Sundays are for counting down the days until the new Doom reveal, unless it’s already happened? In that case, wow, bold of Hugo Martin to cast himself as the Doom Slayer, but I like the moxy. Before I step uninvited into the comments and argue with no one in particular that Doom Eternal’s lateral expansion of the gameplay loop was ultimately a fantastic choice for the series’ long-term health, swine, let’s review the best article on games from reading this week (and game related stuff!)
For the cheerful RPS fanzine PC Gamer, Kerry Brunskill wrote a fantastic piece entitled “Graph paper mapping my way through a 37-year-old RPG reminded me how rarely I give games 100% of my attention, and how much more I enjoy It’s part of their Pasokon Retro series of looks at early Japanese PC games, which I just discovered and will now devour.
The intention of these modern tools is to be helpful, flexible and convenient. But too often the reality is that I mindlessly process games into smooth, efficient, same-same experiences. I don’t invest myself as fully as these games deserve. And when that happens, I miss the opportunity to have an adventure of my own, retrace my route through a game, and leave a game with a personal story to tell instead of a neat checklist of completed tasks, just like everyone else’s.
Aftermath published an excerpt from Katherine Cross’s forthcoming book Log Off: Why Posting And Politics (Almost) Never Mix. I agree, which is why I only posted about wanting a Rock n’ Roll Racing remake – the lack of which I consider the only real failure of democracy.
This all matters for a few reasons. First and foremost, one of the ugliest side effects of terminal COVID posts spreading among the Extremely Online was an increasing distrust of their fellow man; Every time they were drawn into the fact that a wanker was a dick for not wearing a mask, their inevitable response was, “I don’t trust people anymore!” This suits conservatives, whose entire movement is built on an idea of original sin developed by two centuries of monarchism, fascism, nativism, and smaller forms of know-nothingism that essentially treats strangers as threats. But for anyone to the left of Mussolini, such disregard for your fellow man, such unwillingness to reach out to your neighbor for fear they will look like That Bitch from Panera Bread I Saw on TikTok, is extremely dangerous – and fatal for realizing the ideals we share and which are necessarily collective.
For ‘ROCKPAPERSHOTGUN’ dot com, Sin Vega wrote about how Bellwright is secretly a lesson in good management. Does this violate the rules of the Sunday Papers? Wait, wait a minute: I’m making the rules now! And I say that it is a beautiful and incredibly good piece that you should read once normally and again via this link.
What I didn’t appreciate is that it’s mainly about management. I don’t mean “you spend a lot of time in menus”. It’s about why management exists: not for its own sake, but to serve a purpose. That purpose could be to sell goods, or to maintain and distribute student records where they are needed. Or providing countless people with endless entertainment, interesting criticism, and thoughtful reflections of a kind that most can hardly imitate, let alone match. Perhaps by introducing obscure and under-exposed games into a brutally harsh industry to an audience that will enjoy life a little more for having found them; an audience whose other options are too often cynical, routine, or downright disinterested in any larger meaning or purpose of the work. Or free the country by killing all the bad guys, of course.
Brian Crecente has cataloged for Pad and Pixel what appears to be every handheld gaming device ever made, many of which he owns.
Music this week is Monopoly by Homeboy Sandman. Let me know if you can name any other rap songs about board games. Not even as a metaphor. It’s literally just about Monopoly. Nice weekend!