Doctor Who Series 10 First Impressions: Episode 1 (The Pilot)

(It's that time again! Doctor Who is back on television, weekly this time for the next few months like it used to be in the Long Ago times! I am going to write up First Impressions post for every episode, usually the day after they air but anything could happen. Aiming for Sundays, though. This is The Pilot and it's the first episode and we're going to talk about it and there are spoilers so... go watch it first please.)

Reach out and touch me.

Oh, thank God. We're back. After Hell Bent and the departure of Clara Oswald, Knight of Mirrors And Competence, we had a long journey through the dark. An island of fun during the cold Christmas celebration with the last River Song adventure, and then nothing for an awful awful year. A hero tried to save us a year later, but after so long the program felt like a Ghost. Now we start the song again. There's a new girl ready to be wowed by the prospect of travelling through spacetime, but our title is dubious as best. This is not a Pilot for a new series. This is a series that, as is, is on its final legs. Peter Capaldi is on his way out, and 2017 will be his swan song. Still, it is a song worth singing with a new addition to the chorus. Let's cut all the musical metaphors and dive into the puddle that incites new adventures.


This is The Pilot, and I really loved it.

I wrote about a bunch of Power Rangers Movie games from 1995.

Hi, kids! This is very brief as it's basically a plug for more of my words hosted on someone else's websphere. If you look down and to the right, at my little webring of cool sites you should click, you'll see one called Ranger Retrospective. This is a blog run by my Internet pal Samurai Karasu and it's dedicated to looking over every episode of the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. You know, that show that got a big movie a while ago and had literally every episode streamed on Twitch in a marathon. Anyway, I pitched him an idea for a guest post and he gave me the thumbs up and I started to write it!

Two months ago. I admit I pulled a Douglas Adams and let the deadlines pile up while I poked and prodded at other pressing matters and articles. That's all in the past now, and the article's done and it's live! You can find it right here.

Considering Doctor Who writing is just around the corner again, this might be the last video game content you get in a while... unless I can find something really interesting to say about the game I've been playing and loving at present. Or if I form coherent thoughts out of recent opinions I've had. We'll see. Anyway, enjoy that writeup and go binge through that Power Rangers blog because Samurai Karasu is honestly funnier than me and he deserves it.

The Five Worst Doctor Who Stories EVER (That I Actually Really Love)

Oh boy! More Doctor Who bullshit! Sorry, but this will be the beginning of a bit of a blitz on the blog. Series 10 is going to be back in less than a month and that means I'll be bringing back the First Impressions series to blab about all of the new episodes and what they do right or wrong or whatever. The point is, I'm an opinionated asshole with a blog, and it's time to shove some of those opinions out there. Namely by offering alternative hot takes to the established opinions of Doctor Who fans. Wow! Nobody's ever done that shit before! Anyway, in 2014 while we were all waiting for Peter Capaldi to do something other than talk about his kidneys, Doctor Who Magazine published the results of its 50th Anniversary poll in which every televised Doctor Who story up to that point was ranked in a big gigantic list. All 241 of them. I take umbrage with some of these rankings, and we're going to focus on the ones that the poll called the worst of the worst. I went with the bottom 30 because that's low enough to be implied as dreadful while also having enough of these stories that I can actually defend. Not all of these are unjustly in the bottom of the barrel, and I have no empassioned defense for every single story here. Still, I've managed to pick five that I think get a bad rap. They might not always be undeserved bad raps, but I can redemptively read all five of the stories I'm about to put on the list. First, though, I need to rewatch them so I can actually make sure that I'm not full of shit. I'm writing this bit first and then I'll go watch some of them, just to give you a peek behind the curtain. So for you it's a nice quick scan down the page, but for me it's 100 minutes of watching the shit and re-reading critical analysis of it to see why it might be disliked. It's like fuckin' time travel, yes? Do note that since this is a 50th anniversary poll, no Capaldi-era stories were ranked on the list. If you want passionate defense of Peter Capaldi era stories, though, I wrote about all of them on this blog. Check out the First Impressions series. I was nice to at least two episodes that an updated version of this list would no doubt vote into the oblivion pool we're wading in now. Let's get on with it.

[Here is where you can imagine the famous TARDIS "VWOOORP... VWOOORP" sound effect as we go travel through time and space.]

Dark Souls 2: A Trip Report/Boss Fight Critique (Part 2)

(Hey, all! This is part 2 of a Dark Souls 2 boss writeup post. If you missed part 1, pop on over here and read some good words on the first half of bosses I faced in this game. With your spoiler warning of there being spoilers for the rest of the bosses in this game, let's get this shit done.)

Almost 50 hours. Good god, I haven't taken that long to beat something in ages.

Previously on Dark Souls 2: A whole bunch of spooky bosses of varying qualities threatened my heroic lady knight, Ishara. As she worked her way through the hordes and I worked my way through the game, the "feel" of Dark Souls 2 started to become apparent. I mentioned it snarkily in the caption to the last post's image, but one of the opening cutscenes literally does begin by having an old crone in red robes outright state that you're going to lose all of your souls, over and over again. Then she and her other old crones actually start laughing. That's really blatant and signposted and I'm not fond of it. Sure, Dark Souls was hard, but it was only the marketing which played up the THIS GAME'S ULTRA HARD angle with the whole "Prepare To Die" tagline. The game itself was above it... but, as has become clear, this was made by a whole new team with the design philosophy of "let's make it hard". We've seen that one of their go-to ways of making shit hard is outnumbering you, be it with the normal enemies or by adding mooks in the boss fights to overwhelm you. This will be the post in which I yell about their other big blatant "let's make it hard" go-to, but that's still a couple of boss fights away. Last time we covered roughly half of the fights I completed, so let's finish up the rest of the game with the other half.

Dark Souls 2: A Trip Report/Boss Fight Critique (Part 1)

(Hey, kids! Here's the reason why I haven't been writing things for the past two weeks! Now it's over and all I need to do is write about it while it's fresh and I'll be free! Free to fire off even more special words, both promised and not! This one's about Dark Souls 2 and it'll be in two parts. As always, there will be spoilers for Dark Souls 2 in this here writeup so if you care about that, be wary. Onward we go!)

"That which is called ego-death is coming to you. Remember: this is now the hour of death and rebirth; take advantage of this temporary death to obtain the perfect state - Enlightenment."

-Timothy Leary, The Psychedelic Experience

One of the opening cutscenes all but states outright "YOU'LL
DIE A LOT BECAUSE THIS GAME IS HARD!". Fuck's sakes.

As the Bells Of Awakening chime, the hour of death and rebirth has come to our little wordspace. Yes, it's time to tackle Dark Souls for an extended period of time. I briefly touched on it in this piece about roguelikes and "reincarnation simulators", but time has grown and so have I. Our main focus will be the game in the Souls series that I just cleared, Dark Souls 2, but I want to give context and meaning to where I'm coming from. So, a brief intro to talk about how I feel on the original Dark Souls. This was a game I got on the suggestion of friends with Christmas money, and I plunged into sheer hell for the next little while. I'm no stranger to difficult games, but this was no hour-long masocore jumper from the pixel days. This was a full-on big console game on my Xbox 360 and it destroyed me, repeatedly, at every turn. I, a humble dextrous character with a katana, was forced to dodge and roll away from dozens and dozens of deadly attacks from dread beasts who towered over me. Still, I made progress. The nature of Dark Souls is such that death is a mere hassle. Even through the worst areas, I made progress. Even when faced with the infamous brick wall duo of Ornstein and Smough, who fight you in a two-on-one battle to the death, I made progress. Eventually I made it to the final boss, not even knowing this was the end. I overcame that foe with a cheeky trick, and was amazed when the credits rolled. I beat this game. Oh, thank God, I beat this game. I never wanted to see it again. 3 days later, I purchased Dark Souls 2 for the 360. I didn't intend to touch it right away, however. The entire ordeal of Dark Souls had left me drained. I had survived the hour of death and rebirth, but I felt more like a boxer who'd narrowly won a fight than an Enlightened One. This would change, of course. I would regain my strength and I would go back. I went back to Dark Souls half a dozen times, and with the familiarity I found myself adoring it. I did it with swords, with spears. With magic and miracles. I did the DLC and its ultra-tough bosses and I loved them. The original game may be one of my favorites of all time now; it's just that good at what it does. I didn't think so at first, but I do now. So then I tried that copy of Dark Souls 2 I had. I... wasn't feeling it. That was when I learned about a whole new version called Scholar Of The First Sin that rebalanced stuff and changed it around. I found a copy of that for my "new" PS3 I'd obtained, and this is what I played for most of the month of February. Pity, then, that the PS3 version isn't actually Scholar Of The First Sin. It's just the base game with all the DLC stuff included on the disc. I was hoodwinked there, but it's okay.

2017 Is The Year Of Punching People In The Face (Double Dragon 4)

Sometimes, the best way to solve your problems is to punch a whole bunch of people in the face. That's the motto of Billy and Jimmy Lee, at least. For 30 years now these two karate masters have been beating the everloving stuffing out of street punks, ninjas, and Shadow Warriors in the Double Dragon series. While not the first belt scrolling beat-em-up game out there, the original Double Dragon in 1987 was a revelation and one hell of a quarter muncher. Throughout the 80's and 90's the series would go in all sorts of directions; arcade games, a myriad of home ports of said arcade games, console-only sequels and spinoffs, and a crossover with the Battletoads of all things. The wane of the radical 90's meant the end of Double Dragon, but there were some glimmers here and there. A remake or two popped up, and then there was Wayforward's sublime Double Dragon Neon. As the name suggests, it took the series and left it positively dripping with a neon 80's retrowave aesthetic. It was quite good! The series has had its ups and downs, but one subsection that brings a lot of nostalgia to many are the NES ports of the first three arcade games. Whether they hold up or not, the NES trilogy is beloved by many who grew up with the console. Beloved enough, even, to warrant this old-new entry in the series... as opposed to the new-old of Double Dragon Neon. Whatever the faults of Double Dragon, here's a new one to bank on the nostalgia of punching folks in 8-bit. Wrap your hands up and do some warmup stretches, because it's time to go a few rounds with this bad boy of a retro revival; Double Dragon 4.

Don't You Mess With A Little Girl's Dream, Or She's Liable To Grow Up Mean (Metroid: Rogue Dawn)

(Hello! As you'll soon find out when you get past the preamble buildup bullshit, Metroid: Rogue Dawn is a total conversion ROM hack of the original NES Metroid. It can be found right here. That's also where I'll be getting the screenshots for this, so credit where credit is due there. In the interest of playing nice with capitalism, I should advise you to give Nintendo five dollars for the original Metroid on one of its digital services before seeking out some sort of under-the-table version of it to modify. Also I'm going to talk about the tricks it does and the ending and shit, so if you're going to play it and care about that, there are spoilers!)


For Metroid fans, it's been a bleak ten years. 2007, in retrospect, was the last really great grasp of the series. Metroid Prime 3 was a pretty great Metroid game in a series of pretty great Metroid games from Retro Studios, but it was also the capstone to that particular trilogy. A little bit of a wait for the next new Metroid experience wouldn't hurt; we waited eight years after Super Metroid to get to this new golden age of Metroid being a profitable and popular thing that got regular new games. What would be next? E3 2009, that was what was next. I can remember sitting there, live watching the Nintendo show and reacting with my gang of pals. The Chat For Non-Losers and I sat there viewing, wondering what this strange space game that Team Ninja was making had to offer. Then came those words. "Any objections, Lady?". OH SWEET SHIT THAT'S ADAM MALKOVICH IT'S A NEW METROID GAME OH MY GOD YOU FLIP AROUND AND SHIT THIS LOOKS SO COOL! I was beyond hyped. We all were. Then the game came out. Oh. Oh my god. In that moment, the Metroid fanbase had its Phantom Menace moment. The creators went back in time to tell an untold story in the Metroid universe and it was garbage. For years we would get our bats and bludgeon the space where a horse had once laid, trying to understand just what had gone wrong and unable to let go of just how let down we'd all been (or maybe that's just me). To be fair, though, it was all we had. After Other M, things got quiet for Metroid again. Slowly the realization dawned. We were living in the embers of what had once been the golden age of Metroid. The peace and prosperity we'd fought for, wiped clean by the wagging no-no finger denying you a climactic final level or a true last boss fight. Oh sweet Jesus.