My Problem with the Black Panther Oscar Nomination

(I’m hitting you guys with the good ol’ fashioned quadruple uploads today!) First thing’s first: I love Marvel movies. If you’ve read more than a single post on this entire blog, you’re most likely well aware of that fact. There is no franchise that has consistently satisfied my moviegoing desires as well as the MCU,

Top 5 Friday (#1) Game Series That Deserve HD Remasters

Recently, HD Remasters of classic game series such as Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Hitman, and the first Resident Evil(s) have hit shelves to largely positive responses. Taking these hits as inspiration, I thought I’d go through some “older” (and/or less relevant) games that also deserve HD remasters. And no, I don’t simply mean “HD” ports to

On Balancing Entertainment Medium Intake

Over the summer, I wrote a post about the differences between movies, games, and books as far as audience involvement goes (passive vs active interactions), but today I had an idea to bounce off of that; a prequel, if you will. The whole reason I decided to switch things up and focus on gaming and

Silent Night, Hollow Knight

As mentioned in my previous post, I simply had to share my thoughts on Hollow Knight in its own essay; condensing them into a paragraph would’ve been cruel thievery since there’s just so much to talk about. While I waited to post this, I am still writing it before I planned to. I wanted to

Play the Indies (Ignore Triple-A Gaming)

(Convoluted metaphor in 3…2…1…) Fireworks are celebrated not because of their irrepressible effervescence, or representative conception of the free world, but because of their rarity; you can enjoy the bombastic declarations because you know that after the sparks soar into the sky and shatter into spectral spheres, and the delayed “pops” reach your eardrums, you

Xbox Achievements vs PlayStation Trophies

From age 6 to age 21, I was an Xbox player through and through. When it was time for me to get the new console, the Xbox One was the obvious choice for me because it was the follow-up to my favorite gaming console of all time (the 360). After a few months, I traded

Far Cry Series Review

Individual Progress Reviews & Retrospective Analysis In this essay, I individually review all seven (yes, I decided to add Primal even though I’m not sure how I’m going to be able to go into it taking it seriously) Far Cry games and then share my thoughts as far as style, tone, gameplay, and story are concerned across all

Dear Parents of Video-Gaming Kids

Around 2011, I made a PowerPoint presentation for my parents as a persuasive method to get them to understand why video games were awesome, and why they were so much more than what they remember them being. Video games have, historically, been simply a pastime; a “waste of time,” even. From Pong to Donkey Kong, video games were enjoyable

Audience Experience May Vary

Books. Movies. Games. The three of those media each specialize in certain forms of narrative storytelling, forms based around presentation and audience participation. In this essay, I’m going to briefly go over how I interpret these three forms of storytelling and how each differ in their pros and cons. Books First, books: the classic form