Metal Monday

9.11.2023

I don’t work on Labor Day and neither should you. We are back this week with more media munchies!

Watching

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation is a bad movie. No ifs, buts, or howevers about it. A very bad movie.

BUT, it has my favorite depiction Leather Face in the entire series.

It is camp CAMP! It’s a stretch to call this movie “self-aware” but it is certainly trying to do something with Robert Jacks’ effeminate and ineffectual depiction of the horror icon. The movie tries to be what Scream is; Characters aware of horror tropes, pretty people being villains etc, but the acting, pacing and overall construction can’t deliver. It also attempts to incorporate themes that I usually love in movies: Can a spiritual experience be synthesized? Can enough money buy enlightenment? David Fincher’s The Game is a much better film if these themes intrigue you.

I honestly thought no depiction would surpass the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and the infamous “Leather Face Shuffle”

TCM2 is just a better movie with great performances all around.

Playing

I told myself I was going to wait until it went on sale but I could not hold back on Armored Core 6 by FromSoft. Verdict: It’ a great game that I’m glad I bought full-price because I hope they make more.

These games always bring out the “games difficulty” discorse and I know that’s a tired, run in the ground topic but I think it needs to be discussed in relation to AC6.

I don’t think difficult games are -or need to be- made for me and why I play video games. The “Souls Born” series is not for me. Pleasure from those games seem to come from memorizing an attack pattern and ‘getting gud’. Sekiro is the best translation of this philosophy; there is very little you can do between deaths to give yourself an advantage in the next fight other than getting better. I am cool with the finality that I will never have enough time to put into Sekiro what it takes to be good at that game.

AC6 takes a different approach. When you die in AC6 you are immediately given the option to change the build of your AC. Then, it chucks you back in the mission at a (usually) generous checkpoint to try out your new build. More importantly, you are encouraged to change your AC build regularly; parts can be sold for the price they are bought, videos show how each weapon works and there are in-depth tutorials that, upon completion, you are rewarded new parts.

It’s still a hard game but I feel it is the most fair game FromSoft has made so I rarely get frustrated. Aside from the tutorial boss flying outside the fight arena every death I’ve had has been within my grasp to avoid. That is a great feeling.

YouTube Obsession

I have been going down memory lane with the archived episodes of the podcast GFW Radio. Re-listening and seeing the ever-shrinking magazine rack at the grocery store always makes me melancholy for the days of Electronic Gaming Monthly and the death of print media.

Despite all the goofery, it really was the first time I heard people discussing games analysis. I know it sounds wild but, Shawn Elliott in particular, opened my eyes to games being approached as works of media and art instead of just being “fun or not”.

Elliott just had a way of presenting ideas that helped me think critically about games and media in general. This something I look for in all games press to this day and sadly difficult to find great examples other than IdleThumbs and Austin Walker.

There is a great piece on PC Gamer about the keystone gaming podcast GFW Radio.

Reading

Ever read a book and think: This could have been a 30min video essay?

Black Ops Advertising by Mara Einstein is a book I did not care to finish because it had made all it’s points by the introduction. The following few chapters reiterated these points well but with little gusto. I’m sure its a great as a dissertation but it’s lifeless as a recreational read.

Anything Else?