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Horrow Watch Day One
Day one of
Been A While
So it has been one year since I wrote anything to this blog. And on that note I wanted to just check in and say a bit about what the future looks like. Particularly because I will be agent in to book agents over the next few months.
VALOR, my long in-the-works fantasy project, is done. It wrapped up in April after multiple edits and I am now in the middle of sending it out to agents. Took a break because, surprise! I was so inspired I wrote all of Book 2 over the course of two months in the summer.
It was brilliant and amazing, and I am looking forward to pushing the series. With that said, I have to get active here. I would like to record my thoughts regarding games, movies, all sorts of media that comes out. I won’t be able to do that if I keep procrastinating. So, here’s to a good 2026. I hope I can be much more committed this time.
Superman (2025) – The Luthor Review
Superman may be the most comic book movie I’ve ever seen in my life.
Unless you’ve been living on another planet, then you’ve heard that a new Superman film was coming out. Directed by James Gunn, this new film arrives at a time when love for the superhero genre has faded. Which is interesting in the sense that this new film embraces comic books to a degree that I’m not sure any other comic based film has. Guardians of the Galaxy, another James Gun product, also embraces the weirdness of comic books. Yet I’m not even sure that film comes close to embracing the full strange scope of what comics can be in the same way that the new Superman film does.
Consider the following unique parts about the film. A super powered dog, Krypto, who flies and wears a mini-cape. A series of robots, all themselves wearing capes, simply called “The Superman Robots.” A giant interstellar octopus thing that superheroes fight outside the windows of skyscrapers while people inside carry on as if life is normal. That’s before you talk about pocket dimensions, interdimensional rifts, and artificial black holes. Superman as a film is not afraid to embrace all the pseudo scientific weirdness that is a part of comic books.
But that’s all just the window dressing, the world in which the story unfolds. And the story isn’t a complicated one. It has small “twists” but from the start, you know who the villains are. You know who the good guys are. There are no spy-level twists or any international intrigue that will keep you wondering about what’s really going on until the last moment.
No. This movie is about Superman, also known as Clark Kent, and his nemesis, Lex Luthor. Of course, these two are surrounded by a great cast of characters, but the movie is chiefly interested in exploring the two differing world views of its main hero and villain. Lex can be summarized by envy and selfishness. Clark can be summarized by hope and selflessness. From these differing qualities, they affect the world in vastly different ways. The film is clear about how unchecked ambition and selfishness can destroy the lives of others. On the other hand, the film is also quite clear that selflessness and setting an example for others can lead to acts of heroics by others that can also positively affect the world.
So who are those other characters? Well, Lex is primarily surrounded by the overly cheerful Ms. Teschmacher, Ultraman, and the Machinist, in addition to a gang of minor sycophants who act as his office team. Clark, on the other hand, has the Daily Planet team of characters such as Lois Lane and Jimmy Olson. However, as Superman, he also has the Justice Gang, consisting of Guy Gardner, Hawkgirl, and Mr. Terrific. Luthor’s behavior, in the end, is destructive and pushes people away. Clark’s behavior, on the other hand, inspires people to be better.
Of this cast, Lois Lane and Mr. Terrific are two of the most standout characters. Lois explicitly draws a contrast between herself and Clark from the start of the film. They’re very different people who see the world quite differently, because they are quite literally from different worlds. That doesn’t make Lois a bad person, just very human, distinct, and truly an emblem of the hard hitting reporter who is after the truth. Mr. Terrific, on the other hand, is one member of the Justice Gang. Terrific’ s existence, he claims, is to live for technology with little interest in human emotions. He just happens to be on the good side. But Mr. Terrific, throughout his appearances, strikes me as among the most human members of the cast. His interactions with literally everyone, from Guy Gardner to Lois to Superman himself, always are highlights of the film.
The only major con I can see to myself is how busy it is, and how it’s paced. Personally, I had absolutely zero issues with the pacing and rapid sequences. But your mileage will definitely very. The movie starts in media res, with Superman having just come off a beating, and the film never lets up from there. We’re rapidly introduced to multiple conflicts and characters over the first 30 minutes that lead into the main conflict that will occupy the last hour and a half of the film. That first 30 minutes will definitely be rough for non comic fans. It will also most likely be rough for those who have difficulty following fast paced films. It will definitely strike some as disjointed, though I had no problems following the thrust of that first half hour, and understood it was setting up what was to come over the following hour. Yet I will also admit that it may be difficult for some viewers.
On the other hand, there have been some criticisms about the film I simply cannot understand. I do not think James Gunn undercuts emotional moments with humor. In fact, I think that he lets those moments sit quite long enough. It’s simply that at some point the scene switches to something less dramatic. That’s simply scene transition, and the conflict is not undermined by those transitions. New scenes add to what came before as separate storylines begin to come together as the last conflict builds. I also don’t believe this movie doesn’t take Superman seriously enough. I truly believe anyone who thinks so just wanted a repeat of a grim, unhappy Superman. There are multiple times when Superman fully demonstrates the seriousness of the situation and his commitment to human life. He demonstrably saves people time and again, he struggles with his identity, he fights back over and over from the threshold of defeat. And Superman repeatedly emphasizes what he is about and his raison d’etre, no more greatly summarized than when Lex and Clark have two speeches that mirror each other, except with each espousing a different ethos.
But if you want to know how this movie hit me, I can summarize it like this. I set my phone down and never looked at it once. I laughed at all the great jokes. I felt my heart swell at the brave moments. I felt my heart beat when Lois and Clark struggled and grew their relationship. And I cried multiple times before the film came to its tremendous end.
Superman is in theaters now.
TV Review: Fallout
A great example of a game adapted for television, that still exists as its own thing.
“War. War never changes.”
These four simple words have been carved onto the minds of a generation of gamers. Almost two generations, by now. The original Fallout came out on PC in 1997 and was soon followed by a sequel. Though the series went into hibernation for a short while, it returned, re-conceptualized and modernized for a new audience. Fallout 3 and its DLC, New Vegas, invited old players to return to the world of Fallout while bringing in a younger generation. Since then, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76 have continued the heritage of the game, exploring a post-apocalyptic future where bizarre creatures and outlandish technology blend with a horrorscape that acts as a tribute to man’s hubris.
The changes that marked the series’ evolution from the first Fallout to the most recent entries were not always celebrated. The first games were trimetric perspective role playing games in which players were given a great deal of freedom with their character builds and the way they responded to in-game characters. The latter games switch to first person perspectives and reduced some of the freedom in favor of storytelling and gunplay.
Yet what has remained constant about the Fallout series has been its odd blend of humor, horror, and sheer outlandishness. The Fallout world is set in the post-apocalypse, one in which the world is a nuclear wasteland. A war between the United States and its enemies led to global nuclear war, and the United States, by the 2100s, is a shell of itself. The government has long collapsed, independent republics have sprang up, factions fight for control, and the majority of the country is covered in radiation, deserted wastes, and mutated monsters. This is normally where the plot of one of the games would set the player loose into the world. In the Fallout television series, it is instead three unique individuals who become the cornerstones around which a new Fallout story is told.
In telling you about these characters, it’s also possible to tell you a little bit about the factions that inhabit the Fallout world. Cooper, the revolver firing, cowboy looking Ghoul is a bounty hunter. In a world without laws, he takes what he can get to survive. He’s also a Ghoul, which in the world of Fallout, means it’s difficult to kill him because he’s essentially already dead.
Maximus is a shy, reluctant member of the Brotherhood of Steel. The Brotherhood is a paramilitary group founded by remnants of the U.S. Army after the war that makes it its mission to preserve advanced technology. As a member, Maximus’ job is to make sure only the Brotherhood has possession of this technology, since humans have shown they can’t be trusted with it.
And finally, there’s Ella, a Vault Dweller. Vault Dwellers are at the core of almost every Fallout game. To save humanity from war, Vault-Tec created vaults around the country to ensure humanity would survive. In most Fallout games, time and circumstance forces one of the inhabitants of the vault up to the surface to become a hero of the Wasteland. It’s no different for Ella, the naive Vault Dweller who is forced from her home to search the wastes for clues to her past.
You may have noticed a dog in that picture, too. That’s Dogmeat. Don’t worry. Everyone loves Dogmeat.
Three people in a nuclear wasteland, some fighting for factions, some fighting for themselves. The show thrives when these characters are pitted against one another, because each represents a different philosophy. In a world as bleak as the Wasteland, the show often asks the audience which of these characters is best suited to survive. The show also asks whether surviving is enough. Maximus often represents a pragmatic middle ground, a character who reluctantly does as he’s asked and tries to balance being kind with the cruel reality of his existence. Cooper has no qualms about being as vicious as necessary in order to get what he wants and survive in a world that does not care about who makes it out alive. And Ella represents an almost naively bright source of hope, someone who continues to try and find the good in people and situations long after others give up. These conflicting ideologies and characteristics make interactions between these characters that much more dynamic, and each is pursuing the same goal for vastly different reasons. The viewer is asked to decide which ideology they most align with.
The show cannot be divorced from its settings and environment, of course. The game series thrived partly because of the unique world it created, and the show benefits from the same. Irradiated bears that can claw through steel represent one threat in this world. Gigantic mutated behemoths form another. Brains contained in jars give a form of life eternal for some, while hovering multi armed robots serve as assistants to people in the Wasteland. These interesting and unique creatures all work within the context of the show because it is very true to its gaming roots. It tells an intriguing narrative from start to finish. However, that narrative is one part humor, one part horror, one part ultra violence. Genuine, heart touching conversations happen, with genuinely hilarious scenes. These are broken up by mysterious and creepy segments in which the remnants of the old United States are explored and horrific ancient experiments uncovered. And when violence breaks out, death happens in brilliant and joyously excessive ways. If you are squeamish, these fight scenes may be a bit too much.
The Fallout games worked because they balanced these different aspects so well, and the show does the same. While a central story line ties all eight episodes together, the focus of the show is on the individual experiences of each of the protagonists as they navigate the Wasteland. Their stories unfold as they essentially chase a McGuffin. At times this may seem to create for an unfocused viewing experience, but the show is not interested in telling a tight, compact story as much as it is exploring its intriguing world as experienced through the lens of each of its central characters. It’s a journey worth taking, and one you should go on with these intriguing individuals.
Fallout is available on Prime Video.
TV Review: FROM
You’re not watching it. And you should be. There are things that go bump in the night.
There are specific kinds of shows that work for specific kinds of people. One of the most popular formats to emerge in the last two decades was the “mystery box” format. In television, a mystery box show is any show that starts with a lot of mysteries up front. A mystery isn’t any good without people to explore them, so mystery box shows often feature a diverse cast and complex plot that not only explores the mysteries of the show but also the relationships between the people in that show. Very often, people will be having to deal with each other while tugging on the ends of different strings that could unravel the mystery.
This format was popularized by LOST, one of the most influential shows in television history. To recap, in that show, passengers aboard an airliner crashed on an island. That island inexplicably had Egyptian statues, polar bears, shadow monsters . . . You name it, and the island probably had it. And those mysteries were explored by beloved cast members such as Jack, Sawyer, Kate, and others. They argued, fell in love, and did their best to escape from an island that didn’t want to let them go.
Now, listen to the premise of FROM. People from throughout America inexplicably end up detoured while driving and end up in a small town in the Midwest that they can never escape. That town is populated by monsters that hunt them in the night, mysterious totems that offer the people protection, jukeboxes that turn on despite there being no electricity in the town. And the mystery behind the two is explored by beloved cast members such as Boyd, Jim, and Fatima. They argue, fall in love, and do their best to escape from a town that won’t let them go.
The setup is similar in part because the producers of the show, Jack Bender and Jeff Pinker, were also producers on LOST. Let’s set aside LOST, though, because FROM is its own beast. I think it’s best to start with the setting. The shift to a small, dilapidated town immediately has consequences for the tone of the show. It’s a place where the local painting and wood paneling is slowly rotting away, and where the local swing set is rusty and falling apart. This is a world where everything is used; nothing feels polished. Worse, the entire town is surrounded by woods as far as the eye can see. In a single scene, you feel as if you’ve been transported to a world where only depression can exist. Nothing feels modern. It’s a backwater town cut off from society. Those towns exist in real life, and FROM truly captures the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere. The catch, of course, is that you can’t leave.
Anyone choosing to try and leave town ends up looping back into the town. Being stuck, though, is not the worst of everyone’s problems. When they’re not struggling to put together enough food to survive or arguing with each other, the townsfolk are busy trying to survive the horrible monsters that lurk in the woods. Every night, anybody caught outside after dark has a high chance of being slaughtered in some of the most brutal ways possible. This is not a place you want to live, and yet these people are trapped. It would be a hopeless place except, of course, that someone has risen to the occasion to give these people. That brings us to the characters.
FROM has a diverse, ensemble cast with lots of strong performances. However, the story is, at its core, the tale of two men. Boyd Stevens is the appointed sheriff of the town, a man who keeps law and order while making sure that everyone is indoors before nighttime. Boyd’s been around for a while and its clear from how everyone reacts to him that he’s the central pillar keeping the entire town standing. Just how important he is is explored as the first season unwinds, but even from the start, it’s clear that he’s one of the most respected individuals to have ever arrived.
The second man at the center of this story is Jim Matthews. More accurately, it could be said that Matthews and his family form the second major character of the story. Jim and his wife, Tabitha, are on a vacation when they find themselves trapped in town along with their son and daughter, Ethan and Julie. I group the Matthews family together because each one of them becomes pretty important to the story, pretty quickly. In fact, each one of them starts to tug at different threads regarding the mystery of why they’re trapped. Jim takes center stage as an engineer devising a way to communicate with the outside world. However, by season two, each other member of the family is exploring a different side of the mystery. Whether that means talking with psychics, drawing visions of what’s to come, or exploring monster dens, every member of the Matthews family gets time in the spotlight.
It’s impossible to cover just how wide the cast is. You have Fatima, the positive, bohemian type woman who keeps the positive vibes flowing around town. There’s Kenny, all around good guy and deputy to Boyd. There’s another newcomer, Jade, who is a genius scientist trying to save everyone with his technological know how. Then there’s Donna, arguably the third most important person on the show who has, inexplicably, been excluded from exploring the mysteries around town. In many ways, she’s just as important as Boyd.
And because you have such a dense cast, you have lots of time to explore the relationships between characters in between the moments when the plot is moving forward. This is where you can make your own judgement call about whether you will like the show or not. If you need a show that’s driving full force toward resolving its plot at all times, then FROM is not for you. There are very, very intense and scary stretches of the show. However, between them, there is the daily tension that rises between people. Fathers argue with sons, husbands with wives, and these people live under the daily pressures of being trapped with no hope of rescue. When things go tragically wrong and citizens are slaughtered in the night, those tensions rise even higher.
So if you don’t have the patience to sit through the personal drama that exists between these people, you won’t enjoy the show as much. Just the same way as Sawyer, Kate, Locke, and Jack always argued and debated how to move forward, so do the townsfolk. People have preexisting problems with each other that the Matthews family finds itself having to negotiate. And not every episode touches on the overarching plot. In Season One, there’s a good stretch toward the middle dedicated toward really setting up each character and their relationship to the larger town.
But that’s what makes the tense times so tragic. You actually care about the characters once the violence begins. Whether someone dies or is simply left hurting from all of the violence they’re surrounded by, you care. The pacing isn’t always perfect, and the producers are clearly moving along LOST levels of pacing with regard to how they split up a larger plot problem with interpersonal drama. Yet, these characters are very entertaining and contrast against one another in ways that lead to incredible stretches of conversation. And then, not long after, monsters are springing from the forests and phantom ballerinas are dancing through homes while ravens circle the skies.
FROM is available on MGM Plus.
Game Preview: Against the Storm
An intriguing city builder, though one that still needs some refinement.
I love any games that involves building a city, regardless of the conditions. Sim City? You’re building a city. They Are Billions? You’re building a city to protect it from zombies. Frostpunk? You’re building a city meant to stand against a generational storm that will freeze to death anyone who isn’t properly protected.
So you can imagine that when I saw the premise for Against the Storm that I was intrigued. To break down the general ‘plot,’ as it were, the world is plagued by a recurring storm known as the Blight Storm. The world will be at peace for a few years before this storm wipes out every town and settlement in existence in a process known as the Blight Cycle. When the Blight Storm arrives, the only safe place to flee is to the Smoldering City, where the power of the Scorched Queen is able to hold the Blight Storm at bay. Once the storm is over, people can once again go back out into the world to establish their colonies.
This is where the city builder aspect of the game kicks in. As the queen’s viceroy, it’s your job to rebuild the colonies that have been wiped out. As a rogue lite, every cycle resets the game and randomizes what you will find on the map as you engage in a another process of colony building. You start near the Smoldering City, build a colony, and if you are successful, continue to build successful colonies increasingly outward.
What this means for the player is that they must both make decisions on the world map regarding where they want to place their next colony, and then actually build the colony on the colony map. In the world map, you are afforded the chance to use your experience points to buy upgrades from the Smoldering City. You can purchase new buildings, for instance, which makes it easier to establish a colony. Or, you can buy resources that you can use once you enter the colonization phase of the game, making it easier to establish a successful colony.
The colony map is where you’ll actually be spending most of your game time, however. Every colony is on a timer. Spend too long building the colony and the queen will run out of patience, ending your game. That impatience grows on a timer you can visibly see. However, achieving goals extends the amount of time you have, reducing her impatience. Achieving goals also fills up your achievement bar and, when that’s full, you win the map you’re currently playing on. These achievements typically take the form of goods that are being requested by the Smouldering City. For instance, you may need to put together 10 packs of crops or 15 packs of building materials that will benefit the city and increase your chance of winning the current map. There are other, more interesting ways of building your achievement meter, though. As you carve your way through the woods to make more space for your town, you’ll find abandoned goods you can ship back. Again, not a very intriguing way of building your experience. Much more interesting are the mysterious threats you’ll find.
On your colony map, you’ll encounter glades blocked in by woods. Most of these hold new sources of food or materials for you to acquire. Others, though, hold threats. These dangerous glades can be filled with all kinds of dangers. In my play through, I’ve encountered escaped convicts, ancient heretical totems, abandoned ships, and mysterious temples. Fail to deal with these threats in a timely manner, and you could lose resources. In one instance, I took too long dealing with a mysterious temple we found and malevolent spirits burst out and killed a quarter of my town. How you deal with these threats, though, will influence your game. You could tear down a temple, for instance, and take the goods for yourself. Or, you could plunder its deepest secrets and send what you find back to the Smouldering City. Making decisions that benefit the queen will typically reward you with boosts to your experience meter.
The game is still in early access and I do have gripes about the game. There’s a lot of fun in seeing so many types of buildings. For instnace, you can have a tavern, a smokehouse, a cookhouse, a lumber mill, and a cooperage all in addition to more basic buildings like farms and woodcutter camps. Yet a lot of the time, I found myself thinking that many of the buildings felt redundant. You can greatly expand on what’s available to you over time, especially as you upgrade the Smouldering City from the world map, but after about a dozen hours, I felt like there was just a lot of content for content’s sake. It just felt like the game wanted you to have a lot available for its own sake. Does a town really need both a lumber mill and a carpenter’s cabin that both exist to produce planks of wood?
But I wonder how much of this is related to the directionless feeling of the game, overall. As you expand on the world map, you don’t really feel as if you’re doing it for any purpose except, again, simply to do it. This is something I believe the developers have noted they want to work on, and I think they are currently trying to add an overarching goal to the world map. That would at least give you something to work toward that makes it feel as if all the upgrades are for more than their own sake, or for the sake of simply completing more colonies. This game isn’t like They Are Billions, so playing the individual colony maps doesn’t have the thrill of desperately trying to beat off incoming threats. I also wonder sometimes if I am simply playing the game wrong. I’ve defeated multiple maps but often feel as if doing so requires essentially repeating the same processes. I don’t feel like it should take a dozen hours and three world resets to start feeling as if more intriguing environments or threats were coming. Still, this is a promising game so far and I don’t regret my purchase at all. I look forward to seeing how the overarching goals impact the game and how I feel about the upgrade system. It’s a charming city builder with a unique setting and I look forward to more in the future.
Movie Review: The Super Mario Bros. Movie
The Mario Bros. power up in this family friendly film.
It’s okay to have fun.
It’s strange that I had to keep reminding myself about this throughout the entirety of the Super Mario Bros. Movie. For the last month, the online discourse surrounding this film has been obnoxious. “It’s not as emotionally impactful as a Pixar film!” “There are no deeper lessons learned from the movie!” As if the lack of those things inherently makes a film bad. Neither does “It’s just a kids movie!” make for a good defense of a film.
That’s the thing, though. The Mario movie isn’t a bad film. In fact, it’s a pretty good one if you’re looking to just have fun. It’s bright, it’s silly, it’s humorous, and it’s a visual treat. I truly disliked having to argue with the discourse, in my own head, as I watched the film. That’s my own fault though, of course.
The easiest thing to address about the film is the visuals. How can you not? The Mario movie is so visually bright that almost every scene in the film explodes off the screen. Yet once again, the movie somehow came under criticism from the online mobs. At some point in the last few years, people started expecting every individual strand of a character’s hair to be rendered. That level of attention to detail in Pixar films has caused their films to explode in costs, for negligible gains. Does anybody really care that Mario’s mustache isn’t life like? Is anybody really asking for that? The film has a solidly cartoonish look with exaggerated visuals that are perfect for the material.
Musically, the soundtrack borrows from the games for much of the musical cues while also integrating pop hits over different scenes. The original score is fantastic, and the fact that we got a rendition of the beloved DK Rap is a delightful surprise. There is only one scene that comes to mind where the use of a pop track really didn’t fit; I’m thinking specifically of when Take On Me was played over a scene of Mario and Peach driving through the streets on a golf cart. I’m not sure who chose that specific song for that specific scene, but it was the one instance of a track feeling jarring and not well integrated into the film.
But let’s be honest. Everyone coming to the movie is waiting to hear the incredibly memeable earworm known as Peaches.
If you don’t want to spoil the surprise, then skip the video, but parents around the world are going to be clawing at their ears as their children sing Peaches for the 50th time. But, to be honest, it was one of the highlights of the film. Someone apparently just told Jack Black to make a song and scream it out, and that man went 200% into creating a song that will live in infamy. I’ll say that during my showing, the crowd broke out in applause. And, ashamed as I am to say it, I’ll find myself walking around singing “peachespeachespeachespeachespeaches.”
I thought the voice acting throughout was great. The only character that seemed miscast was Cranky Kong, voiced by Fred Armisen. However, the rest of the cast was solid. Princess Peach, voices by Anya-Taylor Joy, takes up as much screen time as Mario himself and maybe more than Luigi. Mario, voiced by Chris Pratt, and Luigi, voiced by Charlie Day, make up the heart of the film. The central theme of the film is the importance of their brotherhood. Throughout, we see Mario acting very protective of his less courages, and less capable, younger brother. That theme is present from the very first moments of the movie, and there’s a genuine sweetness in their love for each other.
But the plot as a whole is as complex as an plot in any Mario game. The Mushroom Kingdom is threatened by Bowser, who wants to marry Princess Peach, and Mario and Luigi arrive to save the day. As is the trend in modern films, Princess Peach couldn’t be relegated to a damsel in distress. Actually, even in the most recent Mario game, Princess Peach seemed to spurn both Mario and Bowser’s romantic advances to go on her own journey at the game’s conclusion. There’s nothing ground breaking or ultra feminist in Peach’s portrayal, but it was nice to see that she was written as a capable ruler of her kingdom. Rather than be relegated to the background, Peach takes a central role. She’s protective of the Toadstools who live in the kingdom and sincerely cares about the well being of the people around her. Mario is still positioned as someone uniquely capable of helping, since he never accepts defeat and is willing to keep getting back up no matter how many times he’s knocked down. The two play off each other very well as they both do their part in saving the kingdom from Bowser. That relationship is accented by memorable characters throughout the film, from the apes of Kong Kingdom to the imprisoned, humorously nihilistic Luma.
At the end of the day, the Super Mario Bros. Movie is one of the most profitable films ever, having taken in nearly $1.5 billion in revenue. Does it deserve that number? That’s subjective and depends on your tastes. Just, take the Mario movie on its own terms. If you’re looking for a tear jerker in the spirit of Up or Wall-E, you won’t find that here. You won’t have the deeply interwoven message of coming to terms with your own adulthood like was found in Inside Out. But the film is a lot of fun, and sometimes, that’s all you need.
Game Review: Dredge
Go for a quiet fishing trip. Meet Cthulhu.
One of my favorite games ever created is Sunless Sea. Set in the world of Fallen London, the game Sunless Sea involved you sailing from one port to another in a great underground ocean located in a cave called The Neath. The gameplay was largely you sailing around and exploring. Occasionally, you got into combat with underwater beasts, some of unfathomable dimensions, but the game was largely focused on finding exotic new locales and going through the story beats. It was one of the best written games I ever played.
It also created a gaming niche I didn’t even realize I needed to have filled – Lovecraftian inspired sailing. There just aren’t a lot of games where the focus is on being a sailor and encountering bizarre forces inspired by Lovecraft’s canon. In fact, the only other game I played that remotely scratched that itch was Sunless Skies, the space-based sequel in which you piloted a train rather than a boat.
So, when I heard about Dredge, I was fascinated. Here was a game in which you were going to be sailing around the map and mostly just fishing. You would get into some interesting side quests with quirky characters. And, along the way, you would also run afoul of the Cthulhu inspired monstrosities that filled the world. The developers of Dredge described Sunless Sea as a “spooky boat” game. That same title can be applied to Dredge.
Because from the moment that you load up the game, it’s made very clear that something is amiss in the islands in which you will be doing your fishing. People warn you not to be out too late at night. It’s good advice – just as in Sunless Sea, the game Dredge has a panic meter that rises as you sail the unknown. Your panic increases the later it gets, and can be made higher by random encounters on your map, such as piloting through red clouds of mist or getting attacked by sea beasts. The more your panic rises, the more you are more likely to encounter enemies that are single mindedly set on destroying you. Of course, you have no way to fight back. You’re just a fisherman, after all.
So, fishing is actually going to be the core of the gameplay loop. Some parts of the map are more dangerous than others, but you need to explore them to complete quests. You can upgrade your boat to take more damage and even acquire abilities that will make it easier to avoid taking hits. But upgrading a boat takes money, and you can only make money by going fishing. And there’s a lot of fishing you can do. While you only start with a simple fishing line, you can upgrade the line to fish in ever more exotic environments. You also get access to crab pots and trawling nets that can add even more fish to your hauls, meaning more money for upgrades.
But while the fishing is the core gameplay loop, it wouldn’t mean much without an interesting world to fish in. Dredge provides you with an island chain that contains five main sections, each unique in their own way. While the peaceful islands of The Marrows provide you with a hospitable start from which to fish, the volcanic and ruin strewn islands of The Devil’s Spine are much more difficult to navigate and survive in.
What really moves the story forward, though, are the quests. There is one central, overarching questline that takes you through the entirety of the islands. Yet every island chain has its own unique questline to work through. Each questline also reveals a little more about the threats the world is facing and the consequences there might be if the Cthulhu like being beneath the islands were to ever wake up. Messages in bottles reveal bits of story as well and help the player understand the motivations of the sea captain they are playing as. In fact, there’s a lot of story packed away in those messages-in-bottles and they really shouldn’t be missed.
If I were to criticize Dredge in an real significant way, it would be to say that the game never went far enough with exploring its own world. Again, the best comparison is Sunless Sea. In Sunless Sea, multi part quests reaped what were sometimes terrifying revelations. Hours would go into completing those quest chains and personal relationships between characters fleshed out. Even exploration was more in-depth when you pulled into port. As a great example, in Sunless Sea, you have to stock up on items to explore a cathedral at one juncture in the game. It’s a long series of you basically reading descriptions of the cathedral and then making decisions, such as whether to use the stairs or try and use ropes to climb upward. Each decision was a gamble and based on your stats, and at each stage in your ascent, you would read sometimes chilling descriptions of what happened there. Dredge has a lighthouse you have to explore at one stage and while you do need a specific item to get inside, there is no sense of exploration. You simply go upstairs and come back down.
So, my one wish would be that Dredge tackle its land based explorations more thoughtfully. It could borrow from the quest structure of Sunless Sea and I think people would be very happy with the outcome. With that said, though, Dredge remains a fantastic game and one of the few examples of a spooky boat simulator that exists. It’s also unexpectedly relaxing to simply go out fishing – even if that relaxation turns to terror once the night descends.
TV Review: Picard, Season 3
Going out boldly.
If you haven’t kept up with the world of the Paramount+ show Picard, I can’t blame you. The first season of the show started with lots of promise. At its beginning, it seemed to be an insightful review of Data’s legacy and the nature of humanity. You know, the typical topics that the Star Trek franchise has historically been about. It quickly became an action stuffed, poorly paced show that ended with a Galaxy threatening enemy the audience had previously never been introduced to. So, while seeing some old, familiar characters was nice, the overall tone of the show was incredibly uneven. Still, it was decent enough to have hopes for Season 2.
And boy, did Season 2 seem to have a good sales line. It promised to bring back Q, the omniscient, omnipotent being who had repeatedly locked horns with Jean-Luc Picard during his time as captain of the Enterprise. The episodes featuring Q had been some of the best with regard to showing us how insignificant, yet paradoxically important, humans were in the scope of the Galaxy. It’s too bad that Season 2 of Picard barely featured Q at all and instead of taking us to the stars, stuck us in modern day Los Angeles. Worse, the overall lesson, that Picard needed to learn to love, was poorly handled throughout the season. Somehow, Season 2 was far worse than Season 1.
So it took me a while before I was willing to watch Picard Season 3. But, I couldn’t ignore the whispers I was hearing from all corners of the internet. “It’s actually good!” I kept hearing that it was a major shift, but after all of my disappointment, it took time before I was willing to revisit the show.
Wow. Am I glad I did.
I want to preface this by saying there were multiple episodes of Picard where I outright cried. There were multiple episodes of Picard when I cheered. This is not the slow paced, cerebral show that Star Trek: The Next Generation was. So, if that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll be disappointed.
So what is it that makes Season 3 so good? It’s the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Season 3 brings back everyone you loved from TNG. Picard, is of course, at the center of the show. But right next to him is River in the command chair. Deanna is here to feature her empathic powers once again. Geordi returns to flaunt his engineering brilliance. Word is back at tactical – and a badass. Data, inexplicably, makes a welcome return. And nobody is more central to the story than Beverly Crusher, whose storyline is intimately tied up with Picard’s.
To my frustration, it feels as if the show runners realized many of the new characters introduced in Season 1 didn’t work and so, through Season 2, they just got rid of all of them. By Picard Season 3, only one new character really remains. Raffi. With that said, her return is welcome, as she was one of the only characters with any real character. With that said, she’s also joined by Voyager and Picard alum, Seven of Nine, who has consistently been an incredible character in the Star Trek franchise.
And somehow, Picard Season 3 does something it hasn’t been able to do for two previous season and introduces even more characters that you want to see more of. To even discuss some of them would be to give away spoilers, but one I can talk about is Captain Liam Shaw. A captain that Picard is forced by circumstances, he’s everything that Picard is not. He’s so by the books you wonder how he became captain. He seems to exhibit very little in the way of bravery or willingness to sacrifice himself from others. Yet, he makes such an impact that by the end of the show, he was one of my favorite additions to the Star Trek series in recent years.
So, new, memorable characters? Check. Old beloved friends? Check. But there’s also the plot, which is actually interesting. For half the season you’re left wondering how this grand conspiracy could be unfolding around Picard and leaving the Federation so helpless in the face of its adversary. Again, I can’t say much without spoiling the show, but there are multiple times you’re left guessing and when the reveals come, you’re left wondering if Picard and crew really can save the day. The enemies are worth waiting around for.
But even when the show loses its footing a bit or when the pacing starts to drag a little, you’re always caught wanting more because of that one thing – Picard and craw. To see the full crew back together after decades, to see them working together and with a new generation of Star Fleet to save the Federation, it really is touching. So many times, just seeing the small interactions between River and Deanna or between Data and Geordi made me tear up. This crew, this cast, loved each other, and it shows in every scene. Actors Jonathan Frakes (Riker) and Michael Dorn (Worf) seem to be having particular fun in every scene the share together.
When the show’s finally done, you’re left applauding for your old heroes having returned, but also left wanting a new Star Trek show featuring the new generation of Star Fleet that’s been assembled. It’s really quite the feat that Picard pulls together old and new to not only celebrate the past but carve a way to the future. Along the way, it touches on the importance of friends, the nobility of the individual, and the importance of always working together toward a better future. It’s a fantastic season of television, and I’m glad that I finally watched it. If it’s not clear, then I highly recommend watching Picard Season 3.
