The Plot of Metal Gear (as concisely as possible)

One of the defining Metal Gear series is its incredibly dense and complicated storyline, a military fantasy epic filled with betrayals, amazing coincidences, pratfalls and switchbacks, double- and triple-crosses, supernatural and technobabble elements, and yes, a plot hole or two. It’s so difficult to keep all the schemes and players straight, in fact, that Kojima […]

The Science of BONK: A Methodology for Quantifying the Violence in River City Ransom

Today I put the finishing touches on River City Ransom, which Dan (KefkaFloyd) and I played back in December. Please to be enjoying the playlist:

Throughout the LP I kept a running tally of how we were dispatching each dude. What sorts of violence were Dan and I most drawn to? The people had […]

South Park, and Solving RPG Combat

There’s little point in reviewing South Park: The Stick of Truth. I can neither recommend it nor not recommend it. If you like South Park, you want to play this game, full stop. And if you don’t like South Park, you’re going to be so turned off while playing it that you might actually throw […]

Steam Winter Sale Breakdown

I nabbed a ridiculous number of new games during this winter’s Steam sale. The perfect storm of insanely low prices, credits from selling virtual trading cards, Steambux in the Christmas stocking and (this is the part that really blows my mind) gifts from YouTube and Twitch viewers, I walked away with more games than I […]

Monopoly — a follow-up post that’s five years late

Nearly five years ago I wrote a post about the board game Monopoly, which is by far one of my most popular posts, judging by the number of comments it’s gotten. My theory is that every so often it gets linked by a board game community somewhere, causing a new flurry of visitors. I’ve gotten […]

dtsund’s NetHack Overhaul

My good pal and roguelike afficianado dtsund (who sat in with me during a few episodes of Shiren the Wanderer) recently compiled some notes about how he would overhaul the class system in NetHack. He has a lot of good ideas, and a few questionable ones, and this blog post is intended to offer my […]

Risk of Rain

Risk of Rain has the most exhilarating learning curve I’ve experienced in a game since I started learning NetHack in 2006.

I don’t mean to say it’s the most fun, mind you. It hasn’t always been fun. I’ve said a lot of bad words at my computer this past week. But it’s been worth the […]

Merry Day-After-Christmas

I can’t imagine anyone reads this blog who isn’t already subscribed on YouTube, but just in case, I added a widget to display my most recently-updated video. That was really difficult and took all day, and I think maybe it doesn’t work all the way, because it doesn’t look like it’s displaying my Little Nemo […]

Binding of Isaac is good, now

Over two years ago, when The Binding of Isaac was new, I compiled my thoughts about the game into a blog post (which you can read here). That post was pretty scathing, and I had lots of negative things to say about the game, despite it being a mostly good experience. I stand by everything […]

How to Breed a Gold Chocobo in Final Fantasy VII

I have played Final Fantasy VII to completion probably a half-dozen times since it came out, and I have bred a gold chocobo each time. It’s kind of like a rite of passage in that game. Even my first time doing it, though, way back in high school, the process of catching and rearing chocobos […]