Howdy folks! It's been a while! We're back from unplanned hiatus with some excellent new games for you to check out. But you're gonna be stuck with mostly Joes for this one because Sam was out on vacation in the lovely countryside, no worries tho 'cause he did submit some great recommendations before turning on his out of office reply. But first, let's start by taking a look at some gaming news and other smart writings and interesting things that caught our eye in recent weeks.
Over the course of the summer some honestly very upsetting stories surfaced on the horrifying stuff going on at industry giant Activision Blizzard. Triggered by a lawsuit brought by the state of California more people came forward with stories about a truly rotten culture and disgusting harassment. If you wanna know what gross men en ghoulish billionaires have been up to, follow the links.
On a very much related note, I wanna shout out The Machine That Eats People by Nathalie Lawhead, on the horrible fallout that vulnerable people are faced with after coming forward with their stories.
Everest Pipkin wrote a remarkable and very touching piece on Roblox and shared spaces. Highly recommend you go read this one.
Step into Liana Ruppert's Mod Corner over at Game Informer and get to know the incredible mod creators who put in tremendous work to reconstruct the games they love.
Strap on your riding boots and join Hylke Langhout on a trot through the world of horse games.
Haven’t been able to get your hands on a new PlayBox Series 5 or XStation X yet? You’re not alone! Matt Kim did some investigating on how the issues that have troubled sneaker culture have taken over console stores.
Kaile from No Escape writes about the power of games that care deeply about the location they are set in, how atmosphere and locale in these games is as important as story or mechanics.
And more from Kaile in their first piece for Polygon, a spectacular examination of the political tensions in Destiny 2’s recent story beats.
And finally There is No Punctual Moment of Disaster by Autumn Wright for Bullet Points Monthly. This one hit me particular hard in the wake of the recent flooding in Belgium and Germany.
I’ve not used my phone for much recently outside of it being a second, smaller Twitter machine I can ruin my morning with. It used to be my little joy rectangle, full of bright and inviting little rounded squares ready to grant me ten to fifteen minutes of levity and distraction whenever I needed it. Like a lot of things over the past few months, this newsletter included, it’s been left dusty and unmaintained under the long heavy shadow of Current Events. But I found this frog right, bright pink and big eyed, darting around lily pads and dodging hateful little bugs, determined and getting through it. I was able to sit for a while, give the guy a bit of direction and help them stay on the big lily until the gateway to the next stage opened up, which we spent just enough time inside of to admire the new colour palette before getting knocked off a log by a new enemy type. So we went again, then a couple more times, until I was able to unlock a cool waffle outfit/version of the frog from an alternate timeline and felt pretty good about things. Ten to fifteen wonderful minutes, free of “just a quick little job”s and Giles Coren NFTs, a brief but valuable moment of positive distraction that I don’t doubt all of you reading this are overdue. I wish I had a frog joke to end this on. — S
I came across Death Crown last year in some Twitter thread and really wanted to check it out but unfortunately it wasn't available on any system I owned, so it just sorta disappeared into my wishlist. Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I was browsing new releases and found out it had made its way onto consoles. The game is just immediately eye-catching, but it's not all about the looks, because underneath is a fun, fast-paced strategy game. It condenses the usually lengthy and complex battles of the real-time strategy genre into a hyper-focused, streamlined skirmish of stylized tower defense. There's only a couple buildings to place and really just one type of unit to order around, so you can really zone in on the optimal order of construction to grind your enemy's base into dust. In the main campaign you are leading the armies of Death herself against the Kingdom of Humanity. A story that plays out in gorgeous animated cutscenes rendered in the game's distinct 1-bit graphic style (and yes, you can toggle between a huge variety of color palettes!). If you're curious about RTS games, or haven't played one in while, this is really a great game to start with. I does an excellent job outlining the basics of the genre, and it's made me really excited to try some more games like it. Now who wants to play the multiplayer with me? — J
“Fiendish” is a word that’s often put before “puzzle”. “Devilish”, too. “Bastard”, maybe. Antagonistic puzzles that allow competitive folks to push their brains the same way they push the other bits of their body. Murder Sudokus etc. Things where you have to rotate something 3D in a mirror. Fine, great! But what about us, the folks who require a… softer puzzle experience? This is that. To the point where I might actually be reviewing a game made for small children, but that doesn’t matter if I enjoyed my time with it right and I can buy whatever I want from the shops whenever I want without even asking. Tiger Trio’s is a game about making sure the customers at your sushi food truck get what they ordered, by positioning your very singular-minded staff members at certain points along the delivery conveyor(s). One can add to an order, another apparently gets paid to eat off customers plates. Later you get a guy that only deals with the red sushi. It’s simple and gets less simple slowly, like good puzzle games do, adding new modifiers and menu items as you progress across a wonderful storybook backdrop populated with charming charcoal customers. It feels smart getting the right sushi plates to the right gorillas, and whether that’s because the games super smart and taught me everything right or it’s just easy, I don’t think it matters. Things don’t need to be tough to be rewarding. Go eat an apple. — S
You should check out @checkpointgot on Twitter, Sam keeps telling me he's got big plans for the account so go follow, if you're not already, and join me in excited anticipation. The next mailer should be coming pretty soon already, I know for a fact Sam is busy playing a cool game that I'm sure he'll wanna tell you all about (even on vacation the guy is working hard!) Until then, stay safe and take care! See ya!