Also known as the one in which Persona 4: Golden gets a Steam release! That is clearly the best piece of gaming news the medium this month, so if you were curious to check out the game after reading my 18,000-word review, that’s the place to get it.
Updates
May 2020 in Summary: Six Years a Critic
Yup, that’s right; I’ve been critiquing games for six years by this point. In a normal post, this is where I’d wonder where time went, but it honestly feels like it has been a long time. Hope all of you are continuing to do well in the face of the pandemic.
April 2020 in Summary: The Exterminating Red Metal
Also known as the one in which Naughty Dog lost the plot – literally. I won’t go into further detail because I don’t wish to spoil it for those interested, and I insist on not judging a work until I experience it regardless of how much the odds are against it. Seriously, if you are interested in playing The Last of Us: Part II, try to refrain from using social media until it’s released next month.
March 2020 in Summary: Silent World
I hope you’re all doing well out there in the face of this daunting pandemic. To think that nearly one-hundred years after the infamous influenza outbreak of 1918, we’d have another one our hands. Isolation won’t be easy but doing so will pay off in the long term, so remember to take care of yourself.
February 2020 in Summary: System Shocked!
Also known as the one in which Red Metal’s computer finally goes kaput, causing the last review of the month to be delayed. Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. I had been considering getting a new one for a long time, but I hesitated until this development forced my hand (which isn’t the first time something like this happened, to be honest).
January 2020 in Summary: Oscar Detour
Also known as the one in which Red Metal forgets to be a game critic for an entire month. I apologize for not getting any of the promised game reviews done. After the Oscar nominees were announced, I decided to put all of my energy towards reviewing all nine entries so I can type up my annual “worst to best” list for them. The good news is that I can already say that this is a much better lineup than last year’s miserable showing.
December 2019 in Summary: The End of a Decade
Happy New Year! Can you believe the year 2020 is upon us? I remember as a kid thinking 2000 sounded so futuristic. Crazy, isn’t it? When it comes to media, the 2010s certainly had its ups and downs.
Video games got off to a great start with 2010 and 2011 being excellent years for the medium. However, the bottom in the fell out in 2012, and suddenly AAA productions lost their dominance. I’m not sure if it can be attributed to a single incident, but I would probably have to name Mass Effect 3 and the negative reaction to its ending that caused people to be more wary of AAA products. Then there was 2013, which I consider the single weakest year for gaming within this decade, having an inordinate number of hyped games such as Gone Home and Beyond: Two Souls that utterly failed to deliver. While 2014 didn’t have as many bad games, barely anything from that year stood out. Then in 2015, Undertale was released, and that caused a major spike in interest for indie productions, which I think singlehandedly redeemed the medium from the treasure trove of bad games released in 2013. In a twist of irony, fans are now more supportive of independent efforts than the journalists – the exact opposite situation the film industry faces.
Depending on your perspective, the 2010s was either a great or miserable decade for music. While I think it was slightly better than the 2000s, there’s no getting around that the mainstream stuff was fairly weak. Fortunately, like video games, there were plenty of indie artists to pick up the slack.
I think of the 2010s as the decade in which films lost their claim to the artistic high ground to video games. They did get off to a better start than video games, having only a few critical missteps between 2010 and 2017. However, I think the release of The Last Jedi marked the moment film criticism lost its way, leading to the medium being in a bad way for 2018 and, to a lesser extent, 2019. Indeed, I consider 2018 to be the film industry equivalent of 2013 in that there was an inordinate number of films that failed to live up to the hype. However, films are overall worse off than video games ever were because I can safely say the independent game makers are far more ambitious than their filmmaking counterparts. Stuff like OneShot and Undertale are far more innovative than the most acclaimed indie films I’ve seen this decade.
As for other mediums, I can’t claim to be an expert, but from what I’ve seen, it was a great decade for animation – both from the West and the East, though the latter seemed to be more consistently good. Along those lines, it ended up being the decade in which I began seriously pursuing manga and graphic novels, though strangely, despite liking the MCU, I find myself gravitating towards non-superhero stories.
Anyway with that bit of rambling out of the way, let’s dive into the final recap, shall we?
November 2019 in Summary: The Home Stretch!
For those who celebrate it, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving! November proved to be a little hectic, but it wasn’t too bad. I was kind of hoping to get five reviews finished, but that’s not how things panned out. Oh, well.
October 2019 in Summary: Milestone Madness
Geez, writing that review of Persona 4 wasn’t easy. I liked how it turned out, though. Plus, I’m glad that my longest review thus far is of one of the very few games I would award a 10/10. This past month saw me reach both 100 film reviews and 200 game reviews. I never thought I’d make it this far, but here we are.
