Hey peeps, and welcome to another weekend update. It seems like I passed the 1,000 blogs milestone earlier this week - I'm not quite sure how I should be feeling about that. Proud? I guess? But it's also the culmination of eight years' worth of constant blogging, throughout which I seem to have improved my craft very little. Since I made watching more TV and movies this year a priority, maybe I should read more next year and get a better handle on this written text business. Couldn't hurt.
Anyway, while I'm evidently not one to toot my own horn if I can help it, I've got nothing better to write about for this week's intro so let's break this quadruple-digit "back catablog" into some bite-sized statistics:
- Approximately 225 of those 1,002 blogs were miscellaneous: that is, they were standalone blogs or part of short-run features, covering all sorts of subjects. I have since supplanted this "bullshit on a random topic for a couple thousand words" blog approach with these Saturday Summaries intros for the most part. Though, looking back at a few of those 225, there are some ideas I wish I'd extended into longer features. Well, there's always the future.
- 151 of the remaining number collectively comprise of my various "May M_____" features, which started back in 2012 with the first May Madness and would run daily throughout the month in question. Including the handful of games I've reviewed for May Maturity 2018 so far, I've appraised 135 games in total across all the May features, the vast majority of which were Steam Indies. Yet, surprisingly enough, I still have more unplayed games in my Steam library than ever. Strange how that works.
- 123 of those blogs are... well, what you're reading now. This feature started as "Sunday Summaries" back in 2016, and has settled into this Saturday slot ever since. It's a weekly fixture that I've yet to skip an episode thereof - a benefit of writing it over relatively quiet weekends.
- It took 75 blogs to complete last year's The Top Shelf feature, which covered all 185 games in my PS2 collection (plus another 10 un-owned "honorable mentions", in brief). Those numbers kinda sound way too big to me. That blog feature definitely took place over a single year, right?
- Indie Game of the Week, another of my recurring blog series from last year, is now 70 entries strong as of this week. My secret shame is that it's only actually covered 68 games so far: I split Tales from the Borderlands into three separate entries, which isn't something I intend to do again the next time I play an episodic game (but probably will do anyway with future episodes of Odysseus Kosmos and Bear With Me).
- 66 of the remaining total were dedicated to that most radical of consoles: NEC/Hudson's TurboGrafx-16 (and its CD sibling). That's across three sub-features: TurboMento, which was a monthly series, and Octurbo and Octurbo-CD, which were daily series across October 2013 and October 2014 respectively. Taking out a couple of "intro/contents" blogs, that's 64 TurboGrafx and PC Engine games I covered - barely the tip of the iceberg.
- Last, a few smaller but still substantial series: I estimate I've made 49 screenshot LP blogs based on 25 games, there's 34 blogs written in 2015 that were dedicated to my beloved Atari ST with the Estival Festival and ST-urday, 26 blogs that covered the core Metal Gear Solid games and Deadly Premonition in the form of incredulous bullet-point "observations", 24 blogs spent creating goofy MS Paint comics to thank the Giant Bomb user who gifted me a couple of years of Premium, 23 blogs that expounded on my various Wiki Projects elsewhere on the site, 17 blogs that covered Desura games when that marketplace was still a thing, 16 on "Scenic Routes" which dug into games like Super Mario 64 and Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII in greater detail, 11 blogs spent going though every game in various bundles I'd bought, 9 blogs handing out GOTY awards from 2010-2017, 9 blogs in my "Old vs. New" feature which was the first long-form series I ever created on the site, 8 blogs for my Soulsborne "Bosswatch" review series, and the 6 blogs for good ol' Rainy Days and Mundis, which I more or less abandoned earlier this year because hidden object games aren't easy things to write about in an entertaining fashion.
If you want any links to any of the above without going through all 100 pages of my blog here, I'd like to point you towards this convenient Blogspot round-up. One of these days, I'll probably put together an enormous Google Doc on every game I've ever written about and where, but that's going to have to wait for another day. Maybe when I have an entire week free. At any rate, all this introspection is making me feel a little queasy so let's instead talk about... oh, right, more of my blogs:
- The Indie Game of the Week was 2012's Offspring Fling, a track & field game with licensed music where you have to toss the hammer, the javelin, and the discus far enough to earn the "Pretty Fly" ranking. Actually, it's a puzzle game featuring a species of little rabbit things, and the goal is to get all your children to the exit without letting them, or yourself, be killed by the stage hazards. Despite having 100 stages, they're all Super Meat Boy compact and fly by quickly, especially when you get into the game's flow and memorize the few rules it has. After that, it's all about doing all those levels again just slightly faster - I tapped out at this point, but throwing babies around is a fine way to spend an afternoon.
- I'd be remiss not to mention the ninth entry in my The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past randomizer LP. Now that Dan Ryckert is taking up the randomized mantle and it's become totally mainstream, it's probably for the best that this run is close to bowing out. A Randomized Link to the Past: Episode IX: The Fattened Ilk: A Gonzo Death Spell takes place entirely within Ganon's Tower: we found so many items in that monolithic dungeon that I decided to wrap it up as soon as Agahnim was defeated. The next (and last) episode on Monday should cover the final dungeon (Misery Mire), the remaining overworld items, and then the final fight against Ganon himself.
- Going one higher than ninth, SNES Classic Mk. II: Episode X: Birdman of Alca-Blaz is the newest entry in the SNES-focused series, which reviews a couple of SNES games every fortnight for their suitability for a modern rerelease. This time we covered HAL Lab's Alcahest, a top-down action-RPG with more arcade-like aspirations that felt like a 16-bit Gauntlet with Kirby music, and Ukiyotei's Skyblazer, a great-looking linear platformer with some appealing traversal abilities (like wall-climbing and a horizonal charge) and boss fights.
- Finally, there's this week's sole May Maturity update, an Intro to Looking Glass Studios's Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds, the sequel to the classic dungeon-crawler spin-off I played last year. Labyrinth of Worlds expands on the original's concept of a single dungeon with an elaborate ecosystem, instead creating multiple dungeons across various dimensions, some of which are more alien than others but all share the commonality of being under the thrall of series antagonist The Guardian. It's a fascinating, weird and well-designed RPG, one that - like its predecessor - rewards ingenious non-violent solutions as much as it does displays of martial prowess.
Addenda
TV: My Hero Academia (Season 1)
My Hero Academia, or Boku no Hero Academia as we refined weebs would have it, is a superhero show that is set in a world where almost everyone has superpowers but perhaps not the heart of a champion, and was an anime series that garnered a whole lot of positive word-of-mouth a couple years ago. For this reason, it was one of several anime series I noted down when researching what to watch with this year's focus on new TV shows. However, I'm still not quite sure if I'm really into it, especially when you compare its earnest superhero story to the more humorous and tightly-paced One Punch Man.
I mean, that isn't to say that certain aspects of My Hero Academia aren't objectively excellent. The animation for its action scenes evidently involved a lot of effort, and I really like the unusual character designs and how expressive they can be: this show does determined grimaces really dang well. However, the plodding nature of the show's first season - which has the unenviable task of setting up the origin story for series protagonist Izuku Midoriya, including his motivations for becoming a hero and his relationship with the ne plus ultra (a term the show uses a lot) superhero and "Symbol of Peace" All Might - makes it a fitfully entertaining show to watch. For instance, it takes about six or seven episodes before we start meeting members of the extended cast: Izuku's fellow superheroes-in-training at the titular educational facility, and their eccentric teachers. The other superheroes and their weird powers are where the show mines a lot of its more comedic moments, and doesn't spend whole episodes on staring contests between Izuku and Katsuki Bakugo, the arrogant jerk rival with an explosive temper.
Maybe this is an anime thing or maybe it's a superheroes comics thing (I'm not actually super familiar with either, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was both), but the show spends an awfully long time on setting up superhero fights and talking about the ramifications - in dramatic internal monologues - of a character's next move as they stand there grimacing for five minutes. The show does this is a lot, and while it's perhaps good for building tension it means the story moves extremely slowly. Around five or six things ever happen during the first season of My Hero Academia - which is thirteen half-hour episodes long - and it feels like the show's creators weren't quite sure if they were going to make back their budget, and so made sure that any big active scenes with a lot of in-betweens and effects would be short and meaningful. Hopefully that, and the fact each episode wastes five minutes at the start and end on recaps, is something that is rectified in the second season. Given the approbations the show received, I'm sure they have the confidence and revenue (as well as the benefit of getting the origin stuff out of the way) to improve on the pacing.
I do think it's an exceptional show, its reputation well-earned, but I'm hoping for more out of its subsequent seasons - more goofy character moments, more action scenes, and really just more stuff actually happening instead of stuff threatening to happen in the near future. I could probably do without that uniquely anime thing of someone being so emotionally wrought that their nose runs as much as their tears do - I can barely recall a scene when Izuku wasn't in that state, or horrifically injured by powers he can barely control. Kind of a weenie hero, but as the protagonist he's clearly got the longest arc ahead of him. At least he's better than that horny Mineta guy.
Movie: Deadpool 2 (2018)
Talking of horny heroes though, Deadpool's back after a surprisingly solid first outing (canonically, anyway) for the merc with a mouth. Combining R-rated violence with R-rated raunchy comedy, the original Deadpool was a breath of fresh air for the more superhero-fatigued, offering something MCU-adjacent that didn't have to behave itself once it signed up for that universe's regular crossover events. It also gave smartass Canadian Ryan Reynolds a vehicle that played to his strengths, and a dream role that was something he clearly fought hard to make happen and to do right, which is the sort of dedication to the source material that is commendable regardless of how you feel about the character in question.
Deadpool 2 succeeds by giving the titular wiseacre some more foils to bounce off than just poor old Colossus; not least of which is the utterly humorless Cable, a grizzled time-travelling mercenary who - ironically but understandably - has zero time for Deadpool's bullshit. The sequel pulls off its own Days of Future Past storyline, forcing Cable to come back and prevent a disastrous timeline from occurring by putting down a troubled mutant teen who would eventually develop a taste for murder and mayhem after rightfully torching the abusive orphanage (a not too subtle stand-in for sexual conversion therapy, tying into X-Men's legacy of examining bigotry in all its ugly forms) that raised him and several other mutants. A better partner than the cowardly TJ Miller (who is unfortunately still here), this sequel really works as an introduction to Cable and the rest of the X-Force - a vaguely derivative team of (mostly) mutant mercs that also includes the lucky Domino and Mojoworld's own celebrity gladiator Shatterstar - as much as it is a vehicle for more of Deadpool's fourth-wall-breaking nincompoopery.
While your tolerance for Deadpool's Bugs Bunny-esque hijinks might vary, I will say that Deadpool 2 is a marginally better film than the first. While its story is a little more meandering - things just kind of happen, and many scenes feel like extended skits rather than something that might further the plot - the jokes are better, the supporting cast is superior (they also did more with Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead too, both characters I liked here), the violence is ramped up even further with John Wick's co-director David Leitch at the helm (seriously, his Atomic Blonde movie had one of the most brutal melees I've ever seen), it can be really cathartic if you hated most of Liefeld's contributions to the 1990s comics universe, and (this one's vaguely spoilerish) the one questionable decision that happens early in the movie is not only lampshaded but reversed. It also has the best mid/post-credits sequence I've ever seen in a superhero movie; less cliffhanger-y hints for sequels or other MCU movies, just more Deadpool being Deadpool. If you hated the first or didn't want anything to do with it after watching the trailer I doubt Deadpool 2 is going to win you over, but I'd eagerly recommended it to anyone else.
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