Since it has been a busy week for me, I have not been able to finish anything to write a review or have a major topic I want to talk about this week. When I have had the time I have still been playing stuff here and there bouncing back and forth between a couple of games, and watching a movie that will turn 20 years old in 2022 and has a sequel that is coming out soon. This is gonna be kinda of a check in to what have been playing and watching!
Deathloop
The first thing that I have been spending a lot of my time with has been the latest game by Arkane, the developers behind Dishonored and Prey called Deathloop. One of the most complicated things about Deathloop is actually explaining what it is, but I will give it my best shot. This game is about a character named Colt, who is trying to break a time loop on the island he is on by killing 8 “Visionaries” of something called the AEON Program. While that is happening, another character named Julianna is hunting Colt down to protect the loop. You can play as either character and try to either break the loop with Colt, or protect the loop as Julianna. When you are playing as Colt, other real online players can invade your game as Julianna and kill you to protect the loop.
I have been playing for about 4-5 hours. I was going to wait to pick it up but a lot of game journalism people I follow were raving about this game so I decided to get it. I think I am starting to finally come around a little bit with this game, though I don’t think it has really met my expectations that were set by early reviews. The opening mission called “The Longest Day” is probably one of my least favorite openings of a game in a long time. I don’t envy this game trying to tutorial its way through the opening because there is a lot to cover in this systems heavy game, but man that beginning is very off putting. The game has finally opened up for me and I think I am finally understanding what people really like about this game, even though I don’t think it will reach those heights for me.
I do want to point out that I think the premise of the game is great and I love the style that this game has, and it has tons of it. The 1960’s psychedelia mixing with modernist architecture provides great backdrops for this time loop business to take place in.
Eastward
The second game that I have been playing is called Eastward, which is on PC and a console exclusive (right now) on Switch. This is going to sound cliche but this is the “Perfect Switch” game. A great looking indie game with an awesome pixel art style. The game has you following the story of John, a digger for this underground town and Sam, who is a girl that he found buried in the mines he works at. In Eastward, you live underground because supposedly the world above is unsafe.
I am not super far into Eastward, only really playing a little more than 3 hours, but I have enjoyed all of those hours. The combat, while on the simple side, has really started to pick up. John controls like a 2D Zelda game, with a 3-hit combo, and if you hold X, you get a charge attack. He can also drop bombs, which are important for solving puzzles. Sam’s combat is a little more interesting. She uses a bubble spell to incapacitate enemies, but does not kill them. Where I have gotten, I can now switch between the 2 of them and do combo attacks.
There is also a whole other game inside of Eastward, called Earth-Born. The developers pretty much went and made their own version of old school Dragon Quest, down to the art on the fake cartridge, and the way the battle system works being in first person. Apparently Earth-Born is pretty long in its own right, which just makes that whole thing even crazier.
Jackass The Movie (2002)
So with the new Jackass movie coming out in February 2022, which would be the 20th year anniversary since the fist movie came out, I decided to watch the first Jackass movie.
There was some worry on my part if watching people get hurt was not going to be as funny as I found it when I was younger watching on MTV. I still really enjoyed it, but the people getting hurt or trying crazy, stupid stuff was not the endearing part, (I can tell I have gotten older because some of that stuff was hard to watch) no the endearing part was the camaraderie between Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, and everyone that was part of the Jackass family. It is also crazy to remeber that Spike Jonze (the director of Her and creator of Viceland) is involved in this.
It is also a blast in the past were not everything was on the internet and just doing crazy things in weird, public spaces was something new and exciting. My favorite sketch was probably Johnny Knoxville fighting the boxer Butterbean in a random clothing store, with a full ring entrance and women holding round cards (Johnny Knoxville did end up with a concussion because of this, hence the warnings). Now there are so many people who are on Tik-Tok, Instagram, etc that try to do “crazy” stuff, but going back to this movie proved that the originals are still the best at being jackasses.