Fairune (A Review)

You know, how we come across video games and play them is a process equally as important as the content of the games themselves. Sure, every game is imbued with some crackling magical alchemy (or necromancy, if the thing's dire) on the basic level. The essential psychogeographical (and psychochronographical, while we're throwing out the Big Smart People Words) power of where and when you are while first experiencing a game has some truth to it as well. So, today we're going to talk about a game called Fairune. Before that we're going to talk about the where and when of how I encountered Fairune. I had a day trip this past Wednesday, and I knew I'd be waiting for people to finish their doctor's appointment. I also had a PS Vita and about 8 dollars to spare. With that, off I went looking for a cheap and simple game experience for me to kill time with whilst waiting. Scrolling through all the games on the store and peeking at prices, I came across a little game with a pixel art character. Fairune. Peeking further, after all the hyped up mechanics and whatnot, this tidbit: "Fairune is a faithful homage to the computer games of the 1980s.". Which, you better believe we're going to unpack that. In a moment. The time and place had been set. Grand Falls-Windsor, Newfoundland. Hospital parking lot. 8 AM. For the next 90 minutes I experienced Fairune, and then between... 4:30 and 5:30 PM, back at home, I experienced the rest of the game. That's fairly short, but in the end it was a good experience. We've set the where, we've set the when... and now for the what. Here is Fairune. It was good.

From The SMPS Vaults: Mega Man Unlimited (A Review)

(Hey all! A little history lesson, in case you're unaware. I got my start writing for video games as a hobby by contributing to a site called Socks Make People Sexy. A lot of my words are still up on the main site, but a lot of them were also on the review subforum of the SMPS forums... and the SMPS forums sadly went offline quite a while ago. I made a lot of good friends from that site and those forums and still talk to a lot of them, but there were some writing casualties that left more than a few words of mine wiped from the Internet. I still have the text files, so I guess I can sporadically archive my own old writing here on the blog for the time being. Anyway, this is a review of the fan game Mega Man Unlimited that I wrote in June 2014. I was hard on it, but in hindsight it's at least better than Mighty No. 9 which is better than nothing. On to the wayback machine!)

Doctor Who Series 10 First Impressions: Episode 12 (The Doctor Falls)

Really, it was the only way Series 10 could have gone out.

And they lived happily ever after.

I'm trying something different here. I've not rewatched the episode yet. I'm letting my words stand on the initial viewing I did last night for once. This is partly because I forgot to PVR it and can't wrangle out a rewatch method immediately due to shenanigans and can't wait, but also sort of a new take. I've called these "First Impressions" but they're honestly second impressions because I always do a rewatch and take notes. Not today. For the last episode of this series, for the penultimate episode of Peter Capaldi's run and of the Moffat era, we will do a true First Impression. Or rather, we already did because the above line I started this all with is my first impression. For better or worse, this is Steven Moffat at his Steven Moffattiest. And now we pad time before talking about the ending by talking about everything else before it. The stuff that matters. Here, then, is The Doctor Falls.