Well. Last weekend has been, uh, a bit eventful. I admit, I’ve been debating with myself what to do after that. I mean, I wrote a very personal, vulnerable thing that brought out and brought back a lot of bad memories, and put a larger spotlight on me, which admittedly made me a bit nervous and filled me with a sense of dread. I wasn’t (I’m not) afraid or full of dread over any sort of reprisal, but rather because I had so many people looking at me for reasons other than for something I made. Also, I’m the kind of person who prefers having a smaller audience anyway; I’ll put a bullet through my miserable skull once and for all if I turn into one of those weirdos that calls their fans a “family” or some other parasocial bull shit. Wasn’t sure if I should take a week off, because it’s not like you can go back to business as usual, right?
Fuck that. It’s business as usual, baby! Let’s have some fun and talk about some video games or something.
Anyways. It’s Spring. The weather is getting warmer, the birds are out, my allergies are kicking in. It’s a great time. It’s also that time of the year where I get bored, and try out new, weird shit on my site. This new, weird idea is the Mailbag. I set up a contact form (click here), so neither myself nor anyone else who wants to talk to me has to use social media, or make a Curious Cat account, and I’m also not making my own Discord server because, again,I don’t feel comfortable managing a community brought together over me. With this form, you can send me questions, leave a comment, or whatever. As someone who is frequently asked what I think about [thing], I figured this would be a good idea.
I got some questions, so I am going to answer them.
(Quick disclaimer: I will never, ever, post your email address on here.)
From: Lariria
What are your thoughts on Grandia 1?
Funny thing, I have never played Grandia prior to getting this message. It’s not like I’ve never had opportunities to play it, I just never did. However, I did spend around an hour playing the game before sitting down to answer this. Grandia has a very slow start. Normally, I hate RPGs that do this, but I didn’t really mind it here. Mostly because the slow start establishes this group of kids as being, well, a group of kids, getting into trouble and having fun. Doesn’t hurt that the dialogue is actually pretty funny (I’m playing the fan-translated Saturn game, for the record).
Grandia seems pretty cool. I didn’t spend that much time with it, in terms of RPG standards, but I think this is something I might want to come back to again.
justin, a boy after my own heart
From: miffy
what’s the worst game you can think of that you would wholeheartedly recommend?
This was a tough one to answer. I was trying to think of something that I hadn’t already written about (so no Hydlide, for example), or something that’s actually good, but got a bad critical reception (such as God Hand).
I would start with Daikatana. The first episode is terrible, the weapons aren’t especially great to use, and “Superfly” Johnson isn’t exactly the most sensitive representation of a Black man. It’s not especially great, but it has its charm. It has heart. If nothing else, it definitely should not have been what derailed John Romero’s career for the last twenty-one years.
Another one I would recommend is Earnest Evans, on Sega Genesis and Sega CD. It is awful. It plays like shit, the levels don’t make any sense, and Earnest himself animated like a Marionette. But there’s this weird “It” factor. Like, it sucks, but it sucks in an interesting way. You can finish the game in about fifteen minutes, but it’s an interesting fifteen minutes.
Last one (for now) is going to be Death Crimson on the Sega Saturn. This is a pretty infamously bad game, and also one that is beloved despite that. It is at least as bad as you’ve heard, if not worse. And it also completely fucking rules. It has inspired some cool stuff, like that custom controller:
And the game’s composer has what is the most infectiously happy YouTube channel there is:
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Well thank you, definitely real person, that left this comment in a random post I made about two years ago. Hope you are your very real friends and family are having a nice day!
From: CJ
I am curious to see what kind of disaster you think the upcoming Resident Evil 4 remake is going to be! My personally theory is that 30% of the charm is going to be lost immediately when you lose the spatial puzzle aspect of organizing the inventory.
Okay, yes, a remake of Resident Evil 4 will be an absolute fucking nightmare. The remakes of 2 and 3 were not particularly that good to begin with, and RE4 is a timeless classic that does not need to be fucked with. This remake will definitely cut out the attache case. It will probably also be like RE3 and cut out like an entire third of the game for no reason, and I bet it won’t have The Mercenaries in this one, too!
There is no way this will be anything other than a major disappointment. That being said, I’m still playing it. I mean, if I can play through Operation Raccoon City and Umbrella Corps, I can tough it out through an extremely disappointing retread of a game that can be purchased on literally every gaming platform that has existed for the last twenty years.
That’s all the messages in the bag. Feel free to send some shit, and I’ll respond to it. If you want to hear my thoughts on something, or if you want to tell me to fuck myself and die, the link is at the top of this post and on the sidebar.
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