Category: 2024

Some Of The Best Video Games I’ve Played Recently

Published January 29, 2024

I’ve been playing quite a few video games recently across both my Steam Deck and my PC and there have been quite a few that I found incredibly impressive. Some of these games have been popular releases but then others seem to be, in my personal opinion, overlooked by the greater gaming population. Therefore, I thought that it might be interesting to take a look at some of the best video games that I’ve played recently and highlight some titles that I think are worthy of achieving greater success.

Wild Guns Reloaded

I wasn’t exactly sure what type of game Wild Guns Reloaded was as I sat down to play it for the first time. I’d heard it referred to as a rail shooter but I also heard that it contained platforming and bullet hell as well. Turns out that the genre Wild Guns Reloaded belongs to is “Shooting Gallery” and that the original game, Wild Guns, was seen as one of the best shooting gallery games. Wild Guns Reloaded is a remaster of the 1994 original and takes place in the American Wild West that also features robots, laser guns and other sci-fi elements. You control one of four characters who have to dodge incoming bullets while mowing down the enemies and bosses that come wave after wave. The game can be quite challenging to get to grips with, definitely worth looking up the controls before you start playing, but the superb music, gorgeous pixel art, tight controls and more make it a game that is well worth learning, playing and mastering.

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A Change To The Blog Post Schedule

Published January 22, 2024

It’s been over four years since I released my first post on this blog and, ever since, I’ve been releasing two blog posts a week almost continuously. However, I’ve recently felt the need to change this schedule due to other aspects of my life. Therefore, I thought it worth devoting a blog post to this change in schedule, what’s happening to the blog for the foreseeable future and some of the reasons why I feel the need to do this.

Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room, the change in blog post schedule itself. Rather than continue to release two blog posts a week, I’m now going to be releasing only one blog post a week. This was actually something that I intended to do far sooner, probably within months of first starting the blog, but I felt the need to continue after several of my early goals weren’t met. I believed that having more and more content on here would eventually solve the problem and, to some extent, it has. Viewership has increased over time with more views in 2023 than in 2019, 2020 and 2021 combined! However, I will say that a couple of those early goals have, even after all this time, still not been met and the benefit of releasing two blog posts a week has steadily depreciated over time. That’s why I feel that now is the time to go back to my original plan and release blog posts on a weekly basis.

A graph showing blog viewership in, from left to right, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 respectively. While it’s true there’s been a small dip from 2022 to 2023, both dwarf the viewership from prior years.

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Now Is The Time For Anime Ltd To Release Tokusatsu

Published January 18, 2024

I recently went to the cinema in what seemed like a very, VERY, long time to see the newest Godzilla film, Godzilla Minus One. For those wondering, I thought it was an excellent movie and is one that I’m eagerly anticipating seeing again with some friends once the home video release is out but I also took note of the UK and Ireland distributor of the film, that being Anime Ltd. I was already aware of this as I’d read that they’d expanded the number of cinemas due to demand but I still wondered whether the film would prove successful for them. It seems that it has as Godzilla Minus One has already become the highest-grossing live-action Japanese film ever in the UK and Ireland box office! Therefore, I believe that now is the time for Anime Ltd to finally move into an area that I’ve been asking companies for a while now, that being to release tokusatsu films and TV series.

Just to briefly remind readers of what tokusatsu is, it refers to Japanese live-action media that focus on the use of special effects and is most heavily associated with the Kaiju and Henshin Hero genres. I was curious whether Anime Ltd had even released any live-action media before and, while certainly not comprehensive, I looked through their website’s catalogue in order to see. As far as I can tell, the only live-action media that Anime Ltd have released prior to Godzilla Minus One is the live-action adaptation of Tokyo Ghoul as well as two documentaries, Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki and 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki. Even if they have released some others, if you’re aware of any others feel free to leave this information in the comments below, it’s clear that tokusatsu is a relatively underdeveloped part of their business model and one that I would love to see expand.

The poster for Godzilla Minus One. — Godzilla Minus One has proven to be an unexpected international hit!

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Taking A Look At My Steam Replay 2023

Published January 15, 2024

I had just taken a look at the Steam frontpage last night and I noticed a big banner saying “Steam Year In Review 2023”. As you might imagine, I was quite pleased to see this since I was not only curious about my statistics over the course of 2023 but also because my article “Taking A Look At My Steam Replay 2022” was one of my more popular posts and doing a follow-up makes perfect sense to me. Therefore, I thought it worth taking a look at my Steam Replay 2023 and breaking down some of the information within it. Also, as before, I’ve made my Steam Replay public so that anyone can take a look at it themselves if they are curious.

First thing to note is that the number of games that I’ve played has gone up slightly from 197 to 200 and the number of new games, those that I’ve not played before, going from 151 to 154. As before though, I do have to confess that these numbers are corrupted by the fact that I subscribe to Humble Choice and that I use a program to farm Steam cards off of these games. More accurate to look at perhaps is that I got 1854 achievements across 61 games, an increase from 1302 across 59 games last year.

A quick summary of my Steam Replay 2023.

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The Game Awards Are An Embarrassment To The Industry

Published January 11, 2024

Where I live, that being Ireland, the Game Awards tend to start sometime after midnight so I don’t tend to see much of it live when it airs. Not that I’m the kind of person to sit down and watch an awards show for hours when I could just look up the news afterwards but I do tend to look at the beginning of it before heading off for bed. However, while it’s certainly not all bad, I personally think we’ve gotten to the point where I have to say that I think the Game Awards are an embarrassment to the entire video game industry! That might sound a bit harsh but let me tell you why I think this.

Let’s start with a brief history of the Game Awards and the embarrassing moments that have predated this year’s event. The Game Awards were first held in 2014 as a replacement for the Spike Video Game Awards and are hosted by Geoff Keighley. The viewership of the awards has consistently grown year upon year with the 2014 Game Awards being watched by 1.9 million people to a staggering 118 million people watching the 2023 Game Awards. You’d think that this success would have led to a better awards show but issues continue to plague the Game Awards year after year. While the 2022 interruption of the Game of the Year Award may have ultimately been amusing, it highlighted the poor security of the event and the potential for dangerous actions to those attending.

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Some Anime That Have Short Episode Runtimes

Published January 8, 2024

Whenever I sit down to watch an anime series, I generally assume that the episodes will be somewhere between 20-25 minutes long. I’ll occasionally come across a series whose episodes are longer than that, Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne and Hellsing Ultimate being two in particular that come to mind, but there are also a surprising number of anime whose runtime is actually below the average, sometimes drastically. Therefore, I thought I might take a look at some anime that have short episode runtimes and how they air on television.

I should start out by saying that I have seen relatively few of these series. My focus on physical media as well as value has always limited the amount of anime with short episode runtimes that I end up seeing. I also get the feeling that they are a harder sell for licensors as I don’t recall seeing many of these series released here in the first place. Off the top of my head, the only anime that I can recall seeing that would fit this criteria is Hetalia: Axis Powers, a series which personifies nations and runs for about five minutes per episode. While the show can be a little uneven in quality at points, it’s one that, particularly as a fan of history, I ended up greatly enjoying.

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What Are The Japanese Playing Cards Karuta?

Published January 4, 2024

I was recently watching the Higurashi anime series and there was a scene, which in Higurashi fashion we saw again later on, in which the main characters partook in a card game that involved grabbing them quickly when something was said. I recognised that I’d seen this game in other media and decided to take a look into it. Therefore, I thought I might explain what karuta is and as well as some of the history of these Japanese playing cards.

First off, let’s take a look at the cards themselves and, more specifically, the types of games you can play with them. Karuta cards are broken up into two groups, cards that are descended from Portuguese-suited playing cards and cards whose lineage hails from E-awase. The two most popular card games, Uta-garuta and Iroha karuta, come from the E-awase group while cards of Portuguese-suited playing cards descent continue to be used for gambling games such as Koi-Koi, Oicho-Kabu, Tehonbiki etc.

An example of two cards, a pair, that are used in Uta-garuta.

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My Suggestion For Sony And Their Efforts On PC

Published January 1, 2024

I recently saw an article which mentioned that Sony was looking for a “PC Planning Analyst” who would assist in “driving sales success and shaping strategy for PlayStation’s fast growing PC business.” While I feel like I should be pleased to see Sony expanding their PC division, known as PlayStation PC, I am simply reminded of my growing frustration with them instead. While it’s highly unlikely that any people from Sony with the ability to make significant changes to their PC strategy will read this, I thought I’d keep yelling into the void we know as the Internet in the perhaps vain hope that something I say may make a difference in some shape or form. Given all of that, here is my suggestion for Sony and their efforts on PC.

I’ve already made a bunch of suggestions in the past with regards to Sony and their efforts on PC but my new suggestion is inspired by a few news articles that I’ve been seeing lately. The first was a news article from last year that stated fans had developed a PC port of the first Jak and Daxter game that is remarkably high-quality with numerous features such as higher framerates and resolutions. The second was from this summer where a fan ported the PS1 game Wipeout to PC and dared Sony to “either let it be, or shut this thing down and get a real remaster going” while adding “I’d love to help.” The final news came from November, just last month as of the writing of this article, and noted that the fans who had ported Jak and Daxter to PC had now ported its sequel, Jak II, to PC.

The fact that a native PC port has been developed by fans is a remarkable achievement and opens up a myriad of possibilities for Sony and their games on PC.

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