Tag: Video Games

No Feet, Dead Man, and Cap’N Shammy: A Sea of Thieves Tale

Header Photo by Alan

A dimly lit tavern and it’s quiet shanty tunes offer a night of reprieve for weary sailors on this dark and stormy night.

Oh, and the mead. The mead helps a lot.

Resting in the corner with drink in hand sits a lone pirate. He mumbles to himself between drinks as a duo comes through the door. Soaked in rain, one of them is a burly woman of sorts, covered in tattoos, and the other a scrawny man missing a hand. They each take a seat next to the drunken pirate.

Betwixt their idle conversation, he lifts his head.

“Dark night,” he says.

“Aye,” the woman responds, “cold as well.”

“No colder than the night me and my crew met The Queen of Crests.”

The man sighs.

“Gods, not this again. Every bleedin’ tavern this happens,” he moans.

He gets up with, “can’t a man just have a drink in peace.”

The pirate man lies his head back down.

The duo get up to leave.

The pirate slams a few blue-ish coins on the table. They glow in the faint lamp-light. The woman and man look on with awe.

“What are these?” the woman asks, her eyes fixated on the their beauty.

“The story’s true, if ye care to hear it,” the pirate responds with a sly smirk.

Slowly they both sit back down.

The pirate takes a long chug of his mead.

“Our tale begins on a night much like this…”

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What I Learned From The Kingdom Hearts Primer

Header Photo Credit

The Kingdom Hearts Primer was teased on September 27th, 2016 and ended on March 2nd, 2018. That’s 522 days to make this series happen, not counting the original botched recording that started exactly a year before the teaser went up. My co-host Brandon Carey and I totaled 103 episodes, averaging about half an hour a piece, or simply a clean 100 if we don’t count the custom-made trailers.
While I didn’t work every single one of those days, the primer was still something that hung around me that entire time, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot from it. Here’s a few of those things.

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The Journey’s End | Persona 3

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Note: For this article, it’s assumed that you’ve played Persona 3, or at least have a cursory knowledge of the game’s plot, characters, and combat system. If not, you may find yourself a bit lost.

Memento Mori. Remember that you will die. Remember your death.

Riding the train on the way to a new city and new life, we suddenly experience a moment in time where everything twists. The city is bathed in reds and greens, and everyone around us now resides in a literal coffin. To everyone else, this moment in time doesn’t exist. To us, and a select few others, it has a name: The Dark Hour.

This, and the enormous, seemingly endless, tower that dominates the landscape during this time, make up the bulk of Persona 3’s narrative, themes, and play hours. I can’t honestly say that Persona 3 is better than any of the other games in the franchise, but I feel that some aspects of it are worth taking a closer look at.

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I felt like I spent a lot of 2017 not doing much. While the Kingdom Hearts Primer rolled in and onward from the previous year, the sheer monotony of the editing process started to take its toll on me. At the same time, I also finally filmed one of my dream projects, LAST NIGHT, that I wrote back when I first started film school. Then I proceeded to barely work on the editing for it, even though I had to take off of school for a while do to financial reasons.

Whether for those reasons or not, not too many games seriously gripped me this past year, but even so, I deeply appreciate the level of storytelling, intimate or grandiose, through writing or gameplay, that video games are coming to consistently achieve.

Here’s a few of those.


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What I Want From Final Fantasy XV

Author’s Note: I’m well aware that this particular topic has been talked to death at this point, but I think it’s endlessly important to reiterate since it continues to be a quiet but very painful problem in a modern male’s adult life.

I remember the afternoon I was seeing off my old friend Keegan, after he spent the previous night playing video games and watching anime with me. I must have been around 11 or 12 and, without giving any thought to it, I hugged him goodbye. Not some kind of nonchalant side hug, but a real loving one, because he was my best friend and I really cherished him and his friendship. Afterwards my mother took me aside and told me that she thought that was really strange, and that maybe I made Keegan or his mother uncomfortable because of that. While the memory receded quickly, it internally fucked me emotionally up for years.

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What I Learned From Interactive Friction Season 4

Season 4 was probably the first time I had a handle of things throughout the post-production process. Editing was really smooth and videos were posted regularly with only one mishap. Recording on the other hand was kind a nightmare.

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My Favorite Games & Biggest Bummers of 2015

Starting with my first quarter at the Art Institute of Atlanta, my routines changed a lot last year. I began to work a bit on film projects before and after class. My commute became extremely long compared to my job (which I quit soon thereafter). My number of articles faltered even more than before even as Interactive Friction went on hiatus. But even so, I did get to play some video games.

Upon the completion of writing this I noticed that a lot of the big budget titles failed to impress me, even when they were good, but most of the side projects felt like they had a lot of heart put into them. There may be as many disappointing games on here as favorites, but that’s more because I didn’t have enough time to play everything I wanted to (especially in the ever growing indie-scene). To put it simply: don’t let my list deceive you. This was a fantastic year for games.

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Interactive Friction Season 4 & The Making Of A Trailer

After a longer break than I expected, but still appreciated, Interactive Friction has returned. This time however I’m going to work harder to keep on schedule, and I’ve already completed the first step by editing all the footage prior to this trailer going up. Additionally season 5’s raw footage is already mostly recorded, and the audio for our new project is primed for editing. The latter of these should be what to expect next from Brandon and I.

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Yakuza Movie Review

Part 1 can be read here.

The Yakuza games have mostly been known for their long “cinematic” cutscenes filled with loads of exposition interspersed with furious fights. This isn’t to say the gameplay is terrible (it’s decent), but it stands apart from the quality of the non-interactive pieces. Most of this is due to the great direction, but what really keep the games interesting is the long list of completely ridiculous characters and expertly timed cinematic moments, both funny and serious. While there were some problems with the first game’s plot, I still came away with a positive experience because of that. People like Majima Goro are just that unforgettable.

Two years after the release of the game it’s based of off, Takashi Miike (mostly known in America for his grossly disturbing and yet darkly humorous films) took at stab at directing a film based on the first game. It would be titled Yakuza.

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Yakuza 1 Review

It’s more rare than it should be for a series that’s not an RPG to make it all the way from Japan to North America, and in that sense I’m really glad that at least most of the Yakuza games crossed over. It means that more of us will get to experience the fascinatingly heavy roots in its native culture instead of merely hearing about it in easily forgotten forum threads.

I may have taken a few too many years to get around to beginning the series myself but I’m glad that I finally did. It has a number of critical gameplay flaws that try to bring it down, but the world it brings the player into more than makes up for it.

The story of Yakuza 1 hits the ground running as protagonist Kazuma’s friend and fellow Yakuza member Nishiki shoots their boss Sohei Dojima to stop the sexual assault of their friend and mutual love interest Yumi. With the police only moments away Kazuma takes the blame to protect Nishiki, going to prison for a long 10 years to pay for it.

It’s around Christmas in 2005 once Kazuma is released, and not even a single night can pass before things get complicated.

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