Yeah saw some similar sentiments from millennial reviewers who were irked that the game seemed sorta semi-millennial and therefore not true to their experience. As a "Xellennial" myself I have one foot in the older and more recent reference pools, and so was probably smiling along more frequently.

I do wonder if being specifically into the material the games are mining is make-or-break for enjoying them, to some degree.

Johnny Galvatron seems like a guy with an earnest passion for a lot of music, moments and movements, genre stuff, fashion/movies/media, youth culture, cultural history, etc. So I don't see it as overly contrived or calculated, in that sense.

I liked Artful Escape better too, although not for its substance, definitely for its style! Psychedelic prog was a richer vein to tap than well-worn Bueller-core. I don't know if 'strange nostalgia grab' is fair, in that I don't see it as strange or a grab, just a game with some nostalgia.

I did enjoy the spirited debate around if/why Mixtape was/was not good too tho. Read a lot of reviews of it. I liked it as a harmless nebulously retro genre piece with some memorable magic realist passages. But it won't be getting near the GOTY list, it was too slight of an experience, overall.

Well hey, you're not alone in that opinion, although the company may be questionable :)

A lot of artists with no real following, that were genuinely on the fringe of my taste but not in my rotation. I miss it. But fuck Spotify.

Since Balatro, Steam mistakenly assumes that I'm a deckbuilder purist. The best algorithmic reccos I've had were ironically from a platform I'm boycotting: Spotify. It seemed to create a kinda Venn diagram with my musical neighbours, and surface stuff that was genuinely relevant to me.

Nice. What are the big changes? I haven't played since I think the March event? It was super minor then, just weather conditions and projects and stuff

SINISTER FORCES

Games rain from clouds organically then spread like a river meeting the ocean, just as Shigeru Miyamoto intended—anything else is artificial deep state interference with this unfettered biosphere of natural attention

It looks like replacement batteries and screwdriver kits are pretty cheap actually. Imma give it a go! It's fun taking apart electronics and seeing what's in there, and concentrating really hard on not messing it up. Had to replace both the sticks in my ROG Ally, was fun.

This is a new series I'm doing called Actually Gaming. It's a change of gear from previewing & reviewing, with raw gameplay & contemporaneous chat. This one's unlocked for all; becoming a patron gets you the first episode—an hour of Onimusha with a crunching boss fight—and a new episode every week 💚

I guess this is the price of those haptics. No way to replace batteries?

People who picked up a PS5 early on: is your Dual Sense controller battery degrading? Mine only stays on the full three bars of charge for about 15 mins, and it's drained after a couple of hours.

This is so funny. The comedy of the perceived detective work is priceless. And the skulls!

End of Abyss really spoke to me. It has some je ne sais quoi. Silver Pines has Alan Wake/Twin Peaks juice. Neon Abyss 2 I'll try out and see how the roguelike formula is. Valor Mortis, if it doesn't lean too much into tiresome difficulty. I'm very ready for Virtue & A Sledgehammer.

But like this month I'd never have known about End of Abyss or Silver Pines without doing the video research, and I'm having an amazing time with each of them.

Some of the inclusions tend to be informational. Like, I'm very rarely going to pick up a co-op / cosy farming / tactics game myself. But if they seem to stand out within their genre in some way, they go in.

One of the best thing about making these videos is that it offers motivation (obligation!) to be extremely attentive to what's coming out. The huge long-list gets built up & up, then whittled down & down to the final video selection. And then from that, I can cherry pick a few to play myself.