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I recently finished a playthrough of Paradise Killer and I'm seriously floored at how good it was.

The game is presented as a single explorable island with a handful of 2D characters to interrogate and a bunch of clues laying around to find. Gameplay-wise it's honestly pretty barebones -- just walk, chat, collect, repeat. The story and music do some seriously heavy lifting, though.

You play as Lady Love Dies, an investigator who has been exiled for the last million years for being tricked by a god from outer space. You need to return to the sequence of failing islands housing immortals to solve a crime involving demons and gods and magical cars.

The way the world has been constructed in Paradise Killer is fascinating in that the creators ensured that everything to do with the core mystery was easy to understand and logical. A lot of matching up timelines, cross-checking alibis, determining motives. Everything -else- is borderline nonsense. Everyone is named ridiculously, there's a person who makes islands out of psychic powers, talking skeletons, demonic possessions, and backstory that makes little to no actual sense but is really fun to read.

I thoroughly enjoyed the very basic gameplay loop, wandering the empty vaporwave-aesthetics island, jumping awkwardly up cliffs to pick up collectables that tell you about the completely irrelevant and wild pantheon and crazy backstories, all while slowly puzzling together the intricate pieces of the investigation.

The mystery was presented wonderfully! There were many times I thought I had everything cracked only to find one more clue that threw everything out the window. I was seeing plans everywhere, and suspecting everyone.

The final jury sequence was also very fun and had me questioning myself at times as I reviewed and presented all the evidence I had collected.

It took me 2 or 3 attempts to get into the game, but I'm glad I took another shot at it. It was a super memorable experience and reminded me how much can be done with so little, and filled my head with ideas.

After reading Children of Time (which was seriously a masterpiece) I ran headlong into Children of Ruin hungry for more.

While the sequel isn't the science fiction masterpiece Children of Time was, I'm entirely satisfied with where Adrian Tchaikovsky is taking the series.

What Children of Ruin lacks in gripping evolutionary story (There's still some of that, it's just not as good), it makes up for in narrative and exploration of interesting concepts. The technology, biology, and psychology in the book are really fascinating, and the story does a good job continuing where the first book left off.

I absolutely loved the human characters of Baltiel and Senkovi. I feel the author perfectly captured the sometimes childlike nature of the scientist-adventurer. I also enjoyed the moral/philosophical messages the author continues to explore: different is good. I found this idea somewhat fumbled in the conclusion of the first novel, but wonderfully expanded on and demonstrated in this story.

I'm excited for the third book in the series. What started as a biological scifi has evolved into a sort of space opera -- and while we may have arrived at an almost trope-ish assembly of alien races and AIs, it hits different when you watched them all grow up.

I've just finished the audiobook version of Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky and it blew my silk socks off.

I'm going straight into massive spoilers on this one, so I'll hide it behind a jump.

It's been two whole months since I posted about a book, and that's because I've been listening to the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in one go.

This was my first time reading/listening to the trilogy and I got the Andy Serkis (mocap/voice of Golum) audiobook version. He does a fantastic job giving each character a voice, and clearly tried to imitate the voices of the actors from the films.

There's not much to say about these books that hasn't been said at this point, so I want to approach this as a review of the differences between the books (specifically this version of the audiobooks) and the films.

Today I finished Super Mario RPG. I never owned the original as a kid, but definitely rented it a handful of times in my youth. I've also played it multiple times on emulators and own a physical copy I bought years ago to adorn a shelf -- but I don't think in all my experiences I've ever made it past chasing the dinosaur after Mallow joins up. The Switch remake was a good excuse to finally cross this one off my backlog, as I'm an RPGs-in-bed kinda person.

It was exactly what it sells itself as: a 12-hour silly charming turn-based RPG featuring Mario characters. It was simple fun without much to take away, though I like to try to take something away from each thing I play.

Here I'd like to focus on the combat. While the combat system in the game is fairly simple turn-based RPG stuff, it does something a little extra for interactivity: during attacks and spells you can hit A at just the right time to increase damage, add additional effects, or even completely negate damage when the attack is directed at one of your own characters. While I can think of several RPGs with a "click button at the right time for bonus damage", I feel the addition of blocking damage is a rarer feature. While it trivialised some boss battles, it definitely kept me more engaged in even basic battles, and I think it would be an interesting feature within a more robust battle system.

On that note, there's not much in Mario RPG that's robust outside of its charm. It's really just a bog standard RPG mechanically and progression-wise -- you go to the next town, buy the only available upgrade for each character**, solve the local issue, move along.

That said, there's so much charm that it transforms a basic RPG template into a super fun experience that manages to constantly surprise (if not challenge) with silly events, weird bosses with weird abilities, and charming locations. It's a wonderful and consistently funny experience.

Overall I had a great time with the game and its cast, but I'm glad it's short; by the last area I found my party overpowered and was on the cusp of getting bored, but the credits rolled before it could sink in.

**Obvious exceptions being some of the end-game equipment and Work Pants, which are WAY too OP and make almost all other armour you can acquire in other towns obsolete.

Last night I finished the manga Dorohedoro, which is mostly about lizards and dumplings.

I watched the anime a little while ago (it was a great time), and decided to give the manga a shot to see where the story went. Turns out the anime ends at around chapter 40, but the manga is a whole different experience.

While the anime was a fun and fairly violent romp, the manga cranked the graphic violence up to 11, throwing in all the viscera and gore they couldn't put on the medium screen.

They also cranked the nudity up while they were at it, with more anime boobs than entirely necessary. I like anime boobs as much as the next internet denizen, but at times it felt like the entire manga may have been an excuse for the author to draw nipples.

The story unfortunately spins its wheels quite a bit after the anime leaves off. It gets confusing, the pacing gets weird, and it pretty much does nothing important for the next 80 chapters. It picks up again after that, however, and finishes strong once things all click together.

Even when the story drags, the gorgeous artwork, ridiculous characters, and wild world building keep you reading. The humour stays pretty consistent throughout as well, and I was impressed how author managed to build a narrative in which the dismemberment, mutation, and even recurring deaths of some characters managed to be hilarious -- and somehow despite the easy access to healing / reviving powers they managed to keep the stakes and tension up when necessary.

It may have been too long and convoluted, but was a totally wild, hilarious, gory bit of fun with a very unique setting and very unique cast of characters.

As 2023 draws to a close and I spend the last two weeks of the year in trash-goblin form doing nothing but playing old junk games and eating 2-3 times my daily recommended calorie intake, I reflect upon the year and the media I've consumed, and the things I've worked on.

Today I beat what is likely my last game of the year: Gravity Circuit. This one was an impulse sale purchase, but had caught my attention multiple times over the year.

I'm normally not a Megaman player -- over the years I've dabbled in a couple titles, but generally wasn't a fan of the shooting mechanic. Megaman Zero was more of my speed (he uses a sword instead of a blaster), but those games always felt a little too hard on the difficulty side for me.

Gravity Circuit is basically knock-off Megaman Zero, but ditches the awkward sword / spear attacks for a simple punch combo that felt absolutely fantastic. Actually, every control felt exactly like it should, and starting the game I was surprised how I was instantly comfortable with the character movement and combat (with the exception of the grappling hook which I very much disliked!)

I had a blast getting through the game. The developers clearly put a lot of love into every aspect -- the bosses had little stories (just enough!) and were tough, rescuing the bots was always super satisfying, and the little base hub and skill unlocks were fun to play with.

While the majority of the game wasn't terribly difficult, I really struggled with the final couple bosses, and by the time I finally beat the last one my thumbs were sore and my heart was pounding. It took me at least 20 attempts and many experiments with different upgrades to cheese as much as possible!

Overall it's a fantastic (and gorgeous) title, and I'm glad I found time to sneak it in!

Last weekend I found myself with nothing pressing to do. No chores, no responsibilities -- just 2 full days of free time to engage in side projects, hobbies, and hang out with some old friends.

Instead, I ended up binge-watching Evangelion and most of the related films.

I've just finished listening to The Sunlit Man by Brandon Sanderson, the last of his Kickstarter book series. Out of the four novels released, this was definitely in the bottom 50% for me, as while some of the content content was interesting in the grander scheme of his "Cosmere" universe, the book on its own was fairly bland.

Now, that's not to say there wasn't any action, interesting settings, or tearjerking moments in The Sunlit Man; when I say bland I mean this entirely in the context of "within Sanderson's novels". And he's got a lot of them -- by his own estimation this is his 50th novel.

Mild Spoilers after the jump.