PixlBit

 Hey guys, sorry I've been away for so long. Had a bit of a depressive slump, had a bit of a breakdown, had some life shit. It's okay though, I'm feeling a lot better now! Getting therapy, on decent meds and whatever, and while I still have my blue periods (gross), I'm a lot healthier and have a lot more confidence in myself. I know I was a complete and utter self destructive asshole who got swept up in being super selfish and in general kind of a cunt. At the same time though, I now recognise that I am getting better. I'm feeling empathy again, which means I also feel a lot of guilt over some things I have done that I don't overly want to go into here, but I also recognise that it's all part of getting better. Sometimes you have to feel worse to get better.

 Anyway, what else has been happening? I bought No Man's Sky because I heard it had gotten better over time, and was a lot closer to what they initially promised. Plus it had a very hefty discount and I got it for about $15 bucks. I don't know if it is any better because it broke my PC. Like, overheated it and now I can't play anything without my display crashing. I'm going to take it in soon to get fixed when I get paid.

 Oh, and my PS4 is at my old house and I still need to go get it back. So the only thing I have to game on atm is my vita.

 Before all that though, I was playing some games! I think. Maybe. Okay I was.

Prey

So I have been playing the hell out of System Shock Prey recently, and I made it about 12 hours in. I was having a blast despite some of it being frustrating and uneven. It's a great, fun game with tons of choices that really harkens back to the golden era of PC gaming, and feels like a streamlined Looking Glass game - even more than Arkane's own Dishonored series.

 Which is great! Things feels real gosh darn spooky to begin with. The mimics are a great creation and really help distill some of the fear from John Carpenter's masterpiece The Thing, and the rest of the enemies are extremely mechanically interesting - even if they suffer the same lack of visual variety Resident Evil 7's monsters did.

 However, something really bothers me about this game, and it's something that has bothered me since Arkane's original Dishonored: It feels like this game wants to punish you for having fun. The most interesting abilities are clearly the Alien abilities - which are more unique versions of System Shock's Psi abilities. You can use the abilities of the alien race in the game, which means you can do things like turn into random objects on the ship, use mind control, and a bunch of other things.

 The problem is, the game makes it abundantly clear that if you use these abilities you will get the "bad ending". Which feels like bullshit to me. Why do Arkane keep doing this? It makes 100% sense from a narrative perspective, and if it weren't for the Dishonored franchise, I'd easily give this a pass as it still remains an interesting tradeoff. However, since I've played Dishonored, it just makes me feel like Arkane is sitting me down and trying to get me to be an adult. I have to be an adult in the real world, I want to play games to escape from real life obligations! 

 Another negative with this game is that there are certain enemies that would feel stupidly difficult to react to on a console - which is maybe why so many PS4 and Xbox users burnt out of this game (and also maybe why I hated it when I originally played it on PS4). I'm all for games being developed with PC in mind as I am a PC gamer at heart, and I get needing to have games on consoles also to make the money back that you put into the games, but I feel like you could at least put in a few more concessions for the gamers who can only play on consoles. 

 If you have a PC though, and you loved System Shock, Bioshock, or the Deus Ex series, you should absolutely give this game a go.

A Hat in Time

Well, this was unexpected. After playing a few indie 3D platformers, I kind of thought that no one could really do this type of game other than Nintendo these days. Fortunately for me, A Hat in Time took those notions, crumpled them into a ball, and threw it at my head while blowing a rasberry at me.

 Unlike the unfathomable failure that was Yooka-Laylee (or Puking-Failure, as I think is a more fitting name) A Hat in Time takes more inspiration from Mario Sunshine and 64 than from Rare's work. The levels are mostly open, explorable areas with tons of secrets to keep you playing, and the controls are so silky smooth that if I were George R.R. Martin I'd me telling you how they felt on a 13 year olds nipples. No seriously George, that passage was just a smidge creepy.

 I somewhat expected that, as certain critics were telling me how much of a return to form for the non-Nintendo developed 3D platformer. What I wasn't expecting was how incredibly charming and funny this game is. It feels like if Tim Schafer played the fuck out of Undertale before creating Psychonauts. The game disarms you with it's overall adorable aesthetic so that you really don't expect some of the darker jokes this game throws at you. No seriously, this game jokes about Mafia members beating up old ladies and children. It has a little girl who wants to turn said Mafia members into bloody, pulpy mush in a jar and then sell it back those she left alive. 

And I'll be damned if I didn't lose my shit every single time. Seriously, this game has some of the funniest dialogue I've experienced in a game. It's anarchic, irreverant, and absurdist, which are absolutely my soft spots for humour.

 More than that, the game has so much damn variety. In one level, you're pretending to be a creepy space monster to scare the bejesus out of a scientist. In another, you're solving a murder. In another, you're photoshopping your passport so you can look more like a professional movie star. It's insane, fun, charming, and just a great title overall. Play it now!

The Wire

 Okay, I'm nearly midway through season 3, and I'm on board. The Wire is the best damn tv show ever. It's not just because it's incredibly dense. It's not just because of how much it has to say about American culture in the early 2000's. And it's not just because this show gave us one of the best damn characters ever created.

 Though Omar's inclusion definitely helps.

 No, what works for me is how damn funny this show manages to be despite how overall bleak it's messages seem. Despite being "a serious HBO show about serious topics" it doesn't take itself as serious as a lot of other shows that fit that mould do. Omar, McNulty, Bunk, Rawls, Herc, Carver, Ziggy, Brodie, Poot - they're all comedic genius, yet they're also all dramatic heavyweights when they need to be. These characters are all so well realised that this show knows how to have fun with them and how to use them to utterly destroy you.

 It's a show that's so incredibly dense that you have to pay close attention to every single scene to get a grasp on things or you'll be completely lost. Yet, it's so goddamn rewarding because of this. Very few other shows could ring as much drama out of a clerk pushing folders towards a desk and typing words into a computer as this one does. Very few other shows let you know well in advance the fucked up things that will happen to characters you love well in advance rather than using them as a shocking twist.

 And boy, let me tell you, it hurts a lot more when you know it's coming. There are scenes in this show that rival and even decimate The Red Wedding in terms of emotional impact. No one in this show is portrayed as straight evil or straight good. Good people do fucked up things, bad people can and will act benevolently - and it feels a lot more realistic because of it. Season 2 is all about a guy who does some shady shit for the good of his people. In contrast to that, Season 1 is set into motion not because a police officer cares about solving murders, but because he wants to prove he's the smartest motherfucker in the room at all times. Still, you can't help but love him despite how self destructive and terrible he is for everyone around him.

 The real reason this is the best show ever is Omar in court. Seriously, I have never been more delighted than I have in watching him tell everyone what his job is. 

 I can't wait to continue watching this show. At the rate I'm going I'll probably finish it in another week or two - which is a rare feat for me.

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