Princesses from Another Castle

I you do not follow me at Kotaku, well, I figured I would let you know about some of my recent posts over there as I've been busy. Perhaps something will be of interest to you! Or not, who can say. It's your life, man, be interested in whatever you want.

Today I've got a piece called Video Games, According to Horror Movies, a look at some of the ridiculous (and often hilarious) ways games and game developers are portrayed in horror movies. Films like Brainscan, Stay Alive, Nightmares, and Hellraiser: Hellworld all get it delightfully wrong and I couldn't be more pleased.

Also, Hellworld is the EIGHTH Hellraiser movie and it is not the last. It's shocking just how massive some of these franchises are–like, everyone knows there are more Friday the 13th movies than you could count on all of your fingers (I assume). But there are almost 20 Amityville movies! How can that be? And don't get me started–don't even get me started–on Witchcraft. Last I knew they were up to Witchcraft MCMXVIII.

I also wrote a piece about the current state of horror games (spoiler alert: it's pretty dang great!). Basically there's a shit ton of good stuff out there in every imaginable subgenre. It parallels the ebbs and flows of the horror film industry, to an extent: when "corporate"/big budget stuff gets too bland and fans get tired, the indies experiment with new ideas and make it all feel fresh again.

I done did my first review of a AAA, The Evil Within 2, huzzah and hooray! (spoiler alert: it's pretty dang great!) I loved it. Fantastic open world-ish survival horror. If that's your bag at all, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

It's all fulla nope.

I wrote a bit about a recent Friday the 13th: The Game update, although since then there's been another update that adds Fox as a playable character and I don't even know why I'm still writing here when I could be playing as Fox?

Finally, I wrote a list of horror movie recommendations for horror game fans. You know, if you like this game, watch this movie kind of stuff. Of course, the inverse also applies–if you're a fan of one of these movies, maybe you'll enjoy the game. It's not 1:1 stuff, like "If you enjoy playing Resident Evil, watch Resident Evil!" because man, what a boring list that would be. It's more moods and vibes and maybe some lesser known films, so maybe someone somewhere got introduced to something great and then my life will feel complete.

It's been a great SHOCKtober all around, and it ain't over yet!

News You Can Use

I recently spoke with the fine folks over at Achievement Oriented about Night Trap and scary video games and more, and I think it was good? You'll have to listen and tell me. I always go into a kind of fugue state when participating in these types of things, like I talk and my soul leaves my body and I keep talking and my soul looks down and is like "GIRL STOP YOU'RE LOSING THE PLOT" but I just keep going and then when it's all over I have no idea what went on or where my pants ended up. HASHTAG BLESSED.

And if that's not enough vidya games for ya, I also ranked Resident Evil games by their number of platform appearances over at Kotaku. It's kind of a post for Resident Evil nerds, aka it is a post for me.

If you want to follow my posts at Kotaku, well all you have to do is get yerself one of those Kinja accounts, visit my profile, and follow. Easy, breezy, something something! I've got some good horror content planned for October (the most wonderful time of the year), so I hope to see you over there.

I'm playing Destiny 2 and it's quite good, quite. Not as much of a time suck as the first go 'round, that's for sure. Many quality of life improvements, definitely some questionable changes. Of course, the game isn't "finished"–I mean, the game's story wrapped up, but as we all know there's a shit ton of content in the pipeline, expansions and the such. This is not a review of course, I am just saying. I'll probably write something a little more involved soon but right now I'm so busy I can't even finish this senten

Night Trap is back, baby, do you feel like trappin'?

I've got a wee retrospective and review of Night Trap: 25th Anniversary Edition up over at Kotaku today, huzzah! It was sure fun to dig into the history of this controversial horror-flavored game and play through the updated version. Spoiler alert: I LOVE IT. It's like playing through the absolute corniest B-grade horror movie you never knew was missing from your life.

Pressing Start

As everyone knows, horror and video games are two of the greatest tastes there are, and so fuck yes they taste great together. Adding me to that beautiful mix is a bit like adding cilantro to an already-delightful dish. Perhaps I will bring out some extra, even more wonderful flavors! (Is that how food works?) Or, if you are my ex's mom, perhaps you will say NO THANK YOU and cast me from the already-delightful dish right into the garbage because you find that for some reason, I make everything taste like pennies.

What I'm getting at is that I am covering the horror beat for Kotaku! (That's a video game site, in case you didn't know.) Yes, like the love child of Forrest J Ackerman and Lois Lane (I WISH) I'll be bringing you...well, horror game related...you know, stuff. Hot scoops and the like.

My first piece went up today, and it's all about counselors killing other counselors in Friday the 13th: The Game. At the risk of sounding like some total loser who enjoys things, I'm definitely pretty excited about the gig.

PS: throwing me in the garbage because I make everything taste like pennies is an insult to me and more importantly, an insult to pennies

Friday the 13th Part THE GAME: Jason vs Final Girl

Cross-posted from Final Girl:

As we all know, there's street smarts (gained via various life experiences) and and there's book smarts (gained via being a nerd), and it's not often the twain get to meetin'. "Sure, sure, maybe you know how to start a fire with nothing but two sticks and some hope," a nerd might say. "But do you know anything about the Teapot Dome Scandal?"

"Who cares?" the streetwise sassafras may reply. "I know all of the spots in my neighborhood where I can mooch off of someone's unprotected wifi. That's way cooler than something something quadratic equations."

My point is, as I have journeyed through life, as I have evolved from a nubile ingenue wizened crone into a full-on swamp hag, I have come to realize that I am severely lacking in street smarts, and nowhere is this deficiency more evident than in the realm of horror. Yes yes, I can talk about Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes all damn day (and I will, just try me)...I can bore dazzle you with some sweet-ass subtext analyzin' or maybe yet another list of obscure titles. But what good will all this nerd knowledge do me when I come face to mask with a deranged, homicidal wackadoo with copious mommy issues? Absolutely none.

You would think I'd know how to behave in Horror Movie Situations. You would think I'd be the last one alive, the one who gets away...geez, it's right there in my blog name.

You would think all that. But thanks to Friday the 13th: The Game, I've learned some cold, hard truths about myself. The biggest, perhaps, is that I should probably change the name of this blog to THE ONE WHO HAS TROUBLE OPENING DOORS AND MAKES BAD DECISIONS AND IS PRETTY MUCH ALWAYS THE FIRST TO DIE. It's not as catchy as "FINAL GIRL", but it's much more honest.

*record scratch* YES THERE'S A FRIDAY THE 13th VIDEO GAME.

*record scratch* YES THAT'S THE ACTUAL POINT OF THIS POST.

Friday the 13th in an asymmetrical 3rd-person survival horror game for PS4, Xbox One, and PC that attempts–and often succeeds–at capturing the spirit of the wonderful, terrible, long-running film series. You can play as Jason Voorhees and stalk all the jerks your mommy has told you to kill, or you can play as one of the counselors, desperately trying to find some means of escape. The game maps and Jasons are pulled directly from the films (for example, Part 2's Baghead Jason might chase you through Higgins Haven, as seen in Parts 3 and 4), while the counselors are more simple homages to movie characters, such as the designer impostor version of Violet from A New Beginning.

Jason has a plethora of skills and tools at his disposal: he can teleport throughout the map, lay down bear traps, and sense where you are. Counselors have varying strength and stats–things like stamina and repair–and can find weapons and first aid sprays scattered throughout the numerous cabins. There are several ways to make it out alive: fix up a car and drive on home, fix up a boat and boat on home, fix the telephone and call the cops, or simply survive for the entire 20 minutes of a match. Chances are, though, Jason is gonna get you. This is Friday the 13th, man! That's what he does! The movies feature a "Final Girl", not a "Final Everybody", after all.

As I intimated earlier, I'm pretty bad at this game. I die. A lot. Should I play as Jason (the killer is randomly chosen as the match starts), I bumble around and the body count is low. Sometimes, salvation is within my grasp and it still slips away, like in this clip, where some dude can't wait one second for me to get in the boat and he drives away, leaving me to my (eventual) fate:



And despite all of my ineptitude and horrifying win/loss record, every single match is so much damn fun. I have screamed and been startled so many times that I'm sure several years have been taken off my life. I've been creeped out, I've cried from laughter...it's just a grand ol' violent time, particularly if you play with friends. I mean, there's more tension in this gif than there is some of the later entries in the film series:


Critical reviews for the game haven't been kind; in fact, they've been fairly excruciating. Many of the criticisms are fair: Friday the 13th was not developed by a AAA studio, and it shows. When you die, you become a spectator–leaving a match early means you gain no xp, and if you die early, well...you're gonna be spectating for a while, and that might bore you. There are glitches, bugs, and server issues that crop up somewhat frequently. These issues are being addressed, however, and a recent patch improved wait times dramatically. Essentially, the game is only going to get better, and bigger: there's a story mode planned for release later this year, and you can be sure the game will expand via DLC. There is a shit ton of potential for this game to grow and improve and enjoy a long lifespan.

While the critical reviews have been damning, player reviews have been stellar, generally boiling down to yeah, it's got some jankiness but I don't care, I'm having a blast. As a Friday the 13th fan, there is so much to love here: I can play as a designer impostor Chris Higgins or a Baghead Jason. I can find Jason's cabin and put on his mom's crusty old sweater. If you die or escape early, there's a chance you can return as Tommy Jarvis. Jason can punch my head clean off à la Part VIII, or he can finish me off with the famous sleeping bag death from Part VII. It's frequently scary, frequently hilarious, always bloody, and often captures the essence of what makes slasher films so enjoyable. Honestly, I'd only be happier if I could play as Ethel Hubbard or the Banana Girl Hitchhiker. I've got my fingers crossed they'll be available eventually.

Knock Jason's mask off and reveal the grossness underneath!

I'm absolutely addicted to this game, I'm telling you. If you want to see it in action, to see me make a complete fool of myself and get murdered in any number of disgusting ways, I'll be livestreaming with my video game super pal Travis this Sunday, the 11th, at 7pm EST on my new twitch channel. To be honest, it's kind of all I want to do with my life at this point...so hopefully I'll see you at Higgins Haven! (For the ten seconds before Jason rips my jaw off, yay!)

Yes, another NO MAN'S SKY post

No one can tell me this game isn't great after I discovered a GIANT SPACE CHICKEN. I watched him strut, run around, and kick up dust for a long time. He is my favorite everything. EVER. A++, worth the admission price, I love him so much, etc etc.

I Can't Stop Taking Screenshots in NO MAN'S SKY

Man, I love landing on new planets and moons in this game. What's it gonna be this time? A lush paradise planet? A barren, glacial wasteland? A toxic mess? Whatever it may be, you can be sure I'm gonna screenshot the shit out of it. Let me tell you, if you ever nerded out when looking at a vintage paperback from Tor or Ace or Fawcett or whatever, you'll probably screenshot the shit out of it, too, because No Man's Sky feels like stepping into one of those covers. Right? Hmm, that reminds me: I gotta name my next planet "Vallejo."

A Few Days Exploring Under NO MAN'S SKY

No Man's Sky has finally arrived this week after years–YEARS–of hype, discussion, hype deflation, publicity, videos, and a near-constant chorus of gamers and non-gamers alike asking "What exactly do you do in this game?" You fly around in space, explore some of the 18 quintillion procedurally-generated planets, and...? It's been a bit of a mystery and it's caused much "buy or do not buy" waffling on the part of audiences, including this humble blogger. So, you're mostly just checking stuff out? Would that be enough to sustain interest? As exploration is one of my very favorite things to do in a game, I finally decided that yes, it would sustain my interest. I took the plunge, and now I can tell you what exactly you do and do not do in No Man's Sky. Maybe you're still waffling. Maybe you're anticipating. I don't know your business! I'm just here to help.

Oh by the way, "quintillion" is a real thing. It's a number with 18 zeroes. I believe it's derived from the Latin for "a fuck ton."

As the game begins, you wake up on a planet next to your crashed ship. To get off of this planet and continue your journey towards the center of the galaxy–ostensibly the goal of the game–you've got to fix your ship and its hyperdrive. And that's pretty much it. There are no "quests" per se beyond fixing your ship and traveling to another solar system. You are on your own to do whatever you want, and the game never really "ends", for once you reach the center of your galaxy you can simply zap to another one. Good luck, traveler.

my starting planet

Everyone's journey will be completely different, but the pieces of each journey are much the same. There will be survival involved, whether it's simply patching up the wear and tear on your exosuit or replacing the depleted shields that protect you from a planet's harsh environment. You'll be crafting–there's a lot of crafting, and you know how crafting can be in games. You want to craft item A, which is made by combining items B and C. So you have to craft those first, but you find that Item B is made by combining items D and E...and so on. It can be a pain to juggle all the materials necessary–including minerals mined and found–with your limited starting inventory space.

I lucked out with my starting planet. It was temperate and teeming with flora and fauna and resources. I spent my entire first session on that one planet! Given how much exploring you'll do, you be making discoveries, from endemic species to outposts and ruins. You can rename animals (and planets and star systems) if you want and upload them to the galactic database. A friend named one weird-looking thing "Tippy Toes Rude AF TBH", so if you should ever find the planet he was on, look out for that because it was mean. You may come across crashed ships that you're welcome to repair and take for your own. You may find monoliths or ruins that  impart a bit of history of an alien species, which will aid you in learning different galactic languages.

This is Stripy Pal

Those are most of the things you will be doing planetside. You can travel on foot or use your ship once it's fixed. How much joy this all gives you is up to...well, you. Perhaps by the second monolith you'll be bored out of your mind. Maybe you'll see another 8-legged cow-thing, except this one has fins and you'll find that's not enough variety for you because here's the thing: there are nearly countless permutations, but ultimately there are only so many building blocks for this universe. I've stopped on eight planets so far and they've all been wildly different. I've experienced a barren moon and an oceanic world dotted with tiny islands, a lush garden world, a pink radioactive nightmare world, and a place pulled straight from a Lisa Frank wet dream.

Likewise with the animals I've encountered. There's Stripy Pal up there. I had a massive, floating space crab follow me for a while after I fed it some iron. I was attacked by a herd of pissed off, bouncing space pineapples.

You can't tell size here, but this thing was the size of like five Buicks 

On the flipside of all of that, some people have started the game on Planet Clusterfuck, with limited resources and toxic environments, where they can't enjoy much because they're simply trying to survive. I can see how this might start your journey on a total downer and.

It's possible to make a beeline for the center of the galaxy with only brief stops for refueling, or you can explore every planet and moon you encounter along the way. It is total freedom, and for now I'm having a blast. I've never been able to resist a question mark that pops up on the radar, and I'm always curious about what may be lurking over the horizon. No Man's Sky is the ultimate "the journey is the destination" game; it ain't gonna be for everybody. It might be for some people for one or two sessions. For me, for now, it's pure space delight. Onward! Only 17,999,999,999,999,999,992 planets to go.

Stuff I've Been Playing Lately

Hi there. I know it's been pretty much forever since the last update, but trust: while I've been sadly ignoring this wonderful place, I have not been ignoring games. Not in the least! So I thought maybe a rundown of some of the stuff I've been playing lately might be in order. This wee list won't touch on everything I've done since we last spoke, but it basically represents the titles I've been putting the most time into (and the consoles on which I done did it).

1. Halo 5: Guardians and Halo: The Master Chief Collection (Xbox One)

Dammit, Halo 5, why aren't you better? For all your gorgeous looks and smooth, smooth gameplay, you sure ended up as one big misfire. I get it: if the series is going to continue far into the future, it's going to have to move away from the established "Master Chief-as-main character" routine. I think we can all accept that–heck, there are already several games where we get to play as other characters. But Guardians goes about this in all the wrong ways. In it, we're Master Chief for but a tiny fraction of the missions; for the rest, we play as Spartan Locke, who is about as dull as a cardboard cutout. It's extremely difficult to care about Locke and his fireteam...but when we get back to Chief, it's equally unsatisfying because all of the character development and promise of Halo 4 is tossed out the window. Add to that an over-reliance the extended Halo universe (seriously, if you haven't read some books you'll be much less invested in the goings-on), several "missions" that solely consist of walking up to a character and pressing A, and well, the whole Cortana thing (trying not to give spoilers BECAUSE I CARE) and...the latest game in the franchise ends up being the leastest game in the franchise.

Still, playing it caused my Halo Fever to flare up and so I finally dug into the Master Chief Collection. Look, I just love Halo and I even say that as someone who never touches the legendary multiplayer. Playing through the entire saga from beginning to end does lend a bit of credence to that whole "games are so easy now" argument. I don't mean that in some judge-y way; ultimately I think accessibility is good for gaming as a whole. But there's no denying that Halo: Combat Evolved is a fuck ton more difficult than Halo 4, what with the latter's recharging health and ubiquitous waypoints.

2. Tom Clancy's The Division (PS4)

Y'all, I played the shit out of The Division for about six weeks and I dug it wicked hard. The setting–post-pandemic NYC–is stunning. The 3rd person gunplay is satisfying. The story is intriguing and the cast of characters is diverse enough to set my SJW heart all aflutter. Then I got to the endgame, such as it is. Then I got to that point–you know the one–where the grind becomes work instead of play and you wonder what the point of it all is. The problems and gameplay issues that you could once ignore become glaringly obvious and unavoidable, and your ardor cools and morphs into an almost active dislike. And though you no longer log in (none of the DLC sounds enticing enough to bring you back quite yet), you still find yourself rooting for the game. You hope that the devs will get their shit together and figure out how to balance the PvP, how to make its mobile game-style economy less terrible ("To unlock this one mission that gives you one kind of currency, you need to grind for this other currency. Then use a third currency to re-roll the mission rewards because everything is RNG on top of RNG. And don't forget about the other currencies! Have fun!"), how to make it feel at all rewarding once you're in the endgame. So for now, I read about it because I enjoyed it so much that I'd like to go back to it...but I fear it'll be a long, long while if ever.

3. Rise of the Tomb Raider (Xbox One)

First of all, hey PS4ers, Rise of the Tomb Raider will be released for y'alls on October 11. FINALLY, RIGHT? It's shipping with all the DLC and extra goodies included in one tidy little package and if you are a fan of adventure games, I highly, highly oh-so-super highly recommend it. The story yer standard pulp adventure, and the cast of characters from Tomb Raider (2013) are missed. But many of the niggling issues from that game–namely "too much combat, not enough exploration" have been rectified. It's beautiful and dammit, it's fun. There are tombs to explore and cliffs to climb and ziplines-a-plenty. Surprisingly enough, one of the biggest highlights of the game for me has been the Endurance DLC, where you're dumped in the middle of the frigid Siberian wilderness with little more than the coat on your back. You're tasked with staying warm and fed, with scavenging enough materials to upgrade your equipment, and with finding as many relics as you can...and then calling in an extraction chopper and getting rescued. All the while there are bad guys and all manner of wildlife ready to eat you if you don't eat them first. I'm not one for these survival-type games as they usually feel more like a chore than anything else, but Endurance absolutely works for me. The hunger and warmth meters don't deplete too rapidly unless you find yourself unsheltered in the middle of a snowstorm, but the threat is always real and it's easy to end up in a bind. I've gone into many a dark cave in search of goodies only to linger to the point of near-starvation...then I rush to get out and hunt and I fall into a trap and die on the way. There's always that feeling of wanting to try again, to replay and survive longer because you know you can probably do better. And also you just unlocked a new outfit for Lara and you want to see how it looks in action.

4. Dex (PS4)

If "sidescrolling cyberpunk adventure with RPG elements along the lines of Shadow Complex" sounds at all appealing to you–and if it doesn't, WHY NOT WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU–then you owe it to yourself to give this indie game a try. You play as Dex, a young woman who becomes the target of the conglomeration of megacorporations known as The Complex. Before she can figure out what's happening, she's saved by a mysterious hacker who sets her on the road to fighting The Complex, getting all sorts of augmentations, and completing sidequests that can be approached in a plethora of ways. As you progress, you unlock equipment and abilities that allow you to reach areas that were previously inaccessible. Combat consists of melee combos and gunplay alike and while it's frequently challenging, it's never punishing. The art style, though simplistic, makes it feel like a modern spin on a 16-bit Blade Runner, and it's a treat to explore.

5. GTA V Online (PS4)

I go through phases where it's all I wanna play...and just FYI, that means long sessions where a friend and I repeatedly kill each other and go clothes shopping. I even made a little video showcasing our journey to becoming archenemies in the game (a journey that began about five minutes after logging in for the first time). He wins these encounters almost all the time, but I don't care. It makes me so happy. My character is the one with the blue hair, the one who obviously has a penchant for getting run over. Enjoy!


6. Life is Strange (PS4)

Oh my goodness, this game. It devastated me and left me a wreck and I'm not sure I'll ever recover. Yes, I'm talking about the cringeworthy dialogue that spouts from the mouths of teenage American girls but is written by adult French men! Ha ha, kidding. Well, not about the dialogue–it is cringeworthy but after the first episode (of five) you kind of get used to it and it's no longer much of an issue. It's the story that completely left me but a husk of a woman. Teenager Max discovers she has the ability to rewind time when she saves her childhood best friend Chloe from certain death. As the two girls get reacquainted, you do some light pointing and clicking and listening to indie rock and interacting and conversing and rewinding through life at Blackwall Academy. Before you realize it, though, Life is Strange gets fucking dark. Max has to make plenty of difficult choices as her powers begin to wane and a devastating storm appears outside of town. I finished it months ago and it still sticks with me. The first episode is now free on all platforms, so check it out if you dig story games along the lines of Telltale's Walking Dead series. I love Life is Strange and Max and Chloe forever, the end.

So there you go! As I mentioned, this isn't everything I've played, but it's all the stuff that's made the biggest impact. How about you? What's new? What are you playing? Are you as excited for No Man's Sky as I am? Yes, I even put it under NOW PLAYING in the sidebar even though it doesn't come out until Tuesday. That's how excited I am, and I hope to be playing it like mad for a good, long while.

Let Us Now Praise Pixelated Men

Despite the overwhelming amount of accolades Grand Theft Auto V received upon its release, I wasn't much interested. While I played the hell out of GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas back in the day, GTA IV left me cold. I was tired of the formula, tired of the series' problematic treatment of female characters, tired of being forced to play as a dude. Whatever my gaming life lacked by skipping the newest title was supplanted nicely by the Saints Row series, which is goofier and funnier than the GTA series and...GASP...even allows me to play as a woman.

And then I caved.

What tipped me over the edge? Something I surely never saw coming: the creativity of the fanbase. The amount of freedom one has in the world of GTA V–not to mention the enormity and detail of that world–has given rise to short films, nature documentaries, and much more. Specifically it was this, a reimagining of the trailer for the 1977 film The Car, that led me to pick up a copy of the game a few days later.


I want to make shit like that! The possibilities seem nearly endless...and with the full suite of in-game movie making tools coming soon to PS4 and Xbox One, I'm excited to see what I can come up with.

As for the game proper, I'm currently having fun in GTA Online. I can play as a lady! It is open world and open-ended enough that it almost feels like a crime-flavored RPG. You start out as a penniless, homeless thug and progress from there, taking on tougher and tougher missions and accumulating wealth, strength, and all the material items you can. Or you don't have to do any of that. You can do whatever you want! And when my character isn't holding up convenience stores, stealing cars, running from the cops, acting as a drug mule, or getting killed incessantly by high-level griefers, she walks the streets indulging in her secret passion: photography. She wouldn't dare tell any of her criminal pals about her desire to be Los Santos's answer to Mary Ellen Mark or Walker Evans, but her camera is always at the ready.