Reviews

I'm really not a film buff. I barely pay attention to what's playing in the cinemas, I don't watch trailers or keep track of when any movie is coming out. "Going to the cinema" is mainly an excuse to leave the house and hang out with my friends.

Video games, on the other hand, is something I'm...

I confess to feeling a bit of envy for my friends who seem to be able to focus on a single game and then finish them within a reasonable timeframe. Some of them can plow through a 100 hour RPG in a month and then move on to the next game and finish it just as consistently. When I ask them how they c...

The basic conceit of an open-world game is that it gives you a world that you can freely explore, without the more common rail-roading from Level A to Level B. What this really means can differ from people to people.

For me personally, it's an escape from my own body: my chronic migraines and f...

Eid Mubarak! Though by the time this blog post is up it'll probably already be a few days since Eid, haha! I've been looking forward to this; not the Eid day specifically, but the one-week holiday that came legally mandated with it where I live. I need this holiday so bad, man. Not necessarily bec...

I know I'm ace as hell because I'll look up smut expecting, wanting, to be aroused and end up feeling nothing much. I'll be reading about two guys (guys being used in a gender-neutral way here) really going at it, all the balls and holes and wet mess and at best I'll be like, huh that's a really cre...

I went into the theater to watch Look Back (2024) expecting absolutely nothing. I went out of it crying. There's something about it that really digs into what it's like to be an artist, to dedicate yourself to creative endeavors. If you've got the chance to watch it, please do so. It's worth it.

I used to write a "Now Playing" list like these in my old WordPress blog about twice a year or so. It's a way to exercise my writing muscle: I write a mini-review of what I've been playing during those half-year in a no-pressure environment. It... usually ends up being a pressure, though. Easier t...

You started out playing as the extremely cool antagonist ("antagonist"?) and within moments are allowed to jump into the combat. Quickly: here is how the combat works, here are the basic mechanics, here are how the different "elements" matter. Then you transition diagetically to choosing your protag...

Ex Astris is a new game by Hypergryph that—unlike their previous game which I also have not shut up about, Arknights—is a normal game. It's not gacha, it's not live-service. It asks for $10 up front then lets you play the entire thing. It is released on mobile, though, which might be a bit puzzli...

This has got to be the most unique and complicated fantasy setting I've seen. A world of one gazillion warring political beliefs and violent religious enforcement, a man who can change history with the flick of a wrist, unseen monsters bleeding into the world. A melting pot of a city, unabashedly ra...