Favorite Things Fall 2024

Published: 2025-01-22

Happy 2025!

My Favorite things from the last 3 months (September 2024 - December 2024)

Arcane

Arcane is incredibly pretty to look at. So pretty that it’s the first show I considered getting the blu-ray release of to watch it without Netflix video compression compromising the image quality. The first season in 2021 and other contemporaries like Spiderverse did popularize the “3d animation taking and emulating elements of 2d animation” trend, which everyone is a fan of. Spiderverse using frame-by-frame animation while arcane went with 3d models with hand-painted textures and backgrounds. I’m obviously in love with the 3d returning to 2d renaissance, with places like ArcSys doing the same for video games.

But what about Arcane as a show? Does it have style and substance?

The first season of Arcane is perfect. It makes good writing look so easy. Nothing in it is particularly new or original - protagonists on opposite sides of a conflict, prospering and impoverished cities, they’re all tropes we’ve seen before - but they just do such a good job at executing all that it stays engaging and interesting. It’s peak, no notes.

Season 2 is also incredible, but the back half is rushed. It feels like we’re getting the highlight reel while skipping all the “unnecessarily but still would’ve been cool to see” stuff. I’m sure they had a hard cutoff of 9 episodes, and it feels like they kept only what they had to, to make as much story as they could, but part of me wishes for an extended cut of the show to later be released.

Watch Arcane! It’s incredibly good! No I won’t get me to play league, We’re wise to your tricks, Riot.

2XKO

Speaking of Riot games…

I got into the 2XKO alpha lab in august and had a good time. 2XKO is very loose and expressive. It’s a classical tag fighter with abhorrent mixups and 40 second long combos (which they’re working on toning down). They don’t make em like this anymore.

It’s interesting that the commitment to 1 button special moves over traditional motion inputs lead to them increasing the game speed from a mid paced 1v1 game (as seen in the earliest footage) to a fast and loose 2v2 game. 1 button special moves become more powerful the slower your game is. In anime or tag game, you usually aren’t using a dragon-punch as a anti-air, it’s usually just used as reversal on wake up. Tag games provide so much more to consider and many more axies of approach making the speed of your special move inputs less important.

Additionally, the introduction of Duo’s mode where two people on both sides control both characters influences the decision to make the game 2v2, but use a round system. This was put in place to prevent the other player who got TODed by Ahri midscreen fireball starter having nothing to do for an entire game.

It feels loose in all the ways our favourite old Japanese fighting games were, but not kusoge. The characters are all expertly crafted by game designers far smarter than myself. They did get a solid cast of developers , including the cannon brothers on the team.

People are unerstandably hyping this game up to be the saviour of the FGC to push it into the esports limelight we’ve been waiting for. While my opinion on what the game represents warrants a post of it’s own, I can say that it’s fun. and I’m in a holding pattern until I can play again. Ekko/Yasuo was my team if you were curious.

Pinecil Soldering Iron

Isn’t it the cutest lil thing?

UFO 50

Derek Yu, creator of Spelunky, and friends made 50 new NES games, and they’re all good. They aren’t actual NES games as they were made in gamemaker, The Game “The Big Bell Race” even features inconsistent pixel sizes… Dead giveaway🤓.

The games are actually designed for a made-up 80’s console called the LX. UFO 50 catalogues a fake company named “UFOsoft” and the games they made between 1984 - 1989. These are full sized games too (relative to contemporaries in the era). There’s a full 20 hour cowboy JRPG in there too.

UFO 50 has more interesting, novel, and fun ideas than a 2d mario game. It’s interesting to me because it shows how most games can be stripped down to their fundamentals and still retain most of their fun. 80% of the fun of any game comes from 20% of it’s mechanics?

It’s also one of those “Looks easy but is very hard” sorts of things to FINISH 50 entire video games. The game was in development for 9 years, with Derek taking a break in between to realease Spelunky 2.

Big recommendation if you’re a game developer who feels creatively bankrupt. Or struggles to come up with small game-jam sized ideas.

Metaphor Re: Fantazio

Metaphor is the Lost Odyessy of Atlus JRPGs. It feels like they took good ideas across their entire catalogue and cobbled them together into a new game. You got the persona calendar and social stat system, the SMT press-turn combat system, Etrian Odyessy Classes, and a Job system reminiscent of Final Fantasy Tactics, a game you all know I (enjoy quite a bit.)[https://youtu.be/nIqUgEYb7GM?si=SXyWxZyT8i_Ql1-8&t=990] I’m not too far in, but I’ve been having a good time! JRPGs have always been a comfort genre for me, and Metaphor is a lot of stuff I like in one package.

I thrifted a sick jacket

That’s all.

The very nice brampton drivetest receptionist

She was very kind and it made me feel very nice.

Be kind out there, everyone.

Imonay “Monday Korean” Korean

A Korean restaurant on Bloor street in koreatown. Very big portions relative to the price, food was also really good.

Free corn tea!!

Sonic 3

Man kids growing up these days with these movies are eating good. I had to grow up in the Nintendo DARK AGES (WiiU era)

Kids these days get a mario AND sonic movie franchises, and the Switch. I would’ve absolutely loved and felt so vindicated by these sonic movies if they came out like 10-15 years ago. They’re still good, and I still enjoyed them now, but I was born too early to experience them in my prime time.

Movie was good, it was an adaptation of Sonic Adventure 2. They changed how that thing happens, but I could understand why they didn’t want to depict a little girl getting shot in a children’s movie.

Hype moments and aura?

E.Y.E: Eternity You’ll Earn

I’m a big fan of Lusa and her extravagant and detailed presentation and polish in her projects, EYE is no different. At it’s core it’s a clicking game. But the surrounding aesthetics and wouldbuilding and characterization help you feel investested in what functionally is clicking on cookies.

I want to open that gate! …should I want to open that gate?

Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers

Good movies, watched both of them at the Revue on Bloor. They were confusing, Perfect Blue much more than Tokyo Godfathers. I think I’d need to re-watch them to have any coherent oppinions on them, but they were enjoyable on the first watch.

Marvel Rivals

GDYU 6 stack!

The kind of pillars of complexity in a game like Rivals is much less specific character focused and more about your team, your opponents team, the map, the gamemode, and other thingies. As a fighting game player, this is quite different than what I’m used to, and I don’t know if I like it yet, at least from a competitive perspective.

The game is pretty loose and fun though, as far as hero shooters go at least (cooldowns and their consequences). The Dr.Strange portal is quite funny. I’ve been only playing Psylocke, It did convince me to pick up the Demon Days and Demon Wars sagas, which I’ll likely write about in the next one of these.