I've played all of the Animal Crossing games in the main series... どうぶつの森 (Animal Forest) on the GameCube, Wild World on the Nintendo DS, City Folk on the Wii, New Leaf on the Nintendo DS, Pocket Camp on the iPhone, and now New Horizons on the Nintendo Switch. For anybody not familiar with the series, it's essential a "life simulation" game where you live amongst animals and pass your time with activities like catching bugs and fish, digging up fossils, expanding and improving your house, and collecting clothing and furnishings to build a custom lifestyle. It's a relaxing way to spend time and forget about the world, and since the game progresses in real time, you're compelled to check in from time to time to see what's new.
The latest effort, New Horizons on the Nintendo Switch adds some important new ideas... while hampered by some really poor game-mechanics which have plagued the game since the beginning (with one notable exception, which I'll get to below). If I were rating it, I guess it would be four stars, maybe? I mean, I do enjoy it very much, but there are times it frustrates me so badly that I want to never play it again.
So let's discuss that, shall we?
This time, instead of moving into a forest (or city), you are dropped on a deserted island with the games business moguls... Tom Nook and his twin (sons? nephews?) employees Timmy and Tommy. The three of them are responsible for building and upgrading your home, selling you stuff, and pretty much run everything. All you have when you start is a tent, a simple bed, and a lantern... along with the clothes on your back. Fairly quickly Tom Nook will inform you that you no longer get the tools you need to survive... instead you have to collect tree branches and stones to craft your own. Like the bug net I made here...
In short order you are informed that the "deserted island" will be getting two new inhabitants. For me this is a pink deer named "Fuchsia" and a body-building-obsessed ape named "Louie." Befriending them gets you advice and occasional gifts, which are much needed when you start the game.
One of the cool new features for New Horizons is the addition of the "Nook Phone." The phone has all kinds of nifty features. Like an app to catalogue all the fish and bugs you catch, your crafting recipes, and even a camera... which has surprising depth of field plus filter features for altering your images. It's a cooler way than a screen snapshot to record events on the island. Compare this image taken with the camera app compared to the screen-cap above...
Your early days will be spent collecting bugs, fish, seashells, weeds, flowers, and the like so you can sell them to Timmy and Tommy for "bells" which is the in-game currency. You need bells to pay off your loan for the tent so you can take out a new loan for a house. You also need them to buy stuff you might need for your home. You also need to collect branches, wood, rocks, weeds, and such for crafting tools, furniture, and accessories. Here you can see me sneaking up on a snail that crawled out when it started raining...
New to this game is the idea of "Nook Miles" which are earned for completing certain tasks... catching this many bugs... talking to this many neighbors... selling stuff for this many bells... that kind of thing. Nook Miles can be exchanged for upgrades, specialty items, and (most importantly) a ticket for a plane ride to neighboring islands where you can plunder its resources and raze its vegetation for fun and profit...
The ecological message here is really scary, albeit historically accurate. You essentially rip everything of value from the island until you are standing in a destroyed wasteland where once a beautiful island stood, all so you can improve your island...
Plunder and raze efficiently enough, and soon you have the funds to upgrade from a tent to a house...
Adding more rooms to your house only takes money. Ever-increasing amounts of money. But, since you can decorate your rooms however you want, that's where the fun is...
You can add progressively more rooms to your house, with each expansion costing more and more bells to procure. Most people turn the first expansion into a bedroom. I turned mine into a big bathroom/laundry room...
Yes, you can absolutely sit on the toilet and take a dump. It even flushes automatically when you get up! Many items have features like this. The washing machine will start up if you close the lid. The little Nintendo Switch will turn on. That kind of thing.
My bathroom is serious business. I couldn't find a bathtub, so I used an oar-fish pool. The Nintendo Switch is handy so I can play games while taking a dump. The katana swords are there to defend myself if somebody intrudes while I'm taking a dump. Don't mind the fish in the corner, I ran out of storage in my attic.
As time goes on, you'll be able to get even more buildings added to your thriving island community. Like a Resident Services Building...
Every time a new structure is built in town, there's a celebration. But there are other seasonal celebrations to be had... including your birthday...
As time goes on, you'll be able to get even more buildings added to your thriving island community. Like a Resident Services Building...
The villagers in my hood are a strange lot. The ape is obsessed with working out and injects it into every conversation you have. He can mostly be found wandering around the island with his ass hanging out...
The airport also allows players to fly to their friends' islands over the internet, or have them fly to you...
At the airport they also have a stationary rack where you can write letters to everybody that they will then deliver for you by the next day. I like dashing out notes to them because they will think you like them and give you stuff. Doesn't seem to matter what you write, they still love getting your letters. As an added bonus, I usually attach a gift of something I have left over...
After you get rich enough and have the materials to craft enough, other animals will move to your island. I always welcome them with a warm letter greeting then do a follow-up in-person visit. Here's my letter to Sherb, who looks like he's a goat...
After a while, a stoner dog named Harvey will show up and invite you to the photo studio on his private island. And, yes... it's as creepy as it sounds. If you have Animal Crossing Amiibo statues, you can transfer them to the game and have them pose for photos with you. My Amiibo for KK Slider the musician, Timmy and Tommy the entrepreneurs, and Mabel the clothing magnate worked just fine. For whatever reason my Amiibo for Cyrus and Reese (the alpaca husband-and-wife duo who make furniture) wouldn't work. My guess is that they will eventually be added to New Horizons in the future, and will likely work when they arrive. The photo studio itself is filled with various rooms, props, and wardrobe so you can pose and create various scenarios for your pictures. I don't have that kind of time to waste, so I just photographed us in front of a brick wall...
I'm not sure how else Amiibo will figure into the game, but I hope it nets me some cool stuff.
And speaking of cool stuff, eventually Blathers the owl will come to the island to collect and catalog the wildlife and any fossils that are found. Like in the other Animal Crossing games, Blathers will build a full-on museum after you donate enough specimens and artifacts...
Don't be fooled by the building. It may be rather small on the outside, but it is absolutely massively huge on the inside... housing an entire wing for bugs, another wing for fish, and a basement full of fossil displays. It's spectacular. If the museum existed in real life, I would absolutely visit it. All the environments are great, and the way that the fossil exhibit tries to follow evolutionary patterns is cute...
My real goal... more than anything else... is to complete the museum collection. I've never done it on any other Animal Crossing game, but maybe this time? How awesome would that be?
So... pretty cool game, right?
Not completely, no. Let's get to the bad stuff here...
REPETITION. The first couple times your character catches a bug or walks into the museum, the conversation bubbles that show up are cute... charming even. But after a couple days you want to put your fist through the television screen every time. You can speed up some conversations with the B-button. You can speed up the crafting session with rapid A-button presses. But you can't eliminate them entirely and it's such a stupid, boring waste of time. For heaven's sake... LET US SKIP THIS IDIOCY.
TOOL ACCURACY. I have no clue why Nintendo doesn't fix the most horrifically frustrating part of the game... the total lack of accuracy in using tools. Whether it's fishing or digging or catching bugs, it's a crapshoot to determine where your tool is going to land. People keep telling me "You'll get used to it!" But in all these many years of Animal Crossing games, I NEVER have. I face to where I want my tool to hit... and inevitably end up going somewhere else half the time. You can literally see it in these screen captures. You face in one direction, your tool hits in another... and don't think you can compensate because your character will shift in random ways...
How hard would it be to have a cursor show you where your tool is going to land as an option?
I may have hated the way that the iPhone version... Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp... added pay-for-play to the game, but at least you could tap the screen to specify where your tool will hit and save a lot of frustration.
CRAFTING. Crafting is new to the console version of the game. I like it. A lot. You collect rocks, sticks, wood, and minerals and get to make new stuff. It adds new depth and gives you something more to do. But, in addition to having to suffer through the crafting animation every damn time, there's no way to craft multiples of an item. Have seven clams and want to craft seven sacks of fish bait? You have to click through the menus and go through that stupid animation SEVEN TIMES. Good Lord. Nobody wants this. Give us the opportunity to specify multiple crafted items at the same time.
CRITTERPEDIA. The Critterpedia, which keeps track of all the bugs and fish you manage to capture is a fun tool to look at...
But incomplete and hardly efficient. First of all, no listing for the fossils you've collected. Second of all, you can't tell at a glance which items you've donated to the museum. You have to click through on every individual critter to find out...
Add a fossil checklist. Add icons to each of the caught critters showing if they're in the museum. Make it ACTUALLY USEFUL AS A TOOL instead of a novelty.
SAVE ME. Saves are automatic. But I'm not sure if they are saved online... even if you have a Switch Online account? And you can't transfer your save data to another Switch, making it impossible to have a home unit and a travel handheld unit both be used for the same game. I am assuming that this has something to do with people not wanting to have multiple saves of the same game, but that's absurd. Surely they can make it be a check-in, check-out situation for people who need it.
ONLINE? It's great that you can travel to the islands of your friends and invite them to your island... but why is it so hard to communicate otherwise? In order to send a gift or a message, your friend has to be online at the time? Why? What if your friend lives across the world 12 times zones away? This is phenomenally idiotic. The Switch is online all the time. How hard could it be to allow messages and gifts and such to be sent whenever and retrieved whenever?
SWITCH TOUCH. The biggest problem I've saved for last... the touch-screen when your Switch is in handheld IS NOT USED! I think you can type out letters on the keyboard that appears when you compose a letter. AND THAT'S IT! Shocking. And stupid. You can't tap to do anything. Even stuff it would be perfectly appropriate for. I have no idea... none why this is the case. Every model of the Switch has a touch-screen, and to intentionally ignore it is criminal.
And that's about it.
It will be interesting to see if this iteration of the game will capture my attention longer than the previous games. I always start obsessed with collecting everything only to get bored and frustrated as time goes by.
I've played Minecraft Dungeons entirely too much. And it's strange. Even my most favorite games didn't result in my playing the levels more than a couple times... but there are levels in Minecraft Dungeons which I've played a dozen times. It's just so wonderfully replayable.
It's all because the game plays entirely differently depending on which weapons you choose and what enchantments are added to those weapons. Play with a super-fast dual-blade set and it's a radically different play than using a slow but lethal hammer. In other dungeon crawlers, you would have to restart the entire game and change your class to do that. Since Minecraft Dungeons doesn't have classes, you're free to change things up on a whim. Likewise, using a multi-fire crossbow makes for a different experience than having a more powerful single-fire bow. Throw in a switch to Adventure Mode or Apocalypse Mode, and the game changes again! Fun stuff.
Sure beats having to listen to the same exact dialogue repeat a hundred times in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. That got really old really fast, and I'm starting to dread playing it. Kinda makes you wonder why Nintendo doesn't offer a way to turn that shit off.
But the best part? Minecraft Dungeons is going to be adding new content... including an island. So even when you're done with it... you're not.
No, this isn't a revolutionary game, but it is definitely a fun one. And the total blast I'm having replaying it? That's pretty much all that matters when it comes to getting your money's worth... and Minecraft Dungeons costs $20 on my Nintendo Switch, which makes it an even bigger bargain.
And now? Back to "Creeper Crypt" for me.
NOTE: I should mention that Minecraft Dungeons has major issues on Switch once you reach higher levels with lots of enemies on the screen. Skipping, stuttering, crashing... it's pretty bad. Apparently even high-end PC's and Xbox have the crashes, so I guess I'll take the slowdown-stuttering if it means I can undock my Switch and take the game with me.
Life sucks, but don't expect a reprieve from the suckage THIS Sunday... because a Very Special Technology All-Fail Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Mojang! The only video game I want to play lately is Minecraft Dungeons. It's a fun dungeon-crawler that's accessible to play because the difficulty is selectable for each level. You can go harder than your character-power if you want a challenge... or easier if you just want something to do that won't stress you out. In lieu of a LEGO dungeon crawler, it's exactly what I need...
EXCEPT... I bought it for Nintendo Switch so I have the option of playing it on my television or taking it with me as a portable. The problem is that Mojang did a shitty job of the Switch conversion, so it's jerky and rough if things get even a little bit intense... especially on a television. This is absurd. FAR more complicated games, like Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Diablo III, don't have this problem. Bad enough that Mojang did such a poor job... but to not allow players to decrease resolution and frame-rate settings so they can have a playable game is kinda unforgivable. With the new DLC packs I just bought, it's even more critical that Mojang get off their asses and improve the translation for Switch or, at the very least let us turn the specs down so it plays well.
• Mojang Deux! And while we're at it... why does Minecraft Dungeons crash so often? It happens most when I am playing the Daily Trial, which means all the parameters change when I have to restart and begin the level all over again. That SUCKS. Let me go back to the saved game so I can keep going! But instead it's see a Daily Trial game you like, start to play, crash, then you can't get the same game back. Also... why is the online network capabilities so abysmal? Most times when I resume a game, it wants to go back to the Main Menu so it can connect to the Microsoft Network (again), then gives me an error, then allows me on. It's almost to the point where I wish I could afford an Xbox so I'd have a platform that Mojang/Microsoft gives a shit about. Except I don't think that cross-platform saves are available (even though cross-platform playing is), so that may not even help.
• Apple Watch! Apple Watch is both genius and stupid at the same time. The main reason I bought it was to track my sleep and hopefully get better insight into how I sleep so I can get better rest. Apple Watch doesn't really do much of that, even though it's got all the sensors and crap to do all of that (it can't even keep track of multiple sleep sessions in a 24 hour period!). The Sleep app they give you is complete shit, which is why I bought the fantastic AutoSleep app for $4. It is phenomenal, and what Apple should have included. And, surprise! It will automatically log multiple sleep sessions and doesn't require you to manually set a sleep window. It's just class all the way through...
One thing I'm trying to do is experiment with going to bed earlier. Last night I decided to go to bed at 9:00pm, but Apple Watch kept me awake because the display is on. "Hey Siri, good night." — "Hey Siri, turn off the display." — "Hey Siri, how do I turn off the Apple Watch display?" — And of course none of that works because Siri is a fucking idiot. My blood pressure rising because I can't find a way to put the watch to sleep or tell it's I'm going to bed in the shitty Sleep app, I have to Google that shit on my iPhone and eventually find out that there's a "Theater Mode" that I can turn on. Jesus. For a company that prides itself on making technology easy to use... Apple sure fucked up this part. Might want to look into actually making Siri be useful.
• Ubiquiti! When my old WiFi router died, I wanted to buy a future-proof model with excellent WiFi 6 capability. I landed on the Amplifi Alien because Ubiquiti has such an amazing reputation. It was $380, but I figured it would be worth the insane investment if I could hang onto it for 5 or 6 years...
Turns out that NOPE, it really isn't worth the money. Mostly because the built-in firewall is total shit, and there's no way to do the most simple shit like blacklist IP addresses or block countries or anything. THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DOLLARS AND YOU CAN'T BLACKLIST AN IP ADDRESS?? Jesus. What a fucking turd of a router. What's worse? You can't add a third-party device like a Firewalla because it's not compatible with the Alien and, of course, the Alien has no configuration options so you can make it compatible. Thinking of buying a new WiFi router? Avoid the Amplifi Alien at all costs. Overpriced trash with minimal configurability and a pathetic feature set.
• Samsung! I am still feeling very raw that my seriously expensive Samsung television died after just five years. And the fact that there are NO repair parts available and I have to go to the secondary market in order to find them... at a highly inflated price, of course... is typical of a manufacturer who counts on their products being disposible. They want them to fail so they can sell you a new one. Well, I may be having to buy a new television, but it sure as fuck ain't going to be from Samsung.
• PARAMOUNT+! When CBS became Paramount+, there was a special offer to go ad-free for the price of ad-enabled if you bought a year. I did it, because there's a lot of stuff on the streaming service I liked. Problem is? A lot of their older stuff WILL NOT STREAM. New shows? Yes. Old shows? Rarely. Sometimes it will work on a laptop, iPad, and iPhone if you have no ad-blocker, allow pop-ups, don't use a VPN, and turn off every conceivable protection to your network. But even then it's a crapshoot. But here's the thing... it NEVER works on my AppleTV. Old episodes of Ink Master or Drag Race or whatever? NOPE! And it's so fucking stupid. I don't have to turn off all my protection shit when I stream from Netflix, Discovery+, AppleTV+, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Philo, or any other service I use all the time... only Paramount+. What a bunch of fucking assholes. And OF COURSE when you write to their customer support they have you jump through hoops that don't do shit. If ALL MY OTHER streaming services work, maybe it's YOU. If new shows from your network stream fine, but old shows don't, maybe it's YOU. I will not be resubscribing when my year runs out.
• QNAP! This past week QNAP, the makers of my NAS (Network Attached Storage) had some kind of vulnerability which allowed malware/ransomeware hackers to install a program on everybody's NAS drives which encrypted all their files. The only way to get your files back is to pay $500+ to the hackers and they would give you the encryption key. I didn't pay them shit because I have redundant offline backups of all my data (which is harder than it should be because QNAP has a shitty, SHITTY fucking backup app)...
I just deleted all the encrypted files and replaced them with the original. No big deal. After that, I installed a bunch of new stuff on my NAS (including a firewall) to (hopefully) avoid new problems. But here's my beef... WHY THE FUCK DOESN'T QNAP HELP CUSTOMERS UNDERSTAND HOW TO SECURE THEIR DATA AGAINST THESE ATTACKS BETTER? Everything with them is far more complicated than it needs to be, and their customers are paying the price for it. Looking for a NAS? Thinking of buying QNAP? AVOID! AVOID! AVOID!
And that's it for stuff that sucks on this fine Sunday.
I like video games. I love the LEGO video games. I think I own all of them multiple times over (for multiple platforms). They are essentially kid games, which means they're low-stress... but there's challenges and humor which make them a blast for adults too.
The latest release is LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. There have been many Star Wars LEGO games before, but this is a new take on the material which is more expansive and clever than any LEGO game I've played before. Even if you own the original games, this is one worth looking at if you've enjoyed any of the other LEGO video games...
Alas... it's a LEGO video game, so it's cute as can be... but all is not perfect from a gaming standpoint. TellTale Games has always traded on the fact that people want to ply LEGO and the experience doesn't have to be perfect.
My profanity-laden thoughts about the game follow...
In other news... I got the Deluxe Version of the game which comes with a Blue Milk variant of Luke Skywalker. The thing is trending online because people are selling them on eBay for up to $300!
Wow.
If I were to rate this game, I'd probably tag it with a B-. It's expansive, adorable, and looks great... but there are some serious gameplay problems which keep it from reaching greatness.
I am not a hardcore gamer by any stretch of the imagination. I have a Nintendo Switch. I have an Xbox S. I play games from time to time when I need a distraction from the horrors of the world. Usually it's games that are challenging without being frustrating, though all games become frustrating to me eventually since I always reach a threshold where I my skills just can't carry me through.
The latest game to occupy my time is the "Early Access Package" to Disney Speedstorm, a Mario Kart style racing game featuring Disney characters. Disney Kart, if you will. It looks amazing on my Xbox S. The music is great. The racetracks are well-designed. The game is a lot of fun to play. At least right now it is...
And here's a taste of the gameplay...
To gain early access, you'll have to pay for a package. They start at $30, and there's really no reason to pay more than that because you'll eventually get everything in the bigger packages just by playing the game. Upon final release, Speedstorm will be Free-To-Play. Which is to say that you can play for free, but you'll be NAGGED TO DEATH to pay for micro-transactions to unlock things you need to keep advancing and be competitive in multi-player. So... if you have any aspirations to play the game, I'd do it now when you just have to pay once instead of paying small amounts over and over and over and over AND OVER. They don't have these micro-transactions enabled yet, but the path to do so is painfully obvious. There's a boatload of in-game currencies along with special tokens and credits, each of which unlocks something or another...
There's a super-special kind of in-game currency called "shards" which "star-up" your racer characters and Pit-Crew characters. In the example below, I got a single "Mickey Mouse Shard," which is 1/10th what you need to get the next star... at least to start... after you have one star the amount needed escalates to 1/20th (2 stars), 1/35 (3 stars), and so on, making it much harder to level up the higher you go...
If you don't want to wait to randomly earn the shards from racing, you can purchase them randomly in "boxes" or purchase them outright in the online store "Daily Specials" section (which change every day). Here I can buy 5 Mickey shards for 49,500 Season Coins...
My favorite racers to play are Mike Wazowski and Donald Duck, so I wait for those characters to be on offer, because there's only so much currency to go around. Along with a character's "stars" there's also their "level" which requires special general tokens along with token specific to a character's "collection." In the example below, I have to have 9 General Wrenches, 4 Turbo Boosters, and 5 Boo Doors to get him to Level 17...
Characters and their supporting Pit-Crew characters are specific to different "collections" of characters. Some races can only use characters from a specific collection. It's best to pick your favorite out of each collection to star-up and level-up...
All characters are dropped into one of four character classes... Brawlers, Speedsters, Tricksters, and Defenders. The character's stats, hit bonus, and boost all shift depending on which class they're in, and affects how you play. Donald Duck is a Brawler, so he has better car handling, stuns when you hit, and gets manual boost power any time you stun. Mike Wazowski is a Speedster, so he has a higher top speed, gets an automatic speed boost when you hit, and gives power to your boost bar when you run over an auto-boost. Eventually I'll try and level up Elizabeth Swan as my Defender and Mulan as my Trickster so I can get a handle on the different kinds of play that's offered.
Characters have generic abilities that change effect depending on whether you fire them forward, charge them to fire forward, or fire backwards. They also have a unique special ability. Mike's "special ability" is Hold the Door (HODOR!) which allows you to teleport-jump ahead on the track by summoning a magical door. The more stars you have, the further ahead you appear...
As mentioned above, each collection of characters shares a "Pit-Crew" and the more stars you have the more Pit-Crew characters you can assign. Each of your Pit-Crew varies in rarity and adds to your stats in some way(s). For the Monsters Inc. collection, one of the better Pit-Crew options is the CDA Agents which add a bit to your Top Speed, Acceleration, and Bomb Skill. The more shards you collect, the higher their star level and the better their bonus...
The highest class of Pit-Crew is "Epic Level" but their shards are incredibly hard to get, thus they're very hard to unlock, and even harder to "star-up"...
Each racer has their own car. You can change car appearance with various cosmetic changes (like paint) and different accessories (like wheels). I honestly don't know if changing your wheels or adding a spoiler (called "wings") or repainting your car actually does anything except allow you to make your car look unique, so I don't really focus on them...
Actually playing the game is done by choosing your "Game Mode"...
The racetracks that are included are so good. Each is based off of a Disney location that come out of each collection. You've got tracks set in places, like Mount Olympus from Hercules and The Great Wall from Mulan... plus tracks inspired by themes, like pirate ships from Pirates of the Caribbean and jungle ruins from The Jungle Book. There's even tracks which are themed off of an idea, like "The Silver Screen" which is in black-and-white. Within each track are various courses. "The Castle" (from Beauty and The Beast) includes options like "Main Hall" and "The West Wing" and "Time for Tea"...
Controlling your racer is insane. At least for somebody like me who started out with Night Driver and Pole Position. There's so many buttons and combinations to remember, that this game will be a challenge for young kids (or old kids like me)...
I suggest turning steering assist and auto-acceleration on so you have two less things to worry about, then focus on mastering one skill at a time. I started practicing how to launch attacks and use my manual speed-boosts. Then spent time learning how to drift, which is essential because drifting fills up your manual boost meter faster (essential to winning races). Then I focused on dashing, which allows you to bump other players as you approach or pass, hopefully stunning them enough to get ahead. Then I practiced rear-view so I can look behind me. Then rear attacked so I can hit what I see behind me. Then jumping so I can hop up on grind-rails or reach ramps and such. It's a lot.
Whether you are blazing through the Starter Circuit or working your way through the Season Tour, you have a map of the races you need to play along with what goals have to be met to win experience or coins or whatever. This could be using a certain number/kind of skills, placing 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, or even just completing the race...
After the race you're told the results and how many of the goals you met. Most of the races can be played as many times as you want to get a better time or meet all the goals (some races are special and can only be played a limited number of times)...
Certain races are special for some reason. Maybe the track is foggy. Maybe there's a guest boss you have to beat. Maybe the boosts and skill power-ups are floating. Maybe to win you have to be the Last One Standing...
If there's a flaw, it's that there doesn't seem to be any surround sound despite my having 7.1 turned on and surround sound enabled. It would be very cool if cars went whizzing past you audibly as well as visually. That's partially compensated for by the music. They got funky electronic versions of Disneyeque tracks that really adds to the atmosphere of the game...
Ultimately, there's a lot to like about Disney Speedstorm. Above all, it's fun. At least for now. I'm very glad that I bought the Early Access before the micro-transactions kick in and everything becomes a "He Who Spends The Most Money Wins the Race" kind of situation. Or, in some situations, "He Who Doesn't Spend Money Can't Access The Full Game" because parts of it like Speedstorm's "Golden Pass" will also likely require your money to get.
Given that this is a Disney game, I was surprised at how brutal it can get. Ramming into other players is a big part of what makes it so dang entertaining (at least when you do it... not so fun when it happens to you), which isn't the nicest way for young children to spend time in a game. Zooming up on poor Meg from Hercules and shoving her into the rails is nasty business, but given the complexity of the controls, maybe they won't be playing it? I dunno. It seems like kids have a better shot at being good at modern games than I do anymore.
So, yeah. If you're into Mario Kart and want to play as Disney characters, this is your ticket (so long as complicated controls and the incredibly complicated array of currencies doesn't scare you away). But if being financially bled to death by micro-transactions is not your idea of fun, then eventually when the free-to-play goes live you will be pretty miserable indeed. The frickin' ridiculous number of in-game currencies make this abundantly clear. My guess is that there will be a monthly package you can buy to get a set number of various tokens, coins, rewards, credits, and whatever at a discount, but regardless of how they bundle things up, having to keep paying to play really sucks. Which is to say that the future of all gaming sucks, because this is the future we're headed towards.
And oh what a crappy future that will be.
It may be getting cold enough that I'm contemplating turning on the heat, but it's always warm on my blog... because an all new Very Special Video Edition of Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Kookaburra! Now, granted, I would not want this outside my window (and I remember them very well from my trip to Australia), but it's sure nice to admire them from afar...
So cute. Are there any baby creatures that are not adorable?
• Andor! Diego Luna is precious and life-affirming. This entire video is fantastic...
On top of that? He's a remarkably gifted actor. I am dying for the second season of Andor to arrive.
• ¡Yo Quiero! "It's the same thing in a different thing." — HE'S FIGURED IT OUT! HE'S DISCOVERED THE TACO BELL FORMULA!
LOL. These foreign takes on quintessentially American things never gets old!
• Does Whatever a Spider Can! Video games have reached the point where you're basically playing a feature film. This looks incredible...
This was a Spider-Man game when I first started playing...
Insanity. And soon we'll have much, much better VR experiences, which could take it to an even more immersive level.
• Unreal! If you want a look into the absolutely fascinating world of 3D computer graphics, this is an amazing behind-the-scenes look at how photogrammetry works...
Now, I've written about the Unity gaming engine a couple times before. The stuff people are doing with it is breathtaking (including companies like Lucasfilm and Marvel using it for producing their projects). It is an amazing, amazing tool. Unfortunately, they've just unveiled a hugely controversial licensing model, which is gouging game developers in a terrible way. It's easy to say "Just switch to a different gaming engine if you don't like the cost!" Except video games take years to develop. Even for large studios with hundreds of employees. So if you've been working on a game for two or three years... how can you afford to switch to a different engine? This is a major deal. So major that some game projects are being canceled... and some developers are going to switch engines despite the additional time needed...
Of course the people behind Unity deserve to get paid for their hard work. But to kill developers to get there seems like a horrifically bad business model. Hopefully they will re-evaluate what they're doing and come up with something more reasonable.
• SCIENCE! Despite an inexplicable (and highly selective) anti-science movement by fucking idiots, science marches on. And this is fascinating...
Fascinating and scary. Plants screaming? But in brighter news... research into Alzheimer's just keeps advancing. Very promising that one day we might have a cure.
• HomeShit! For anybody saying that I am exaggerating about just how fucking shitty Apple's HomeKit is, this guy is a total expert and even he can't solve the problems he's been having. He finally ended up resetting and rebuilding his entire HomeKit setup...
If I get this desperate, I'm just going to bail on HomeShit altogether and go with Matter and some kind of smarter home hub (like Homey Pro). In the meanwhile, I am just applying Band-Aids to try to solve the massive fucking problems I'm having. As an example, I just installed a light and motion sensor in my garage as a backup to automatically turn the light on when the doors open since HomeShit automations keep dying on my door sensor for some reason (even though the light switch and sensor itself is operating perfectly).
And on that happy note... enjoy the rest of your Sunday.
I am banging this entry out early because I have a house to clean, but better early than ever... because an all new Very Special YouTube Edition of Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Strangers! The meat of this excellent video story is about 10 minutes long. It is absolutely worth your valuable time to watch. Especially if you want to know what this experiment we call "life" is all about...
I've seen feature-length movies that didn't work this hard. Brilliant.
• Crash! Remember when police officers stood on the driver's side to talk to you when you get pulled over? Thank heavens they changed procedure and switched to the passenger side, or this officer would have certainly been killed...
Wild. It's just wild to watch it happen. Even more wild that nobody as hurt. And you have to wonder what happened. Was somebody looking at their phone or what?
• We Are the World! It's interesting how USA for Africa came together. I mean, not shocking because it's pretty much what you'd expect, but it's exciting to watch as the dominoes started to fall and people were getting involved. If you have Netflix, this documentary is gold. Especially if you like music...
I actually think there was likely enough material to make a second part, because the stories behind having so many legends in a single room are undoubtedly endless.
• Power! On Friday I mentioned the Marques Brownlee Waveform Podcast where they were talking about the Apple Vision Pro, and they mentioned a relaxing "game" called Powerwash Simulator. I played this at a friend's house, but don't actually own it, so I had no idea what all it contains. Basically, you select a dirt object in the game, then power wash it until it's clean. That's it. When you wash all the dirt and grime off the object you selected, you finish the job and "win." It turns out that one of the things you can wash is the Perseverance Mars Rover! I've fast-forwarded to that part of this review (5:45 minutes)...
And look! The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is there too! How cool is that? If I had a Vision Pro and Powerwash Simulator was available, I'd buy it just for this.
• Attendant! I learned very early on when I was flying constantly about how being a flight attendant works. There are all kinds of excuses as to why their pay doesn’t start until the cabin door closes, usually having to do with making sure that their maximum legal hours worked doesn’t expire in mid-flight after a delay. But it’s all bullshit. I 1000% support flight attendants earning a living wage for the work they do, and excuses are just excuses. Airlines can find a way to pay these hard-working people fairly for the work they do...
• HOT! Hot Ones is a surprisingly deep interview that runs at a brisk pace while buying into an absurd concept of eating hot sauce. And regardless of how you feel about John Oliver and his politics, he has some really funny moments... and some surprisingly astute observations... that aren't straying into political territory...
It just goes to show that John Oliver has some very smart takes the go beyond politics.
• Tay Tay Today! The bat-shit insane conspiracy theories that Fox "News" is drumming up over Taylor Swift don't concern me. It's the fact that some of their viewers actually buy into the conspiracy theories. They don't even make any fucking sense. Like if Taylor Swift says anything AT ALL that's political, she's an evil Biden puppet. But all the "musicians" who show up on Fox "News" to talk Conservative politics are real patriots? Jesus Christ. Taylor Swift hasn't said shit. But apparently Conservatives are shitting their pants over the idea that she could, and so they want to jump in front of it. Anyway... Seth Meyers has a look down the rabbit hole of Taylor's existence, and it's worth a closer look...
Anymore doesn't our reality seem like a fucking bad movie?
At the beginning of each year I don't make resolutions. Instead I make a list of dreams for the next 365 (366 in 2024) days. I'm not talking about pie-in-the-sky dreams of unrealistic fantasy that are unachievable, but dreams which can actually happen. High on that list is that Taylor Swift continue to trigger people in all the best ways. Because apparently this is something that is badly needed. And you know what? January just ended and I'm just going to check that one off my list. Whether she's just existing... or watching her boyfriend play football... or she's being accused of being a demon in league with satan... she triggers more ridiculous people on a daily basis than I could ever hope for. And I love you for that, Taylor!
Now I need to get back to cleaning my wreck of a house. See you next Sunday with more bullets.
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