Game-related ramblings.

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Scratching That Itch: Mythos: Reawakening

This is the fifty-ninth entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

What’s this? Why, it’s another random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality! This time, the pick is Mythos: Reawakening, by PVGames (short for Pioneer Valley Games). Its tagline in the bundle reads:

Mythos: Reawakening presents you with a huge number of assets to craft yo…

At this point, the tagline is truncated by the character limit. But even this incomplete description is enough to conclude that Mythos: Reawakening is not actually a game, even though its title sounds very much like a game. It is, in fact, a set of art assets that others can use when making their own games.

Scratching That Itch: The Dark By Eric Koziol

This is the fifty-eighth entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Yet again, the random number generators have plucked an entry from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality for us. It’s The Dark by Eric Koziol, by Eric Koziol. Its tagline in the bundle reads:

What you can’t see will hurt you.

I presume that the attribution to Eric Koziol in the title is a means of differentiating this particular game about unseen dangers from others that share the title “The Dark”.

Shadow Warrior Is Better Than Shadow Warrior, But Still Problematic

This post is part of the Keeping Score series about games and their soundtracks. As always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

I recently wrote about Shadow Warrior, the 1997 follow-up to Duke Nukem 3D. I’d heard that it was racist, and it very much is. Which is why I was surprised to see it get a remake in 2013, and even more surprised that it earned praise from critics and was successful enough to become a whole new franchise, with a well-liked sequel in 2016 and a third game planned to release this year. The positive reception to these newer games was what inspired me to play the original for comparison, and now I’ve also played the 2013 version of Shadow Warrior, by Polish studio Flying Wild Hog. It’s certainly better than Shadow Warrior, but doesn’t escape some of that game’s problems.

Scratching That Itch: Binaries

This is the fifty-seventh entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

That’s right: here is another random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. It’s Binaries, by Ant Workshop. Its tagline in the bundle reads:

Controller-smashingly tough puzzle platformer

The joke’s on you, Ant Workshop. I’m going to play this one with my keyboard!

Scratching That Itch: Chipmonk!

This is the fifty-sixth entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

It’s time for another random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The random number generators have picked Chipmonk! by Niemi Bros Entertainment. Its tagline in the bundle reads:

Retro-inspired beat ’em up starring chipmunk warriors!

These chipmunks came to kick ass and gather nuts in their cheek pouches to bring back to their burrows. And they’re all out of nuts.

Scratching That Itch: VIDEOSTORE – A Monster Of The Week Double Feature

This is the fifty-fifth entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Here comes our next selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. It’s VIDEOSTORE – A Monster of the Week Double Feature by Sinister Beard Games. Its tagline in the bundle reads:

Two 80s VHS inspired mysteries for Monster of the Week

Monster of the Week, in case you were wondering, is a tabletop role-playing game by Evil Hat Productions. It’s not in the bundle, but it is available separately from itch.io. Usually, for tabletop entries, I am unable to actually play them due to a lack of other people to play with. This time, I’m unable to play it because I don’t even own the actual game, just these two scenarios for it. All I can do is read them and offer my impressions.

Death Before Dishonor, Epilogue: Dishonorable Discharge

This is an epilogue to Death Before Dishonor, a series in which I attempt to play through Dishonored with a self-imposed, semi-permadeath rule designed to make me improvise my way out of trouble, rather than re-loading an earlier save. For some background, you may want to read the introduction and then the eight parts of the series proper, before continuing. Also be advised that, unlike most posts on this blog, this series will contain spoilers. For spoiler-free thoughts on Dishonored, read my original posts about the game. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

When I started Death Before Dishonor, I was convinced that I’d end up with the high chaos ending, when my character Corvo’s stealthy approach inevitably failed and he was forced to fight and kill his adversaries. I was wrong. It turns out, Corvo had several ways to incapacitate his enemies nonlethally or simply to escape and regroup, and I managed to complete his adventure with a low body count and a happy ending. And the highly improvisational approach was a ton of fun. But, I was left curious as to how the story would have ended if I had been more murderous. So I decided to play through the game again, as something of an alternate timeline. What if Corvo’s unjust imprisonment and torture at the start of the game broke something within him, and he sought bloody revenge on the entire city of Dunwall? What if he fully embraced the dark powers of the Outsider and descended into chaos and madness?

At first, I thought I’d play a stealthy assassin, killing everyone from the shadows. But then I tried that for a bit, and realized that it’s not that different from sneaking around and knocking out guards with chokeholds and sleep darts. No, I wanted to explore how different Dishonored could be, which meant I really needed to shake things up. So I decided to ignore stealth entirely. My new persona, Evil Corvo, would flamboyantly walk right into hostile territory and fight everyone in his way. If you’d like to know how that turned out, read on for massive spoilers.

Scratching That Itch: A Lullaby Of Colors

This is the fifty-fourth entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

It’s time for another random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. It’s A Lullaby of Colors, by Andrew C. Wang. Its tagline in the bundle reads:

A blissful psychedelic relaxation experience

Oh man, I am about to relax so hard.

History Lessons: Shadow Warrior

Other History Lessons posts can be found here. In particular, you may want to read the post about Duke Nukem 3D for some context. This post is also an honorary member of the Keeping Score series about games and their soundtracks.

Back in the early days of this blog, before I even had screenshots in my posts, I wrote about Duke Nukem 3D. I was curious about the game because of the release of its sequel, Duke Nukem Forever, that same year; a game that had reached near mythical status due to its seemingly endless development cycle. It was crap, by all accounts, but it only made it to release because the original Duke Nukem 3D had been one of the most popular games of its era, before the rise of the linear shooter. Duke Nukem 3D is dumb and very sexist — something for which I didn’t criticize it harshly enough, in retrospect — but its imaginative level design and arsenal made it a lot of fun to play.

While many more games would appear using the Build Engine that powered Duke Nukem 3D, only one was by Duke developers 3D Realms: 1997’s Shadow Warrior. It was not nearly as popular. Duke Nukem 3D had been criticized for its sexism, but Shadow Warrior was also criticized for its racism, and it didn’t seem to do enough to offset its offensive stereotypes. I was surprised, then, when a remake, also titled Shadow Warrior, appeared in 2013, and even more surprised when it got good reviews. Good enough that a sequel appeared in 2016, also receiving critical praise, and a third game is planned for this year. I was intrigued. How did this happen? Why remake a game that seemed better forgotten?

The original Shadow Warrior, now re-dubbed Shadow Warrior Classic, was released for free in 2013 to help promote the remake, and I grabbed it but never got around to it. Now, I’ve decided to check it out, so later I can compare it to its more favorably-received remake. Having played it and the two expansion packs bundled with it, I can confirm that it is very racist.

Scratching That Itch: Books & Bone

This is the fifty-third entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Once again, I have plucked a random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. It’s Books & Bone by Victoria Corva, and its tagline in the bundle reads:

A Librarians-and-Necromancy Fantasy Novel

That’s right, readers. This one is not a game, but a full length novel, in e-reader format (.epub and .mobi). I actually didn’t have any e-reader software, but I was able to use the free Google Play Books app on my phone to read it, after a little fiddling to get it to find the file. I think I’ll forgo the screenshots this time.

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