This post marks a full year of Metal Monday on BeeHiiv! I’m very satisfied with how easy it makes writing a blog. We’ve come a long way since AngelFire right folks?!

YouTube Obsession

Rust is one of those games that I get the itch to play once every 6 months, build a fun little fort, get absolutely owned by a no-lifer with 6000 hours and I log out. Most of my enjoyment of Rust comes from watching Welyn.

Hard to believe this video is from 6 years ago omg where is time going?

Anyway, unlike most of my YT recommendations Wylen is not always chill and he does scream. But! He’s very funny and just the perfect amount of toxic.

He’s lately branched out to other games -including Tarkov- bringing his own brand of silly storytelling. I especially like his adventures in the infamous Minecraft server 2B2T.

Watching

Being that my partner is currently in a Nosferatu obsession hole, I figured it would be good for them to watch Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.

Jesus, what beautiful fucking movie.

Small bit of Owen lore; in 2004 I was able to save up enough money to buy a PS2 and the first DVD I ever was Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust because the PS2 had a DVD drive. So, it had probably been 15 to 20 years since I had last watched this movie and I was blown away. Most likely because more and more anime just don’t look like this¹ . Every scene is an excuse to show something cool, beautiful or both. Absolutely decadent.

It’s story is also one that is super easy to get behind, not caught up in it’s own lore, leaving so much up to the viewer and introducing a new weird dude every 5 minutes. Not to mention an ending that had my partner and I in tears.

I cannot sing higher praises of this movie you absolutely must see it.

Reading

I’m still reading Invincible!

A few other items I read this week that have been floating around in my head…

A short story suggested by Metal Monday contributor Andrew…

Playing

Some folks will be happy to know that I am finally playing Supergiant’s 2020 rogue -like Hades. It’s the perfect storm of a game for me: Rogue-like is a genre favorite of mine, beautiful hand drawn art, queerness and sexuality pours from almost every character interaction. So why did it take so long for me to play this?

God strike me dead but I’ve never really liked a Supergiant game.

Supergiant games do a lot of things well, art and story are among their greatest talents. Where their games fail to grab me is their gameplay loops and level design. Bastion, felt clunky, slow and repetitive. Transistor is a bigger disappointment because it does have a very interesting fighting system but it never feels like the player is given agency² . Did anyone play Pyre? That the very few, most recent YT videos talking about Pyre are all about how it’s underrated is a telling sign that what this game is was not communicated to the audience.

Which brings me back to Hades.

Look, I spoken before that games must be first and foremost have a good gameplay loop. Everything else is secondary. Sure, story and gameplay do not have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, as with Hades, Bastion has a great story that goes hand in hand with it’s mechanics and loop. However, Supergiant obviously favors it’s writing and that’s great, they write good stories and that is the main draw of their games. I get it.

To be fair, as far as their games go, Hades is the most fun I’ve played. However, I can feel that the gameplay of Hades, level design and meta progression are all servants to the story. Which means, when I’m not interacting with characters, when I’m just playing the base game, I am underwhelmed.

I do have a long trip coming up so I may dig into it deeper on my partner’s Switch. And who knows, maybe it will cross a threshold I’ll love it.

Listening

One of the first albums I ever bought with my own money was the 1998 album White Ladder by David Grey.

In case you were wondering, yes, I am very white.

This is an album I know by heart and I love it precisely because it’s not bombastic or experimental musically. It’s comforting.

When I moved to LA in 2019, as my first big “Isn’t it cool to live in a big city?” purchase, I bought tickets to see David Gray at the Greek in April 2020 for the 20 year anniversary tour of White Ladder. As you can guess, that did not happen.

Crossing my fingers for a 25th anniversary tour!

Other Notables

** Why Gen Z trusts TikTok over experts: Convenience.

** The spark of being: A birth of Gothic masterpieces

** A damn good dam clip

1  The last anime I saw that I thought looked incredible was Redline from 2009.

2  Transistor could have been saved by an “Abili-tease” opening. Let the player fight with a very powerful character and then knock them down to base level.