A Theme Park Mistress standard, Water dates back to 2012. A dreamy trip into the deep, written, if I remember correctly, for Jeff Buckley, who drowned after taking a spontaneous dip in a river. This version uses more instrumentation than the original demo, with the main riff of the verse played on a keyboard using the 1969 organ patch from Propellerhead Reason. My Fender acoustic along with my Stratocaster through a Big Muff also are featured.
I did a country-fried version of Lost Without End, complete with twangy guitars and piano. Just a simple song about being a hobo drunk. Let the good times roll.
I wrote this in Muncie when I was staying in a tiny house for 300 dollars a month with some dude whom I never talked to and whose name I cannot remember. This version is the definitive one--it has a punk arrangement that always suited the song--and I managed to record it in about two hours today after getting the drums down. The guitar tracks are done with my Stratocaster on the bridge pickup with the tone knob rolled down to about 6, played through a TS-57 Tube Screamer and my Epiphone Blues Custom. You can get a good heavy tone with single coils! Humbuckers are cool, but I prefer the color of single coil pickups. Just my humble opinion.
Spider-Man 2 is Sony's followup to 2018's successful Spider-Man, and it is in most respects a classic iterative sequel, delivering a bigger story with more cinematic set pieces, gameplay improvements, and more life-like New York to swing around. This time, you can switch between Miles Morales and Peter Parker, and although they play similarly, Miles has electrical abilities that differentiate his powers from Peter's, who goes through much of the game with the symbiote suit. Kraven the hunter is the main antagonist for about two-thirds of the runtime, until Venom shows up, with much fanfare. Sandman and the Lizard also make notable appearances, with the former appearing at the start of the game and more or less recreating his gigantic form from Sam Rami's Spider-Man 3. The story involves the dual Spider-Men attempting to prevent Kraven from offing their rogue's gallery, until the appearance of Harry Osborn, who has kept his life-threatening illness at bay with a biological suit of unknown origins, diverts Pete's attention. You can probably predict the rest, but playing through Spider-Man 2 is at least as enjoyable as watching one of his classic flicks. I have been thoroughly pursuing the sidequests, not just because of their quality (do the one involving Mysterio's virtual reality game) but because it's just plain fun to traverse this hyper-detailed New York. Both Pete and Miles have web-wings which allows them to fly alongside their web-slinging, and it is thrilling to glide in-between towering skyscrapers and across New York Bay. High quality ray-traced reflections look excellent and really add to the immersion. Combat has been expanded since the first game, with both Spider-Men having special abilities that they tap into during battle along with an array of gadgets and combo moves. Two-thirds in, you'll really master the system and start handling massive mobs with the supernatural dexterity of a spider-powered hero. All in all, Spider-Man 2 is right up there with God of War: Ragnarok as one of the best singleplayer games I've experienced this year.
A note on the PC version; it's not quite as good as you would really expect from Sony and Nixxies, who did the port. When it was released earlier this year, it was full of crashes and bugs and had terrible performance on even high-end hardware. A couple months later, the bugs aren't really plentiful (I got stuck behind level geometry a couple of times), but Spider-Man 2 still crashes more than is really acceptable. There's nothing that really prompts the crashes; sometimes I'll play for an hour or more and it will crash, other times just a few minutes. As for performance, this game is ridiculously CPU-heavy with ray-tracing enabled, especially when you consider how the Playstation 5 sports a down-clocked Zen 2 CPU. A smooth sixty frames per second is not possible without frame generation on my hardware. However, FSR frame gen can be enabled along with Nvidia's Reflex anti-lag tech and DLSS upscaling, and the result is pretty good. I played the game with an RTX 3080 and a Ryzen 7 5800x with a mix of High and Very High settings, with ray-traced reflections and interiors enabled on Very High at 1440p DLSS Quality, and my frame rates varied between 120 and 80 fps. I didn't notice any input lag or visual bugs due to frame gen, so I'd definitely enable it.
In conclusion, Spider-Man 2 looks great and plays great, but asks for some serious hardware and requires frame generation to run smoothly on PC. It think it's worth the asking price at this point, but it is a shame that Nixxes couldn't port the title to PC without some hurdles. Screenshots below:
2025
Have we exhumed the corpse of sincerity
From its postmodern grave?
Have we dusted off the ideologies
of the dead past
To play dress up
Like a Nazi at a dinner party
Shooting the salute
With a wry grin
And a shrug of the shoulders?
Stochastic anarchy is a term
That I did not invent.
Metamodernism: the oscillation between
Sincere belief and ironic detachment.
One minute you are a Fascist on the stage,
The next you are a provocateur
Engaging in cosplay
To critique the illiberalism
of the liberal establishment.
People have a desire for truth
But it cannot exist
In a world of disinformation
Where computer algorithms
Trained on bullshit
Are increasingly appealed to
And utilized
By children too lazy to use their brain.
If we are past the time of labels,
If we parade the corpse around
moving its arms and hands
In a ghoulish dance,
Making a mockery of humanity,
What future can we embrace?
Call the truth the truth
But we don’t know what truth is anymore
Since we are outsourcing thought
To the vanity of billionaires
And Silicon Valley firms
Disinterested in any concept
That doesn’t raise their valuation.
We have to remember the past
Not to use as fodder for memetic creation,
But as a reference on how to learn
How to think
How to act.
There is agency
In admitting
You are an agent.
I don't know why, but this song reminds me of Sly and The Family Stone's It's A Family Affair. It's a real bummer lyrically, but the music moves me, containing the slightest sliver of mellow hope. I'm really digging having an electric piano, although my favorite part of this song is when the dual guitars kick in. It's a real gut punch, a shock to the system (insert favorite cliche).
A Poem For Napoleon
We took you from the Colerain SPCA
A little short puppy
With a tattoo
Where your balls used to be.
The first time you met Lily,
You nipped her cheek so much that it bled.
In Cincinnati, you would sit on the armrest of the couch,
Legs spread out like a reptile,
Nose stuck beneath the blinds
To bark at any passersby you saw.
Prone to ear infections
Due to your hairy Wookiee feet,
You would growl and snap
Whenever I tried to clean your ears.
Your nicknames were the following:
Pupperton-maximus,
Po-Po,
Wubus,
And wubbydoodle.
When they put you under at the vet
To clean your ears,
You clamped your tiny jaws
Onto a vet-tech's finger.
In your old age, you mellowed
and mostly kept around my heels
when I was in the kitchen.
Blind and deaf, you wandered out of the yard
Just last week to be picked up
By two older ladies
Who took you
To David's vet clinic in Rising Sun.
You passed on the cool floors of the kitchen
Where you preferred to lay.
I buried you at the farm
Next to Lily
Your packmate
And true love.
I will miss your little short feet,
Your floppy ears,
Your shaggy coat,
And The way you rested your head
Chin jutting outward.
Little old man,
Last of the pack,
Vestige of my youth,
My first dog.
Goodbye.
A Theme Park Mistress classic, Come With A Drink dates back to 2010. A moody lamentation for alcohol and direction in the winter gloom, this version is mostly piano driven, as opposed to the original, which relied on rough, jangling guitars.
I am very late to the party, for Disco Elysium is already famous for being a modern classic of RPG genre, and so my review, coming years after its release, has little reason to exist other than to tell you, my hypothetical reader, what I think of it. Quite simply, it's a marvelous game. A role-playing experience with heavy adventure game roots (you will spend all of your time reading, listening, pointing, and clicking) Disco Elysium is about an alcoholic police detective who awakens in a hotel room with no memory of his self or past life. After a few conversations in the Whirling Rags (your hotel), you discover a personal path of desolation and destruction that points to one hell of a night. Your detective was sent to the ruined city of Revachol, a post-war ghetto still suffering from a war that happened almost fifty years ago between the Communists and the Loyalist factions, to solve the murder of a hanged mercenary. In the present Revochal is controlled by the Coalition, a neoliberal government that adheres to a centrist philosophy the game calls Moralism. Politics and political ideologies are very relevant to Disco Elysium, but the game's main theme is the heavy burden of the past. Your detective is unable to recover from a broken relationship; similarly, Revochal cannot transcend its history of civil war and conquest. The disco dancer in the hotel whom you soon discover is very important to the case is running from past transgressions, and the murderer, without revealing too much, is a former deserter who cannot let go of a failed revolution. I played the detective as an empath and a physical being, the four main attributes being Intellect, Psyche, Motorics, and Physique, with six secondary skills being associated with those four. You'll have to pass various skill checks during lengthy conversations, and what skills you choose are important, for Disco Elysium is a game almost entirely about talking. Said conversations are fully-voiced and well-acted, and I often found myself listening to many of them instead of hurriedly clicking past to the next option. The dialogue is poetic and very well-written; here's a little sample from the end of the game, when you're speaking to a sentient cryptid that seems to have a completely alien perspective.
"I am the end of a narrow tunnel. Weightless. So light it only feels like "something" to be me. In truth--perhaps I'm nothing? I certainly do not have a soul. And if I did, it would never ache."
Disco Elysium's main designer is Estonian novelist Robert Kurvitz, and the game is based on the same setting as his novel Sacred and Terrible Air. According to Wikipedia, Kurvitz is a communist, and the history of Disco Elysium is dependent on Marxist theory. Class warfare, corrupt Union bosses, citizens taking the law into their own hands, governing forces attempting to hold what little is left together--this is a dense stew that doesn't necessarily point the player in the direction of the Comrade, although my cop managed reconcile his hustler drive with his occasional support of communist socio-economics. These ideologies can be researched and equipped under Thoughts, and they provide gameplay bonuses, as well as penalties. Thoughts such as Hobo-cop are nestled right next to Traditionalism and Radical Feminist. Disco Elysium wants you to be as invested in your political ideologies as your character's bizarre quirks and addictions.
My only real criticism of the game is there are a couple of skill checks that'll prevent your progress unless you increase them. One is pretty early; you encounter a racist Union henchman named Measurehead that'll kick your ass unless you've invested heavily in the Physical Instrument skill. You can steal a Union card and bypass him, if you see it--I didn't, and had to do other quests until I level up the aforementioned skill enough to put the behemoth in his place. I also had to reload a save because I progress locked myself on the first night by not having enough cash to pay for my hotel room, which was a pain, because I had to redo several quests, which meant clicking through a lot of dialogue that I'd already read.
Minor quibbles aside, Disco Elysium is a classic RPG adventure, and highly recommended to anyone who enjoys unconventional, well-written games. It's a true piece of art and up there with Baldur's Gate 3 as one of the best examples of the genre I've played.
A song about being your own savior (happy Easter!) done on my Yamaha piano while using Reason for bass and drum sounds. The mean streets of Aurora, Indiana are filmed in passing. What more is there to say? I enjoyed making this one.
A wise man once said to me
"Son, when you see two birds
flying through the air
and a hawk swoops down
and seizes one of them,
do not waste time thinking
about the one who became
a meal."
I don't trust men
who call themselves wise.
Is it wise to discard the fate
of the doomed?
Will their plight
drown us in misery?
It is hard not to drown now
floundering as we are
the churning waters lapping
against our outstretched arms.
The time of change is often
the time of dying
And what bird could we be?
Will you soar tomorrow
or have your bones cracked
by curved talons?
Yes, you cannot think about it
but in the dark of the early morn
my mind wanders to the ditch
and lingers in the cold caverns
where bodies become one
with the earth.
Maybe that bird deserved it.
Maybe he flew too high
or was seized by a strange impulse,
a manic stupidity,
and he danced for the hawk
and dared him to come and see
if his wings were faster,
if his talons were as sharp
as the wise folk said.
You're right, wise man.
I can't cry for him
or me
or anyone who dares death
with a reckless abandon.
Sometimes we don't deserve
any pity for the things we do.
A solo piano piece in D that features modulation from D Melodic Major (D major with a flatted 6th) to D Lydian in 3/4 time. One of the prettier pieces of music I've ever written.
Welcome to Moron Town, where we manufacture the finest poo-poo and refined pee-pee in the world. Here in Moron Town, you get a square deal, because we're all out of other shapes, and to be quite honest, we don't know any others at this point. The Poo-Poo King dismantled the Department of Education, and now instead of learning mathematics and verbal skills, our kids work in the poop factory, shoveling shit into square boxes to distribute amongst ourselves.
We used to have a vibrant economy, mostly serviced based. We had schools and hotels and office buildings. There were public parks and paved roads and government services. But then we had an election, and the Poo-Poo King won on a platform of Bring the Poo-Poo Back Again. At one time in our history, Moron Town was a global leader in manure distribution. Many of our citizens worked in this field, but global trade agreements decimated our poo-poo industry. Our economy changed, and although we became much wealthier due to all the cheap goods we purchased from other countries, many people lost their jobs in the poo sector. There was a lot of resentment on the rural outskirts of Moron Town, and that resentment, along with fears of The Woke Mind-Virus, propelled the Poo-Poo King into office.
Unfortunately, the Poo-Poo King wasn't a very smart man. Despite running on a platform of Bring The Poo-Poo Back Again, many people were surprised when the Poo-Poo King put a tax on anything that wasn't poo-poo. Everything became much more expensive. All of a sudden, everybody became much poorer, not just because of the tariffs, but also because our non-poo-poo industries went out of business. Turns out that when you switch to a poo-poo based economy, anything that's not poop becomes really expensive. Our teachers, doctors, CEOs, service workers, and just about everybody else were soon shoveling shit in the poo-poo factory. Other countries heavily tariffed our poo-poo, so we started refining piss in an attempt to diversify, but nobody wants to buy our pee, and our poo-poo is unwanted as well. So now we sell poo-poo and pee-pee to ourselves, and everybody is dumb and poor as shit.
The Poo-Poo King doesn't care. He sits upon his throne of shit and pisses on anybody that approaches. The members of his political party (The GOP--Grand Old Poop Party) grovel on their knees and lap it up. They have poop in their brains and they can't stand up to the Poo-Poo King, because they slip on the piss. So we are stuck with our poo-poo based economy, despite everyone not really digging all the shit and piss.
I hear what you're saying. "Why did you guys vote for the Poo-Poo King, when Bring the Poo Back Again was such a stupid platform?" Well, buddy, this is Moron Town. We're all a bunch of morons. We do shit, and ask questions later. By the way, how are you enjoying your plate of poo-poo? Would you like some pee-pee with that?
What is this song? I wrote it in C but then transposed it to B Flat to better match my voice. Then I had a hell of a time singing the 3/4 part, so maybe I should have left it in C? I dunno. It's not really like anything I've ever done before, which is good. You gotta evolve as an artist. At least, that's what they tell me. I don't know who "they" is.
It's the Royal Road, baby! Sure, J-Pop might have abused the hell out of this chord progression, but I haven't used it much! Took my new piano out for a spin. The guitars were all played on my cheap Fender acoustic; for the dueling solos, I ran them through Reason and distorted them. I like the concept of change. Change is good, because change is life. To resist change is to be destroyed. Change and adapt. I hath begun my career as a motivational speaker/life-coach. Perhaps I can do better than George Costanza.
Do you want to move?
Do you want to pick through your belongings
Pack it all up
and start again down the street?
This house is my home
Where I had my children
Where we scrapped ice off the walls
And learned to have space.
When I sleep at night
I worry about leaving my past
And all the memories we made here.
But shouldn't we change?
If we fight against the current
We drown and sink beneath the surface
There is no way to add to a person
without embracing the difference
between the past and the present.
I know that nothing will ever stay the same
Life is not a picture
A painting
A screenshot
Or a photo.
Last night I had a dream
of a different woman and I
doing homework
In another home
With another child.
What is this strange reality?
A different universe?
An omen?
Or a simple flight of fancy?
I don't know
But maybe
it is okay
To move.
Kind of proud of this little piano instrumental I wrote on my new keyboard. A piano is so much more powerful than a guitar when it comes to songwriting. It's so much easier to adjust chord shapes with an extra hand!
It takes a decent amount of hubris to name your song "Rock 'n' Roll" but it's on par for the genre, am I right? An oldie that I rerecorded this week. Just some simple three chord rock with lyrics about chasing that youthful feeling.
There was a lot of whining about the price of eggs during the 2024 Presidential election. Google's bullshit AI tells me that the average price of eggs in the US during January was 4.95, a 15 percent increase over the previous month. Of course, bird flu is to blame, but this is Trump's America, and facts don't matter, only feelings. Americans felt pessimistic about the post-Covid economic recovery, so they voted in an authoritarian with an inflationary agenda. This is because America is full of dumb fuckers. Last night, Trump announced that the delayed 25 percent tariffs on Mexico and Canada would finally go into effect. He also raised Chinese tariffs from 10 percent to 20 percent. Given that America is the largest economy in the world, and that we consume around a quarter of what the world produces while having only five percent of the world's population, this... isn't good. If Americans were dissatisfied with Biden's economy, I can't imagine they'll be happy with Trump's inflationary policies. Those tariffs will be paid by American consumers, who will either bite the bullet and go home with less money in their bank accounts, or reduce consumption, shrinking the economy. Tariffs are protective measures meant to jump-start domestic industry or protect a vulnerable part of the economy. It's not ideal that all of the world's microchips are made in Taiwan, but it takes a lot of time and money to build a chip fabricator--around three years, 10 billion dollars, and 6000 construction workers, according to Intel. So it makes no sense to put blanket tariffs on Chinese electronics (most electronics are assembled in China) when it takes an extraordinary amount of time and money to build your own chips. The consumer is just going to end up paying a lot more for electronics. This is Econ 101, but Trump seems to not understand this. My own personal theory is that the tax cut Congressional Republicans are preparing will be paid for by tariffs, and they're counting on Americans being dumb enough to not realize that they're footing the bill. One of the advantages Republicans have over Democrats is that they realize that the average voter is an idiot, so while I don't think consumers will ignore how the price of everything drastically increased immediately after Trump took office, it's a gamble that may pay off, considering how dumb everyone is, and how Trump was reelected despite running on a Destroy America agenda.
The big, dumb fucker in chief also announced last night that he was ending aid to Ukraine. This comes after Trump and Vice President Vance personally berated and insulted Ukrainian President Zelenskyy while television crews filmed last Friday. Vance accused Zelenskyy of disrespect and ingratitude, despite it being obvious to anyone watching that Vance and Trump were the rude assholes in the room. Former Ukraine supporting Republicans like closeted homosexual hypocrite Lindsay Graham seized the bait and threw Zelenskyy under the bus as their dear leader desired. With the abandonment of Ukraine, Trump signaled to the rest of the world that America will not honor its commitments to allies (Trump wants to get out of NATO) and will now support dictators like Vladimir Putin, despite the historical animosity between Russia and the US. Now America has always been full of shit when it comes to international conflicts--the Iraq war never found any weapons of mass destruction, Vietnam was a nonsensical bloodbath, and the Afghanistan war was all for naught --but we've never outright abandoned democracy and our post-World War 2 allies in favor of an oligarch like Putin. Then again, we've never had a shadow President like Elon Musk dissolving government agencies and illegally firing government employees while harvesting the personal info of Americans.
I haven't touched on Trump's deportation agenda or his illegal executive orders or the coming fight over the budget and whether or not the President has the right to do whatever he wants with Treasury funds (he doesn't). None of this matters because although the signs are there, most Americans haven't noticed a difference yet. Ignorance is bliss, right? If you're plugged into the right wing grifter echo chamber, maybe you even think things are getting better. I'm here to tell you, you big, dumb fucking idiot, that things aren't okay, and you're going to notice the effects of Donald Trump's destruction of the American government and economy sooner rather than later. There is a price for ignorance, and there is a price for moral apathy, and there is a price for being fat and lazy and stupid. Fiction couldn't conjure a better physical representation of all of America's faults than Donald Trump. Now that we finally have a President that represents the worst of us, will we get what we deserve? Because if you take away freedom and democracy and civil rights and hope for the future, you're left with greed, gluttony, consumerism, and sloth. The latter isn't much to build a country on, is it?
Wake up, you dumb fucks. You wanted to fuck over the rest of us and drink our liberal tears, but in the process, you're getting fucked and you're fucking things up for your own children and anyone else that might care about the future. Stupidity is a privilege you've been afforded until now, but I'm taking it away for the good of the public. In the words of Dean Wormer from Animal House "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son."
Here's some Rage, because that's why I'm feeling lately.
I've realized that my initial review of God of War: Ragnarok was a little too negative after having played it for an additional sixteen or so hours. Despite being an iterative sequel, it does do a lot to expand the basic gameplay, at least after thirty hours or so. You get a new weapon, the Draupnir Spear, which adds a lot to your arsenal, and a huge new optional area opens up in Vandeheim called the Crater, which is full of quests. This area is not only the best in the game, it pretty much is the game. I think I've spent well over ten hours hunting dragons and tangling with other beasties in the Crater, and the option to free-roam while still enjoying story-based questing really makes Ragnarok enjoyable. As for the spear, Kratos now has three weapons, all with two runic-based heavy attacks and specific combos, along with his sword hilt ability and his shield, giving the player a plethora of options for any combat situation. The exploding spears are a nice ranged option, and the ability to build up might by repeated spear strikes makes the Draupnir my default weapon most of the time. I'd also like to compliment Santa Monica on Ragnarok's visuals, which are stellar. I mashed the screenshot key over and over again while taking advantage of the photo mode. Now, after fifty hours in, my opinion of Ragnarok has changed. It might be a safe sequel, but it's really fun and well-designed, and anyone searching for a strong single-player odyssey won't be disappointed.
The winter freeze is upon us, and so it's been a big month for musical creativity. The Sack of Troy is a elegy for Hector and all of those who fight reluctantly. Had a lot of fun with the guitars on this one. I used my T57 Tube Screamer with the strat. Initially I had this song at 210 bpm, but I had to slow the drums down to 195 bpm because I couldn't get the bass part right. The lyrics are below.
Give my sons all the coins that I’ve earned
Give my wife my books that I want burned
On the shores they’ve gathered armies
Long of lance and short of heartbeats
You can’t hide yourself any longer
They have swords that have your number
You can’t hide yourself any longer
They have swords that have your number
From the walls I see the blood bath
Children scream the names of fallen
“This one’s armor will go to you,”
“This one’s memories will fall to you,”
You can’t hide yourself any longer
They have swords that have your number
You can’t hide yourself any longer
They have swords that have your number
Around my walls Achilles chased me
Eyes of fire and heart of stone
I did face him though it killed me
He wouldn’t give away my body
You can’t hide yourself any longer
They have swords that have your number
You can’t hide yourself any longer
They have swords that have your number
Names preserved in poet’s lines
Echoed across the seas of time
“Do you remember why we fell
into a churning mass of knives?
Do you remember why we died?”
They can’t hide themselves any longer
We have swords that have their number
They can’t hide themselves any longer
We have swords that have their number
An old instrumental dating back to my Texas days. The original used a Digitech Whammy pedal for the rhythm chord progression; on this recording, I used a Pitchfork set to fifths.I don't remember where I heard the story of Lucretia, but it was a myth that made an impression on me.
Wrote and recorded this last night in a frenzy. One positive to the dissolution of my country is that I've been very creative! Went for a 60's feel, with the guitars and Iggy Pop beat.
I've put almost forty hours into Vampire Survivor, a bullet-hell roguelike with pixelated graphics and a nostalgic Castlevania theme so obvious that they released an official Castlevania DLC. Gameplay consists of wandering around an expansive map while ever-increasing waves of enemies attack. Your character auto-attacks, so all you have to do is move and chose from a huge selection of active weapons and passive powerups that random chance offers you every time you level up. If you pair the right weapon with the right passive ability, you'll eventually evolve your weapon into a stronger form. This is gameplay in a nutshell--Vampire Survivors is a very simple game--but the sheer amount of unlockables, from weapons, stages, characters, and relics (items on the map the confer a permanent bonus; e.g., a map, the ability to reroll random weapon/passive ability drops) ensures that you'll always have a reason for another run. The dopamine rush from having your character absolutely annihilate hundreds of enemies--their deaths leaving behind gems of various shades that serve as experience--is very real, and I've often wondered whether Vampire Survivor can be considered a manipulative game. Its designer worked in the casino industry and you can tell. When you kill a boss, a chest will drop that contains anywhere from three to five random rewards. A little piece of crescendoing music plays and fireworks shoot out of the chest, increasing your anticipation. Were there predatory microtransactions, I would think I'd hate this game, but Vampire Survivors is like a gambling ode to the simple games of the NES generation. It doesn't have a story or high production values. It simply massages your lizard brain and lets you relax and forget America's downward spiral into authoritarianism (putting out the positive vibes!).
Contrast the simple mechanics/indie production values of Vampire Survivor with God of War: Ragnarok, Sony's big-budget sequel to their 2018 God of War reboot. Ragnarok is a perfect example of a modern triple-A singleplayer game. It's gorgeous, well-voice acted, plays well, and is about as safe a sequel as you could imagine. Developers Santa Monica have added very little new from a gameplay perspective, other than more time playing as Atreus, who serves as the story's focal point. The narrative tension between Kratos and Atreus from the first game is absent, even though Ragnarok tries to replicate this dynamic. Kartos's story from GOW 2018 is just more interesting--Atreus finding his place in the Norse pantheon isn't as compelling as wondering whether Kratos will learn how to parent his son or revert to the monster he was in the original games. Without a really compelling story, Ragnarok becomes just a series of little dungeons and simple puzzles. I wish they'd tinkered with the camera or given Kratos some of his old powers back, or maybe made Atreus more fun to play. It's not that I don't like the game--I've spent almost thirty hours in Ragnarok--but it feels like something I've played before. It's interesting that an indie title like Vampire Survivor can suck up more of my time than a big budget action game like God of War, but that seems to be the situation. Sometimes all we need is a little reversion to the basics. Still, I'd like to commend the PC port of Ragnarok, because it runs really well (triple digit framerates at 1440p maxed out with DLAA on an RTX 3080 and a Ryzen 7 5800x), especially seeing how Spider-man 2's PC port is such a disaster.
God of War: Ragnarok screenshots below (because they're so pretty):
A Theme Park Mistress standard, Water dates back to 2012. A dreamy trip into the deep, written, if I remember correctly, for Jeff Buckley,...
