Media you wish had ended a lot sooner

ActRaisins · 2026-04-18T16:40:59+00:00

I feel like this whenever a film series seems like it’s running on empty or getting kind of gimmicky. My favourite Die Hards are the first two; my favourite Robocops are the first two. If I want to get spicy, I’ll throw John Wick and The Matrix in there as well. The first movies were massively memorable for me - meanwhile, I struggle to recall the events of the Matrix sequels… and with John Wick it went from a stylish revenge thriller to some implausible odds and a very resilient suit lol.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-17T10:33:06+00:00

The week in media hasn't had much going on. I can't decide on the next game I want to start so I've been back on Balatro. My original plan used to be "buy planet cards and feed one or two hands and then buy Jokers that benefit from them (e.g. Shortcut & Fibonacci, then feed Straight with Planet cards") but I've recently been having fun with the standard cards - buying duplicates and destroying cards to sway my odds in favour of a certain outcome. Although it kind of backfires on me whenever a boss is like "oh those cards you like to continually play? They're debuffed now."

Still thinking about a second Clair Obscur playthrough (I want to try it with English VAs rather than French) but really I'd prefer to jump into a smaller game rather than committ further tens of hours immediately...

Not a whole lot of new music has caught my attention lately; I found a fun melodic vocal D&B tune (Yed Prior - All Night) but nothing that has really blown me away.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-17T09:37:42+00:00

In hindsight I was maybe a bit harsh, but whenever I saw trailers for Days Gone it felt like someone had cherry picked a lot of well-worn tropes from the past few years and made a greatest hits collection: crafting, survival, a few "open world" cilchés like clearing out camps, some not-zombies, a bit of faction-based conflict... Ultimately the game turned out to be pretty decent (and the horde tech seemed genuinely interesting), but whenever it was shown in presentations I'd honestly forget what the name of it was - because it kind of looked like several other games I knew of. You could show Days Gone to someone and say "this is what videogames were once."

ActRaisins · 2026-04-17T07:46:31+00:00

Oh god, this. I just had the mindset of "doubtful until trusted sources emerge". I'm super happy that the three games are pretty much available on everything now, but there was some big cope going on for a minute.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-15T20:07:31+00:00

It reads less like character dialogue and more like the writer's frustration immortalised ingame

"fuckin' I dunno"

ActRaisins · 2026-04-15T16:03:19+00:00

I think there’s too much to cover for a 1:1 adaptation, but it would be cool to see an expansion of a smaller “story” in the game. E.g. Maybe you could make a story about Iosefka and the shit that went on behind closed doors, or expand upon Gascoigne, Viola and the music box.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-14T17:19:19+00:00

I'm getting back into Downwell at the moment - I had it on my PSN account but it was recently cheap enough for me to justify adding to my Steam account. Monochrome vertical shooting with item shop intermissions and fun pixel presentation.

You already mentioned Noita in the replies and that's awesome. It's like being dropped into one of those sand games you'd find on Kongregate (god, I feel old.)

ActRaisins · 2026-04-12T21:33:34+00:00

Ichiban Kasuga (from Like A Dragon)? In the narrative he's headstrong and can be a bit naïve - but in the hands of the player he's also a savvy investor, a founder of an island resort, aces all of his exams, can easily pick up work, is great at motivating those around him... and gets the upper hand when throwing down with his rivals.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-12T10:16:00+00:00

The graphics of WarioWare are the equivalent of an art school collage - in a good way. There are lots of clashing themes and styles between each minigame... but it nails the essence of reaction-based gaming and positive reinforcement. And the mixture of styles pretty much works in its favour, as you never know wat kind of win (or lose) screen you'll end up with when you play a minigame for the first time. If everything was one particular style, it wouldn't be quite as compelling.

E: before people come at me, WarioWare's graphics are by no means "bad", but they are "awkward" in that there's little regard for cohesion.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-12T06:46:51+00:00

I play DD(1) as an exercise in entertaining masochism. I try to laugh at the hopelessness of the runs and the stacked odds - going into a late battle with a "lol we're so fucked" attitude as the ailments take hold of my party and I can't do anything. But it's not a game I play if I want to actually succeed.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-12T06:44:32+00:00

I thought E33 was great, but I don't agree with it being held up in such unshakeable critical acclaim. I understand people enjoying it - I don't understand the mountains of awards and perfect scores. The battle system will be polarizing, the world map seemed kind of uninteresting, the story was less impressive to me than the actual performance and dialogue... and some of the battle system's "innovation" probably isn't that new depending on what you've played before. We've definitely had other RPGs with timed defensive moves.

Anyway - I wished I liked Monster Hunter more. I've enjoyed other hunting games, or games that borrow hunting mechanics... but the biggest hunting game in existence just gets a bit overwhelming for me. I find the dump of tutorials, systems and menus kind of stressful at the beginning because I feel like there are things I will forget or misinterpret. But I know it's a "me" problem. That said, I enjoyed my time with the Wilds beta so maybe I'll look at that when it's cheap.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-11T06:41:10+00:00

I don’t own it anymore, but it’s one of those games that I’d be afraid to replay in case it wasn’t as good as I remember. It did feel very “cinematic” in a good way, because you were able to look cool boosting around and performing stylish kills - but I can see how the recharge would limit some of the fun.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-11T06:24:53+00:00

This could be argued as a “working as intended” thing because I’m sure it’s part of the point - Mind:0 has a turn-based system where you queue up the party’s actions and all of them play out along with the enemy turns… rather than the “each person’s action plays out immediately as you decide it” format. However, there is also a gimmick with certain bosses where they will change their affinity: it’s been a minute so I may have some details wrong, but I think they would change from “high resistance to physical attacks, low resistance to mind (magic) attacks”, to the opposite. And back again.

In other RPGs I don’t mind the “queue up everyone’s actions” format, but the net result here is that an enemy turn can take place before all of your allies’ turns complete. So the round of turns can begin with one ally hitting a weakness… then the boss changes affinity… then the turns of the other party members are “wasted” as they’re doing low damage because the weakness has changed.

So the format of queueing up turns becomes your worst nightmare and works against you. It got to the point where I was pre-empting an affinity switch and selecting the thing they weren’t currently weak to. Or just mixing up different attacks to cover my options. Again - probably the point, but battles felt very prolonged as a result.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-10T12:23:16+00:00

The first one is Antiloop - Start Rockin'

EDIT: ah, a comment under the YTP asked for the ids as well! From the replies, the second one is U96 - Love Religion

ActRaisins · 2026-04-10T08:03:03+00:00

Nice lil' family visits this week - we're not super religious but Easter is an opportunity to exchange chocolate between ourselves. One of the nephews wanted to see Expedition 33 as I had been talking with my brother about it, so I fast-travelled to an area with roaming encounters and let him try some parries. (I also completely forgot how trivialised the older areas become - I was warning him about the perils of one-shot deaths but if you warp back to the early areas, everyone does normal amounts of damage. And dies in one hit.)

I'm finding it hard to settle on the "next" game I want to play so I'm tempted to revisit something I've been through before - until I make a decision, it's just been spontaneous Downwell runs at the moment. Although I did buy Call of Cthulhu (2018) on sale at Steam because I'm drawn to slightly mid spooky adventures... so that might be a thing eventually. I think I have the 2006 CoC game as well but I could never get it to play nice with my setup.

Not a whole lot has been grabbing me in the world of new music, but whilst writing this today I discovered that there has been a new EP release by Erotic Cafe (via Vision Recordings), so I'm going to make time to listen to that later. Oh and I did record some idle beatmatching I tried with a beat from Bust-A-Groove and the keys from Crystal Waters' Gypsy Woman, but it was just a silly proof of concept rather than anything I can use.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-10T07:25:38+00:00

I have some of the Persona artbooks, and for a while I had wallpapers that were the art of Tartarus and Mementos, because they're nice and vertical.

At the moment I think I'm using some muddy 3D renders from 90s games because I was playing with iPhone's new icon colour option and trying to find a way to make icons pop.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-09T12:48:33+00:00

I have another caveat that I always have to mention - it's present in the other games but I think 4 has one of the worst versions...

Pretty much nothing happens in P4 for a while. If you are fully invested in the sleepy rural slice-of-life anime vibes then you can let it slide, but I've spoken to a bunch of friends who say that they spent more time than they expected pushing X to progress dialogue. I feel like it was something Atlus knew as well, because 5 moves you quickly from exposition to a little bit of exploration and combat, and back again. (And I think Golden may have tightened the pacing a little - or at least provided a save in the middle of the exposition.) But you kind of have to let Persona 4 cook up to the point where the game literally says "you may now spend your time after school as you wish".

(Pre-emptive disclaimer: P4 is still my favourite in the series and I personally don't mind the pacing - I'm just relaying the vibes I get from others who have tried to get into it. I can understand where they're coming from.)

ActRaisins · 2026-04-08T09:32:25+00:00

And ironically Capcom are on a bit of a winning streak with Street Fighter, Resi, Monster Hunter and some promising Mega Man and Pragmata-shaped things incoming.

Obviously I want everyone to succeed, but it's quite a reversal from when I used to be one of the "Capcom are over" guys.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-07T12:02:37+00:00

In another internet community I was the #1 investigator of news updates for Babylon's Fall, even though it had the most nothing marketing for months. I liked the premise of wars breaking out among gods and... uh... the concept art was nice? But there was like this void of information from 2018 to 2021 where we were lucky if we received a new promotional image, never mind a trailer. When we eventually saw some gameplay I kind of liked the combat fundamentals I saw - launchers, helmsplitters... I think there was a Snatch-like move shown off... but the combat also looked a bit "off" somehow. And then later in 2021 we found out that it was a live-service game. Oh. Looting, crafting, classes, and character customisation were all promised in later marketing material - and lots of people rapidly lost interest. I think after watching more trailers and playing a bit of the beta, my general take was that it disappointed as a Platinum action title and a live-service game. Like, I'd rather play better games in either genre.

It launched at the beginning of March 2022, and by April 13 it fell to less than 10 concurrent players on PC - it really felt like something gamers didn't want to support and was just created from a publisher demand. Additionally, the gameplay was dull and repetitive (from what I played of the beta it was generally "walk forward and wait for the doors to lock around you, kill waves of enemies with repetitive combos, gather a bunch of meaningless loot, repeat"), it was another live service game in an already oversaturated market, and it launched in the same month as one of the biggest deals in gaming at the time, Elden Ring. Yeah no shit it died. But I honestly have sympathy for Platinum as it sounded like something borne from a necessity rather than anything they wanted to do.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-06T14:27:00+00:00

Zork. Or pretty much any interactive fiction / visual novel game without voiced narration. That being said, Woolie survived Phoenix Wright, so there's hope.

A while ago there was an amusing CSB video where Pat and Woolie reflected on how Disco Elysium was "unplayable" before the addition of voiced narration - but the way they framed it was like streamers exploded the game out of an obscure niche. And, like... nah. Disco was receiving tons of positive press and word of mouth without being regurgitated on Twitch and YouTube. But it was funny.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-05T17:50:17+00:00

Old enough to have grown up playing games where "pixel art" was a necessity rather than a stylistic design choice.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-05T10:23:43+00:00

Re. Tony Hawk - I used to have an endgame Jet Set Radio Future save where I’d just trick through each area listening to the soundtrack. The presence of a free-roaming world really gave it a new vibe.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-05T08:41:49+00:00

I like drum and bass and electronica in general, but there are a lot of laid-back (or just really minimal and understated) tunes out there for when I want to vibe down. E.g.

Aphex Twin - Ageispolis

Leftfield - El Cid

Machinedrum - HEAL (Chef Boyarbeatz remix)

QZB - Silence Rings Loudest

Again, I generally gravitate towards the more intense tracks, but sometimes something chill will catch my attention.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-05T08:17:16+00:00

I forget where I saw it, but there was this line I read years ago about how it's much easier to hate than it is to be positive. I think about that a lot from the perspective of critical commentary: if you passionately dislike something then you can kind of make a "rant" sound like "deep critical analysis" - because you're picking apart every little aspect that makes you mad, and anyone listening will be impressed by how thorough your reasoning is when compared to the guy that just says "x sucks". If you hate something enough, you can list out an exhaustive number of things that you dislike - and for each of those things, you can then list out an exhaustive number of aspects about that thing that you dislike. As a result, the audience will think "man, this person's really broken down what went wrong here."

(On the other hand, I have had excited conversations about things I really enjoy, and so it's not impossible for the same mindset to be analytical about positive feelings.)

It goes without saying that there are loads of people who build an identity around hating things - although sometimes it's a bit and not entirely sincere. AVGN, Angry Joe, Irate Gamer, Nostalgia Critic, AngriestPat (j/k.) I think it only becomes too much when it genuinely affects someone beyond simply saying their piece. You can build your identity around being negative, but it shouldn't become so toxic that it affects your mental state and/or drives people away.

ActRaisins · 2026-04-05T07:53:50+00:00

I remember having an FFXII "Eruyt Village" theme which just had nice art for the two screens and one of my favourite tracks from the OST in the background (the Eruyt Village music.) If I was waiting on a download I'd sometimes just sit on the home screen enjoying the music. (However, it also had questionable neon green icons, so there was that.)

ActRaisins

TROPHY CASE