2026 January Media Post
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I for one had a good time with everyone here.
Spider-Man Across The Spider-Verse
The animation/art-direction sure was phenomenal. I enjoyed a lot of the general writing, the characters were interesting, and the comedy was amusing. I can't quite say I liked the narrative though, because it leaves on a massive cliffhanger with nothing resolved. An hour into watching it I thought to myself "Wow this has been a lot of setup", but then the whole movie ended up being setup for another sequel I guess. For not having little to no payoff, I'd still say the movie was still pretty good, it was enjoyable on a moment to moment basis.
Absolute Martian Manhunter (Issues 1-6)
Despite being interested in DC Comic's comics for ages, this is the first time I've actually bothered reading one. This miniseries isn't really like anything I've seen before, it feels novel. The visual storytelling is very well done, in part because the visuals in general are just crazy great to look at.
Wuh woh, I have once again gotten invested in a story that hasn't finished yet. Like a lot of people I believe, I initially heard of this game as "the incest game". Unlike what I've usually seen from others though, I didn't have an immediate visceral reaction to the idea, so I got curious since it doesn't sound like people actually give the game a shot. What actually pushed me over the edge of curiosity though was this video, I watched like the first 14 minutes, and then stopped so I could experience the game for myself.
I liked what I played so far. I struggle to come up with an explanation for why I like it though, I've heard plenty of explanations as to why humans enjoy dark, disturbing, and tragic media, but I haven't really heard an explanation that describes what I get out of something like this. I guess my feelings can be described as fascination. Andrew and Ashley have pretty unique dynamics with each other, I was constantly curious to see what they'd be saying to each other next, and to see how their lives spiral. The world is cartoonishly terrible, the plot with the doctor fellah has been pretty bland to me so far, but Andrew and Ashley keep things engaging.
I also wanna note for the incest stuff, the prominence of it is variable depending on player choice, and from what I've seen the game doesn't even glorify incest, the romance is very manipulative. Admittedly I haven't seen everything in the game yet, but the bad rap this game's received strikes me as very shallow reaction.
I didn't like the gameplay much. The moment to moment plot progression generally feels like busy work. I only found a couple of the puzzles fun, there were equally as many which I just couldn't figure out and looked up, but most of them were just really easy. In general, the game's too tedious, even when you know what you're doing, for me to wanna bother playing through multiple routes, so I've just been watching the stuff I missed on YouTube.
Rayman Origins
I feared that replaying this game would make me like it less, and unfortunately that came to be. One particular issue I've seen people have is feeling like the end of level screens take too long, and that reminds me of an issue I had with Pikmin 2 so I was worried I'd also be really annoyed by them, but I actually ended up feeling fine about them.
Another thing I expected to take issues with was the shoot'em-up levels, since I already didn't really like them, and I still don't. The earlier ones just feel kinda boring, but then the later ones became frustrating because I decided to 100% the game. The later shoot'em-up stages don't feel like they were designed with single player in mind, while collecting the medals in them is doable, they become so much more difficult than the regular stages, and they require even more memorization. 100%'ing the game isn't something I think I'm ever gonna wanna do again. The way the lums are designed to be missable, the way some lums only appear after repeating tasks, and the electoon/medal requirements not being revealed until after beating a stage, all made for an annoying completion experience.
After being well versed with Rayman Legends physics for years, I definitely prefer that game's tweaks to what Origins originally had. Thankfully there aren't that many of them, but I thought most of the boss fights were kinda bad. Another thing I noticed is that this game's more jank than I remember.
With all that said, I still have a fondness for this game. I think it still generally plays pretty well, and I love its world, art design, and sound design.
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