Tag: review

#REVIEW: The Last Faith (PS5, 2023)

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews, video gamesLeave a comment

The TL;DR version: perfectly cromulent.

The slightly longer version: The Last Faith is a mix of my two favorite genres, as a Soulslike and a Metroidvania, of much the same ilk as Blasphemous and Blasphemous II, with which it also shares a weirdly religious background, a relatively incomprehensible story, and pixelated art design. And, to be completely honest, I could end this review right here by saying that if you liked Blasphemous II, you should pick this up, and expect a game that is about 85% as good. Which is a compliment! Both of those were good games. This is not quite as good– it’s easier, for starters, and it’s a little too fond of instadeath spikes in obnoxious locations (although part of that was my fault, for not figuring out a way across an obstacle in a really annoying place) and the graphics aren’t as good. Your inventory can be really rough, for example:

Okay, a few of those are obviously guns, but if I told you that the item that’s highlighted is a grenade launcher, more or less, would you have any idea? Can you tell that the item next to it is a bow? What about the one above that? Or the one to the left of what is pretty clearly a minigun?

The spell icons aren’t super clear either, and this isn’t the worst example of the inventory screen, but you get the idea. I don’t complain about graphics often, but even for something with retro graphics this game can be pretty muddy. Combat is excellent and the variety of weapons available is pretty good– superior to both Blasphemous games, so long as we’re making comparisons, although I never really got into the guns very much and I’m not convinced a gun build is really viable since bullets are limited. Control is snappy and sharp, though, especially on some of the later bosses where dodging a barrage of lightning bolts is going to depend on near-pixel-perfect positioning (say that four times fast) and without good controls that would have been hellaciously annoying and frankly a little unfair. Fair is a critical component of a good Soulslike, of course: if you can find lots of videos of people beating a boss without being hit when you can’t get a quarter of the way through its health bar without getting melted, chances are it’s a pretty good Soulslike. Soulslikes love bosses who are hard until you figure them out and then become trivial. This game does that quite well.

One slightly less fortunate aspect of Soulslikes that it brings with it is super obscure side quests, unfortunately, including one that I wasn’t able to finish because it just abruptly became unavailable on me. I was two achievements away from Platinum on this game; one of them was for that side quest and another was for fifty parries, a mechanic I never used, as this is very much a dodge-and-jump game and if I was standing still and close enough to parry something that was attacking me I was doing it wrong. I’m probably not going to do another playthrough just to collect those two trophies and the Platinum. I might, you never know, but probably not.

But yeah– we’ll call it an 8/10, easily, and at $24.99 for full price for about a 25-30 hour game depending on your skill level and willingness to do some farming (progression was pretty quick one way or another, although I don’t think I actually lost any … uh … nycrux, whatever that is, to deaths during the game, and if you’re dying a lot YMMV) you’re getting pretty good value for your money if you like these genres. I finished the game at 98% completion before hitting the final boss and I assume that last 2% is probably related to the quest I missed as I’m pretty damn sure I hit the whole map.

Check it out.

2024 in music

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music1 Comment

I bought eighty-six albums in 2024, a number that frankly I find surprising– I wouldn’t have guessed it was that many, and it’s probably upped a bit by the number of singles I purchased this year (See: Lamar, K.) but that’s still a hell of a lot of music. This, like last year, isn’t a Best Of list and the only order it’s going to be in is rough chronological, but here are some albums that I thought were notable from this year. And, yes, “this year” means “I heard it first this year,” not “It came out this year,” although most of these are 2024 releases.

T-Pain’s live album On Top of the Covers: Live from the Sun Rose has no right to be as good as it is. I didn’t realize I was a fan of T-Pain until hearing his cover of War Pigs, which made me spend money, and this album, recorded in front of a tiny crowd and featuring lots of T-Pain just sort of chatting and screwing around with the audience, is spectacular.

Be honest: did you know the Black Crowes were still recording? Did you know that Happiness Bastards was fucking awesome? I bought this one in a state of vague shock– their last release was in 2013, and I’d not heard anything about it prior to seeing it in Itunes’ pre-order list, but any child of the nineties has no right to pass this up. It’s great.

Speaking of bands from the nineties…

I talked about Pearl Jam’s latest release, Dark Matter, quite a lot when it came out, mostly because I didn’t listen to anything else for a month. It’s their best album since Vitalogy. That is the highest of high praise. You’ll notice a lot of live albums in the list later; it’s because I needed live versions of all of the songs on this album. Album of the year, no real competition.

If you had told me at any point prior to its release that one of my favorite hiphop albums of the year would be by LL Cool J I would have laughed at you, but The Force is the best thing he’s released in a long, long time. I used to be a big fan of his and then kinda fell away as he left the harder-edged persona of his earlier albums away (and focused on acting instead of rapping) but this reminds me of everything that he was capable of as a younger rapper, and his duet with Eminem on Murdergram Deux is one of the best songs he’s ever done, complete with the best single verse I’ve ever heard from him.

I found Kharii through TikTok, of all places, where she’s fond of freestyling straight into the camera, and her chill, slightly hippie rap vibe ended up right up my alley. Microdoses of Me is a full-length album and you’ll notice a couple of EPs in the list later as well.

This was Kendrick Lamar’s year in a lot of ways, and his unannounced drop of GNX toward the end of the year was one of the best surprises (possibly the only good surprise) of 2024. Kendrick has always been an artist who I respect more than I like, and his last full-length album kind of left me cold, but GNX is great even if it doesn’t piss on Drake enough. Mustaaaaaaaaaaaard!

Another “wait, they’re still recording?” release, and also another “not really a huge fan, just picked it up for the hell of it” release, The Cure’s new Songs of a Lost World is the most hypnotic, endlessly listenable thing I’ve heard this year. If I was trying to write a book I’d have this on constant repeat, because it just sort of worms its way into your brain and makes you focus. One thing: don’t listen to Endsong, the final track, while driving. It’ll put you in a trance and that’s a bad idea at 70 miles an hour.

They released a double album a couple of weeks ago, pairing this with a live version. Don’t bother; the live version sounds damn near exactly like the studio recording and it was really disappointing.

Okay, one more:

I don’t have the slightest recollection of what caused me to pick up Doechii’s latest album, Alligator Bites Never Heal, because previously I had only heard of her from a couple of clips on TikTok– not even any actual videos, because as far as I know she’s not on the platform, there have just been a couple of her audio clips that have gone viral. Well … thanks, whoever you are? She kind of reminds me of Kharii in that her rapping is really laid back and chill, but more slickly produced and a little bit more mainstream. They even both do the double-i thing. Either way the albums pair together really well.

Here’s the whole list. Let me know if there’s anything else you want me to talk about:

In which today was tomorrow

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I want to read tonight, so this isn’t going to be long, but I figured it was probably worth it to point out that today was a genuinely good day, for the most part, and the first day at least of the study guide seemed to go over pretty well. I have no doubt that as some routine sets in things will get a little rougher– four days in a row of taking notes, even in guided and somewhat abbreviated form, is gonna get on the kids’ nerves– but today at least went well, so I’ll take it.

Just discovered that the wind chill is supposed to be eight below tomorrow morning, too, so watch us get a two-hour delay on a day where I definitely do not have time for a two-hour delay and an actual cancellation would be a huge pain in my ass.

(There is no chance at all of a cancellation, but still.)

Anyway. Got a book to finish.

#REVIEW: The Vagrant Gods series, by David Dalglish

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

It took me eight days to read through David Dalglish’s three-volume, 1500-page Vagrant Gods series, the covers of which ought to be clickable above. I don’t recall what drew my attention to this series initially, but I bought all three in a fit of consumerism before reading any of them, and they’ve been sitting on a shelf for perhaps longer than they should have before I finally got to them. I’m not about to go back and look to find out how long; it’s been a while.

Shoulda read ’em earlier, because they’re awesome, and they manage the rare feat of starting off pretty good (I four-starred the first book) and then getting better with each successive volume. The series tells the story of Cyrus, a young (initially, at least) prince who not only witnesses his parents’ executions in front of him during an invasion but also literally witnesses the death of one of his gods. Cyrus is held in captivity as a puppet regent for a few years, and ultimately is able to escape with the help of a small band of revolutionaries, who forge him into the Vagrant, a vicious assassin whose one and only goal is to drive the Everlorn Empire from his native island of Thanet.

It is possible you are rolling your eyes right now; the word “assassin” is used way too much in fantasy literature nowadays, and a whole lot of assassins don’t really do a lot of assassinating because the authors want them to be relatable, and it’s harder to do that with somebody who is killing people all the time. You will possibly be pleased to learn that Cyrus does an immense amount of assassinating in Vagrant Gods. Holy crap, does he do a lot of assassinating, and his body count by the end of the series is horrifying. He’s practically the PC of a first-person shooter out there; this is a series that does not shy away from violence and is really not at all interested in a relatable main character. (It’s also, for what it’s worth, rotating-POV third person, but Cyrus is absolutely the main character for all that.) The books also do a pretty good job of making even the ultimate big bad guy of the series feel, if not relatable, at least understandable; the Everlorn Emperor is (mostly) immortal but the previous emperors live in his head, and he’s really only about half-sane during the book his POV shows up in, which makes him a fascinating character.

But the most interesting thing about this series is the way it handles divinity. Gods can be killed, and in fact are killed, and resurrected and sometimes killed again after resurrection, all over the place in this series, and the Everlorn Empire’s drive for, well, empire is due mostly to the need of the Divine Emperor for more worshippers. I’d call it an analogue of Christian imperialism, but only if Jesus was, like, still alive, but on his fifth or sixth body, and if he literally got more powerful with every new worshipper. One character ends up channeling one of the deceased gods for most of the series, and she can literally transform back and forth like the world’s most awesome lycanthrope between her form and the god’s. The crew that Cyrus amasses around himself is uniformly very cool, with a lot of interesting abilities, some of which are divinely inspired and some of which aren’t. Basically everything magical can be traced back to some god or another; this isn’t a world where mages, per se, exist, but the gods are generous with their followers.

Also, for what it’s worth, nearly everyone in the series is brown to some degree or another, and there’s a handful of prominent gay characters. Thanet is clearly more friendly to the LGBTQIA spectrum (not that they call it that, and the words “gay,” “lesbian” and “transgender” are never actually used) than Everlorn is, and some of the most noteworthy revolutionary activities are triggered by Everlorn trying to mess with Thanet’s rules about who can marry who.

Again, I don’t remember what brought me to this series, but it turns out David Dalglish has written a lot of books, so I’ve got a nice back catalogue to dip into if I want. I’m pretty sure this series is the only one set in this world, but I’m looking forward to seeing more of what he has to offer. If you’re looking for a series with a lot of political intrigue, great action, and a fascinating perspective on fantasy religion, you’ll love these books.