TBT^16: SimEarth

8 May 20254 May 2025 The Portly Politico2 Comments

The big news in the gaming world right now is the incredible The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. It came as a total shock to the gaming world (yeah, there were rumors swirling that it was in the works, but no one knew it was coming so soon), and managed to update the game’s graphics and fix some bugs while also maintaining the legendary “jank” for which the game is so fondly remembered.

Yours portly has not yet taken the dive back into Cyrodiil (although, goodness, I am desperate to do so), but I am looking forward to the rapidly-approaching summer for a chance to dig into some classic games. It’s been so long since I’ve really been able to sit down and lose myself for hours into a good game. I haven’t even been able to touch Civilization VII in almost two months!

Gaming always comes to my mind during the hot, lazy days of summer, when it’s so unbearable outside, I l basically live like my home is a life support pod on Venus, only venturing out when absolutely necessary. So it was that I booted up old SimEarth some years ago, and took a rose-tinted, nostalgia-fueled walk back to my past, when I first played a copy of the game my Indian friend copied onto a 3.5″ floppy disk for me. Those were the days!

With that, join me on this extended walk through the past; here is 16 May 2024’s “TBT^4: SimEarth“:

Lazy Sunday CCLXXVII: Reviews of Video Games After Only Playing a Tiny Bit of Them

1 September 202425 August 2024 The Portly Politico4 Comments

Yours portly likes to make rash, snap judgments. Fortunately, I’m usually right—at least when it comes to video games.

This weekend, I’m looking back at a couple of video games that I assessed to be excellent—correctly!—after only putting in a few hours in each of them:

“SubscribeStar Saturday: Disco Elysium” (SubscribeStar) – My review of the game after playing for about two hours. Even at that point, I knew it was something special.
“Fallout: Initial Reactions” – The timeless classic from 1997. It controls like a game from 1997, but it also offers the kind of open-ended roleplaying that only a game from 1997 can offer.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Lazy Sunday CCLXV: Disco Elysium Reviews

2 June 202431 May 2024 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

A bit of tedious housekeeping before launching into today’s installment of Lazy Sunday: I give this series, as well as several others, Roman numeral designators. It is a bit unwieldy, but unnecessary unwieldiness is, after all, a hallmark of this blog. What is portlier, I ask, than a bloated inefficient numbering system?

That said, I tend to make mistakes with Roman numerals. It’s easy enough to do, especially as the numbers enter the triple digits. I decided to check to see if I have been accurate in my numbering, and I have not. It seems I got off track somewhere in the 140s(ish). It occurred to me to check when I labeled this edition “CL” (150), as I thought, “wait a minute—didn’t I hit that milestone a long time ago?”

So I undertook the tedious task of renumbering all of the titles for past installments of Lazy Sunday on the list below, and changed from a bullet to a number for the list, to give myself an additional safeguard.

What I did not do was go back and change the title of each individual blog post to the correct number. That would take an inordinate amount of time. I may go and correct that eventually, but, goodness—what a dreary task!

So we’re starting fresh today, with CCLXV, or the 265th installment of Lazy Sunday. That means in one hundred more Sundays (assuming I don’t skip any—gulp!), we’ll have year’s worth of Lazy Sundays to enjoy. Maybe I could publish The Lazy Sunday Daily Devotional? Ha!

With that, let’s get on to the posts! To celebrate Ponty’s review of Disco Elysium (that’s an affiliate link, so I get a portion of proceeds from any purchase made through it at no additional cost to you), I figured I’d feature our respective reviews of that legendary game.

“SubscribeStar Saturday: Disco Elysium” (SubscribeStar) – My review of the game after playing for about two hours. Even at that point, I knew it was something special.
“Ponty Praises: Disco Elysium” – Ponty’s much better review of the game—and it’s not behind a paywall!

Go play some video games!

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Ponty Praises: Disco Elysium

31 May 202422 May 2024 The Portly Politico25 Comments

Disco Elysium is quite possibly the best video game I have ever played. It is certainly the most unique. I knew it was something special after only an hour of playing it, and while I have not started a new game since finishing it—“beating” is probably not the right word for Disco Elysium—it is a game that could reveal fresh layers through dozens, perhaps hundreds, of playthroughs, even if it only consists of one “main quest,” as it were.

I’ve never played a game that more accurately reflects the way my own mind is structured, and the way that I think about and dwell upon certain inane details. I don’t have a “Thought Cabinet,” per se, but the notion of fixating upon and ruminating about an idea to the point that it worms its way into your psyche feels true to my experience. As dear old Ponty will point out, the game has a way of seeping into your mind and, therefore, your life outside of the game.

I don’t want to give too much away, as Ponty delivers a brilliant and detailed review, so I’ll turn the controller over to him.

With that, here is Ponty’s review of Disco Elysium:

TBT^4: SimEarth

16 May 202416 May 2024 The Portly Politico27 Comments

May. It’s the superfluous final month of school. There’s not enough time to cover any new content, but too much time to launch right into exam review. The result: an odd limbo in which neither students or teachers wish to dwell. It’s the time of year when everyone is in on the game of modern education—we’d all be better off doing and being somewhere else, but we’re still going through the rituals of an industrial-era factory.

Naturally, with summer looming, I’m getting the itch to do some gaming again. Since finishing Disco Elysium a few weeks ago, I have not played any game deeply. I did purchase Planescape: Torment, the spiritual ancestor of DE, but only managed to get in about an hour of playtime. One of my students asked me earlier this week about Stardew Valley, which I played religiously for about two weeks in probably 2013. That’s a modern classic I want to dust off soon.

As for the ostensible subject of this post, my forays into SimEarth have been nonexistent since those halcyon days of May 2020, when America’s love affair with The Virus was in full swing. Being cooped up in the house got me nostalgic for the classics, but I need to revisit the planet simulator soon.

Big plans for the summer. If I play all these games as planned, my eyeballs might fall out.

With that, here is 11 May 2023’s “TBT^2: SimEarth“:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Disco Elysium

30 March 202425 March 2024 The Portly Politico3 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

I recently picked up the “final cut” of Disco Elysium during the Steam Spring Sale at the amazing price of $9.99 (it usually MRSPs for $39.99). It’s a game I’d heard about since its release in 2019, but always with an air of mystery around it. It’s a roleplaying game, yes, but totally different from the typical fantasy-inspired roleplaying worlds of, say, The Elder Scrolls series or even the sci-fi roleplaying of Cyberpunk 2077 or Starfield (Ponty’s promised a review of CP2077, and I am quite excited to read it).

There have been non-fantasy roleplaying games before, to be sure, and even those that take place in the modern-ish world. Disco Elysium, however, is unlike any other game I’ve ever played, roleplaying or otherwise, and after just a few hours of gameplay—and having not even solved the first case yet!—I love it.

It also turns out the game can be had on consoles—and much more affordably than the default Steam price. Amazon has it on the Nintendo Switch ($25), the Playstation 4 (marked down $16.90 at the time of writing), and the XBox One ($24). If I’d known it was on the Switch I likely would have got for that console (and may still do so), but I think the game is meant to be played on the PC. That said, I can tell it’s quite console-friendly based on the controls.

What sets Disco Elysium apart from other games, I think, is that most of the game is dialogue—with your own mind. And not just one, unified mind, but your character’s entire nervous system. It is probably the closest simulation I’ve ever experienced to what goes on in my mind, although I’m not a drug-addled 70s-style super cop down on his luck.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. Any purchases made through those link result in a bit of additional revenue for yours portly, at no additional cost to you.

The Portly Politico

One Southerner's unique, erudite, conservative perspective in a hectic world

Tag: Disco Elysium