Celeste Playthrough on Virtual Bastion

Today we begin our playthrough of Celeste, a super difficult platformer where we help Madeline climb a mountain…and along the way, face a side of herself she’d rather forget.

Video from YouTube User: Virtual Bastion

Inktober 2019 Highlights Week 1

Good day, dear readers!  I decided to do Inktober this year, which is a little drawing event where you get a topic for every day in October to draw and ink, either digitally or in the traditional way.  You can start the first day of September, which means I have been giving myself two days per picture.  And let me tell you, I am feeling extremely tired from drawing far more than I’m used to….

Listmas 2018: Future Cosplay Ideas

If you’ve been following us on Virtual Bastion, you may be familiar with Listmas, a little holiday we celebrate every December.  Listmas involves a rather fun format of blog posts, lists, which can be about anything at all, as long as you’re listing something.  While December at Virtual Bastion is dedicated to gaming lists, I decided to create some non-gaming lists here on my own blog, as well!  To begin, I thought I’d start with something easy…future cosplay ideas!

Is This Blog Post Actually Stretching?

Happy Halloween, fellow mortals!  I have been simply dying to show you my Ratchet and Clank stretching portraits, and today is finally the day to discover just how those pictured in my earlier post met their ghastly ends….

This Blog Post Has No Windows and No Doors

Look closely at the image below and tell me if it looks familiar….

Day 17: Favorite Antagonist

As you can see, I’m still working my way through the 30 days’ worth of video game topics, and I’ve just managed to get a couple days past the halfway point.  Yay for me!  Day 17’s topic is my favorite antagonist.  For me, talking about my favorite of anything can be difficult because my favorites change all the time.  Which is something that kind of bugs me about myself.  Duck, you are a fickle, unpredictable creature.  Stop it!  Ahem, well, the arbitrary list of topics says I must discuss my favorite antagonist, so I’m going to pick the villain I’ve probably liked for the longest span of time, Dr. Nefarious.

FFV and the Joy of Feeling Competent

I have mentioned it from time to time, but over the last few years, I’ve been trying to catch up on a whole bunch of retro games I had missed.  And at this point, I’m largely done.  Sure, there are definitely more retro games out there that I should play one day, but as for the games I really wanted to check off my list, this goal has been met.  Final Fantasy 4-9, Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, EarthBound, Super Metroid, Super Mario RPG, all present and accounted for.  The last one on my list to play was Final Fantasy V, which, like Final Fantasy IV, is probably pretty obscure for anyone who hasn’t been playing Final Fantasy since the beginning.  (Thank you, Kingdom Hearts.  You introduced even non-Final Fantasy fans to characters like Cloud and Squall, but not once do you mention FF6 and prior.  With the exception of Setzer, of all people.  Setzer.)

Final Fantasy 4 and 5 were the only games not explicitly on my list, but they came with Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6, respectively, and who am I to pass up on an essentially free pair of games?  While FF4 was merely to pass the time and to say with confidence that, yes, I’ve played Final Fantasy 4, I must say that I enjoyed Final Fantasy 5 far more than I expected to.  Let me summarize the game a bit for anyone who might not be familiar with it.

Uncharted, We Meet Again

Sometimes, it feels as if certain games come to exist in my house thanks to pure fate.  Most of my games I seek out myself, but Uncharted is one series I never once put my mind to acquiring, and yet, here I stand the owner of not one, but two, entries from the series.  The main reason why Uncharted never really appealed to me was because I’ve never been a fan of games that are too…realistic, I guess?  There’s just something about games that feature realistic-looking humans or even just good, ol’ planet Earth that don’t appeal to me.  (I mean, the Sly Cooper series seems to take place on Earth, but it’s populated by anthropomorphic animals, which is okay in my book.)

When I bought my PS3, it was accompanied by Uncharted 3.  I decided to play the game, since I had it in my possession, after all, and while it was pretty cool, I quickly forgot about it shortly after completion.  For a short while, I considered checking out the first two games, and then that just never happened.  And yet, that was certainly not the last I would see of the series, even if I didn’t know it at the time.  It was with the recent purchase of my PS4 that another Uncharted game snuck its way into my gaming shelf once more, the fourth (and final?) entry in the series.

Fancy seeing you here, Nathan Drake.  Long time no see.

The First Good Video Game Movie is Here

After a long wait, the Ratchet and Clank movie has finally come out.  Video game movies have a long history of being pretty terrible, but after watching the trailer (um…several dozen times), this one looked like it would be the first video game movie to be of quality.  Nevertheless, after its release in theatres, I watched as the ratings went down and down, from a high of 21% on Rotten Tomatoes down to a dismal 17%.  I expect it to drop lower in the coming weeks.  While I found this aggravating, it did not surprise me.  People will never accept such a movie until they accept the medium that inspired it.  Why mobile games like Angry Birds gain such widespread acceptance, while console and PC games continue to thrive only outside the mainstream population, I know not, but alas, that is not the topic of this post.  Suffice it to say, us gamers are a very special group indeed, and it appears we will remain that way.

I knew the reviews would only annoy me, but I skimmed over a few anyway.  Critics complained of an unoriginal storyline and flat characters, among other things.  They even claimed many elements were stolen from more recent movies.  I was baffled because these statements were unfounded.  How can a movie based on a game from 2002 steal elements from movies that came out far after the game’s original release date?  This is not just my opinion; it is logically impossible.  Likewise, the Ratchet and Clank series has a history of fun, but well-developed characters and interesting stories.  I find the characters from this series to be among the best in video games, and how characters I have formed a deep bond with, from the naïve, but intelligent Clank to the arrogant, but well-meaning (after his redemption, anyway) Qwark…how they could be described as flat, well, I’m astounded.  They might as well state Mario is not an icon of gaming or Sonic is not Sega’s most famous character.

Top Songs from Chrono Trigger

Hello again, you blog-readers, you. Time to list my favorite songs from “Chrono Trigger”.  I’m not even going to bother with much of an intro because I’m bad at them anyway.  Just enjoy the musical joy.