Endgame Viable

There are massive spoilers for the game below. Don’t read this unless you’ve finished the game through to the credits. Having finished the game, I’m only just now starting to see all the articles and videos containing let’s charitably call them “criticisms” about The Last Of Us Part II. There are plenty of things about the game to legitimately criticize and discuss (sadly I have no knowledge of where honest discussions of video games can occur with relative safety on the Internet anymore, or in real life for that matter), but I’m seeing a preponderance of what I’ll charitably call “shallow interpretations” of the game. So I feel like I have no choice but to try to push a little bit of what I’ll charitably call moderately reasonable or at least alternate viewpoints onto the Internet to balance the scales a little bit. (2693 words.)

Two things happened to derail my Assassin’s Creed franchise backlog playthrough: First, controversy surrounding the Ubisoft company (what else is new) which I assume is common knowledge by now. Though I personally do not have any difficulty distinguishing art from artists (or executives), I figured I should shut the hell up about Assassin’s Creed games for a while. Second, The Last Of Us Part II launched on the Playstation 4. (603 words.)

Continuing my epic playthrough of all of the Assassin’s Creed games in my Steam backlog in order, and archiving the tweets I wrote about them. Last time it was Black Flag, next is the one that made everyone step back and say, “You know, maybe we don’t actually need a new Assassin’s Creed game every year.” Assassin’s Creed Rogue, June 2 Shay Cormac, our completely level-headed character for this game, who will not at any point make any rash decisions whatsoever. (774 words.)

Continuing my epic playthrough of all of the Assassin’s Creed games in my Steam backlog in order, and archiving the tweets I wrote about them. Last time it was Liberation HD. This time it’s the pirate game that I knew I wasn’t going to like, and the main reason I stopped playing Assassin’s Creed games in the first place. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (2013), May 28 Get used to this sight. There's \*a lot\* of sailing in Black Flag. (883 words.)

Continuing my epic playthrough of the Assassin’s Creed franchise in my Steam backlog, so that I can be ready to … not buy Valhalla at launch and wait for a Steam sale some time in the future, like I do with every iteration of Assassin’s Creed. These blog posts are largely here to archive and expand on all the tweets I wrote. (To be perfectly honest, this specific blog post is mainly here to test whether or not Tweetdeck is going to show an image on the automated tweet that Jetpack is going to create for this post. But that’s a whole different story.) (348 words.)

I’m going to attempt to write a blog post now. I don’t really want to, but I feel like I should at least try to get one post out about something every month. But honestly, who gives a crap about blogging right now? Not me, that’s who. Anyway, after I reached a stopping point with No Man’s Sky, I turned to the Assassin’s Creed franchise. I didn’t really plan to, but after I saw the reveal trailer for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, I thought, “Hey I want to replay that first Assassin’s Creed game and get a good recording of it. It was one of those seminal, ground-breaking games in the history of gaming that needs to be remembered.” (1716 words.)

I’ll start with non-spoilery stuff. I saw some folks talking about Doki Doki Literature Club on the Blaugust Discord (raving about it, one might say), and I noticed it was free on Steam, so I downloaded it to try it out. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard people talking favorably about it in the past as well, though I never understood why. It’s a really, really slow burn, but I think it’s probably worth it in the end. (1841 words.)

I saw Roger posted his Gamer Motivation Profile, which “motivated” me to take the test myself. Many others have also done it, including Rakuno at Shards of Imagination, who links to surely at least a dozen others. Anything I can do to help dislodge that Bartle thing-the test that our gaming neanderthal ancestors* created from stone knives and bear skins and VT100 terminals and MUDs-from the public discourse is a win. Surprisingly fairly accurate. (596 words.)

I’ve been wrestling with whether I should get No Man’s Sky for almost four years now. To their credit, Hello Games has put a lot of work into upgrading it over the years, but I worried it was one of those games that looked great visually and conceptually, but didn’t have much substance or gameplay underneath it. Recently I heard they did another big update, and I was looking for a mouse-and-keyboard game to play on my PC on my “controller-rest days” in between playing Horizon Zero Dawn on the PS4 (which I restarted a little while ago). So I finally pulled the trigger and bought No Man’s Sky on Steam yesterday. It’s on sale right now. (825 words.)

First, just a quick note to say I feel like I’m “recovered” from whatever it was I had. I still have a minor cough now and then, but that’s something I’ve had for years anyway. Secondly, I’ve been so distracted lately that I’m only just now realizing that Blapril is not just coming soon, but already here and started. So go do that if you haven’t signed up yet. It’s a great event. (588 words.)