Year Summary: One of the things that stuck out to me was how much I wanted to do the act of "grinding," , where you just do a repetitive task for moderate character improvement, in video games in 2021. It was pretty critical to helping me get through so many dang books and podcasts. I read 56 books in 2021. This was an improvement on almost zero in 2020 and virtually none since college. The rep...
originally posted on my blog at https://justis.zone/posts/post_20210512-active-reload-should-feel-better/ I’m only a couple hours into the video game Returnal and I’ve come to a strange realization - The active reload is using the wrong stimuli for how my brain works. Specifically, the noise that comes from the controller, the specific way the controller rumbles, and the information presented o...
Games were not a priority in 2020. They never are a priority but they are a thing usually to make time for. My relationship with games this year was a real roller-coaster so I've laid out what my year looked like to hopefully provide some needed context. I put these thoughts in spoiler blocks so that you can skip them if you'd like. I had a really hard time after finishing my last big JRPG of t...
I am going to skip the beginning of a Game of the Year list where I recap small details that have occurred in our world. I don't do this as some sort of easy out or as a way to avoid confrontation. I am doing it because I spent all of 2019 avoiding 2019. I gave it the side-eye, I engaged in "discourse" until my mouth was dry and my throat hurt from screaming, I even started working out again. I...
Every single time I have sat down to play Double Dragon Neon I am almost always a little drunk. I don't mean that as a way to detract from what the game does well. I mean it in that I am almost always drawn to the game in a specific mood. I was inspired to go back and take a second look at this game after finishing WayForward Technologies 's new game, River City Girls, and because, well, I was...
GOTY 2016 1. Doom This is the DOOM your parents were afraid of in the 90s. DOOM (2016) feels like the DOOM 1 and 2 of yore. You play as a guy dubbed “The DoomBringer” that shoots demons in the face with a shotgun while never not moving. This game undoes the sin of making DOOM 3 a pretty alright survival horror game. It makes you forget that the modes that are not the campaign seem to be forgott...
I didn't even realize it until I started putting this list together, but 2018 was the year of "returning." We went back. I specifically went back enough that I did not play 10 games that came out in 2018. *GASP* I know, right!? As the world has continued to be on fire, games jumped right back to what we are familiar with, chasing after everything in a hazy memory. This resulted in some great ga...