Tag: video games

Ponty Praises: Ghost of Tsushima (2020)

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Yours portly has been giving Ponty a bit of ribbing about writing his rebuttal to my Caldecott Award-winning review of Donnie Darko (1999).  Please know, dear readers (and dear Ponty) that it’s all a spot of fun; I know Ponty is a busy man.

Indeed, he’s been busy replaying 2020’s Ghost of Tsushima, a samurai action-adventure epic.  Just reading through his review, I was blown away by two things:  how realistic the trees in the game look (you’ll see what I mean below) and the love and dedication with which Ponty approaches his reviews.  Game journalism might be rigged in the mainstream publications, but not here at The Portly Politico.  With Ponty’s in-depth analysis, you’re getting the best video game reviewing and analysis of our time.

That might sound like hyperbole, but TPP is blessed to host some great writers.  Ponty’s video game and film reviews always deliver.  In this case, I’m eager to pick up and try Ghost of Tsushima myself… but I don’t have a PS4 or PS5!  Here’s hoping for a port to the Nintendo Switch or the PC.

In the meantime, I can live vicariously through Ponty’s thirteenth-century samurai escapades—and so can you!

With that, here is Ponty’s review of 2020’s Ghost of Tsushima:

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Ponty Reviews: Stray (2022)

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2024 is in full swing, and Ponty is already pitching in with his hot takes on video games.

His latest review covers the 2022 video game Stray, in which players take control of a feline protagonist in a post-apocalyptic world.

I remember when Stray hit a couple years ago.  The premise seemed intriguing, and gameplay footage and screenshots looked gorgeous.  The Blade Runner aesthetic and MS-DOS-faced robots added another level of charm.

Cats and the Internet go hand in paw, and pretty soon even the most casual of gamers—but the most ardent of cat lovers—were playing the game.  I even recall rumors that the game would be up for Game of the Year, though that didn’t happen for reasons Ponty eludes to in his review.

It’s also a favorite among couples, as most women even loosely associated or familiar with gaming love cats, some to the point of building their personalities around it.  Naturally, these cat moms flocked to the game.

I have not played the game, unfortunately, but I’d like to try it.  I do have to wonder, though—why didn’t somebody think of this concept sooner?  Given the gaming world’s love of cats, it seems like a slam dunk.  In the case of Stray, it really was!

With that, here’s Ponty’s review of Stray:

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TBT^2: Game Review: Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution

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Thanksgiving Break is long gone and Christmas Break is still a good ways off, so yours portly doesn’t quite have the time to game that I did just recently.  I’ve had a blast playing my Nintendo Switch Lite lately, especially diving into F-Zero 99.  I’ve been hitting Civilization VI on my PC pretty hard, too, which has fed my highly cyclical video gaming buzz.

So, in the spirit of video game nostalgia, I thought I’d look back to a review of a game that’s not nearly as good as the ones I just mentioned, but which still devoured a ton of my time in late 2021.

With that, here is 10 November 2022’s “TBT: Game Review: Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution“:

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Giving Thanks… for Civilization VI

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Yours portly had a massive burst of productivity on a lazy, rainy Saturday early in November.  I buckled down and finished my lesson plans, quizzes, tests, study guides, exams, exam review guides, etc., for the rest of the semester.  I spent the following Sunday afternoon churning out blog posts, as I’m trying to get back ahead so I don’t have to worry about writing over Thanksgiving.

One upshot to all of that hustle is that I have a rare thing now:  free time in the evenings.  I’m always working a bit on something, and I have plenty of grading to keep me warm over Thanksgiving Break, but I’ve been slamming that stuff out, too.

That’s all to say that I’ve had way more time to play video games in the evenings, usually while watching horror movies.  The game that has dominated my time the past few weeks—and which has kept me up far too late on a number of occasions—is Civilization VI.

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Ponty’s Pen: The BBC’s Newfound Interest in the Gaming Industry

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Video games used to be a bit of a niche—a large and popular niche, but a niche nonetheless.  Sure, our mom loved playing Dr. Mario on our old Nintendo, but that was about the extent of it.  Video games were largely for boys, who grew up into men.  Those men rebought the classics when they became available digitally, and continued to fuel the development of new games with their hard-earned dollars.

Of course, video game companies sensibly sought to expand their market share.  They developed more casual games to attract older gamers and more women.  The Nintendo Wii marked a major shift, as the kinetic style of the console made it popular among many demographics, most notably the elderly.  Nary a retirement home or assisted living facility lacked a Wii, with which geriatrics could play virtual tennis and bowling.

All of that is wonderful.  More gamers means more games, and it means broader acceptance of video games as a fun, harmless pastime (in spite of the ludicrous stories that insist on linking video games to violence—malarkey!).

Lately, however, video game developers have followed in the footsteps of film and television, making a mad push towards increasing “representation” in games.  This development is premised upon a number of false premises, such as “women are objectified damsels-in-distress in games,” which ignores Princess Peach, Princess Zelda/Sheikh, Lara Croft, and many other “strong female” protagonists or supporting characters in game.

That obsession is linked to another false premise:  that in order to enjoy a video game (or movie, or book, or other work), we must see carbon-copies of ourselves in them.  According to this reasoning, a black kid can’t enjoy a Mario game because Mario is an Italian-American plumber, not an African-American one.

As Ponty so eloquently points out, video games are frequently a form of escapism.  We don’t want to be ourselves; we want to be a burly barbarian, or a sneaky thief.  When I play roleplaying games, I don’t play a six-foot-one, two-hundred-fifty-plus pound nerd with bad eyesight; I typically play a short rogue or bard character, pilfering loot from NPCs’ homes.  I’d never burgle a home in real life, and the game doesn’t make me want to do so; rather, it gives the thrill of being a second-story man without any of the terrible consequences for either myself or the victim.

Regardless, gaming, too, has been a major front in the Culture Wars, going back to Gamergate in 2014.  Nearly ten years on, we’re still fighting similar battles.

With that, here is Ponty’s essay “The BBC’s Newfound Interest in the Gaming Industry”:

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PlayStation Ponty Reviews: Hogwarts Legacy (2023)

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It seems that, despite his protestations earlier this year, dear old Ponty just couldn’t keep away from the warm, chubby, sweaty embrace of The Portly Politico.  We’re all too happy to take him back into our doughy arms.

Ponty’s breaking the silence with a powerhouse review of Hogwarts Legacy, a roleplaying game based on the beloved Harry Potter franchise.

I’m not a Potterphile—I was born just two or three years too late to be in the books’ key demographic upon their release—but I certainly appreciate magic and whimsy.  That said, I don’t know my Muggle from a Hufflepuff (except that I am, apparently, both), so for all you people out there whose only frame of reference for the world is a series of children’s books about kid wizards, don’t persecute me for my ignorance.

What I do know is that this game engendered (no pun intended) a great deal of controversy upon its release because the series’ creator, J.K. Rowling, is a TERF—a Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist.  That means that, while she loves all the feminist foolishness a woman of her age tends to believe, she still believes that men are men and women are women.  For that, detractors decried this game as “violence against trans people,” because apparently we can’t separate a work of video game fiction—itself quite distinct from the original author’s work—from one’s personal beliefs, and because one’s personal beliefs are now deemed violence if certain mentally impaired individuals deem it to be so.

Well, there’s no use arguing with the insane.  Ponty, however, does commit a bit of violence against Hogwarts Legacy from the other direction, though purely in an editorial sense.  And before he gets to some of the bad, he does extensive yeoman’s work covering the good, too.

With that, here is Ponty’s excellent review of Hogwarts Legacy:

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Minecraft Camp 2023!

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It’s summertime again for yours portly, which means MINECRAFT CAMP!  Woot!

I’m back to spend my mornings playing the digital equivalent of LEGOs on the computer with elementary school kids.  It’s glorious!

By the time you read this post, we’ll be halfway through the first of two sessions of camp.  I have had a group of ten campers this week, with three students (two former, one current) helping out as counselors.  The second week has just three campers enrolled at the time of this writing, but I imagine that will change.  I had just five students signed up for this week’s camp as of last week and it doubled by camp day, so… we’ll see!

Minecraft Camp is one of the tentpoles of my summer hustlin’.  This time of year, lessons slow down considerably due to family trips and the like, and while I still teach quite a few in the summer, it’s nothing like the volume of the school year.  So Minecraft Camp helps to keep the lights on.

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TBT: Zelda Game & Watch

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Last year I picked up a nifty little from Nintendo with both of the classic NES Legend of Zelda titles, as well as the Gameboy LoZ game.  I proceeded to spend a good chunk of the summer playing through and beating all of the games, and tried to avoid guides as much as possible in an attempt to replicate the feel of playing these games at the time of their release.

At that time, you could only get tips from three sources:  an expensive 1-900 hotline (not a realistic option); friends on the schoolyard or at church; or Nintendo Power.  That last one was worth its weight in video gaming gold.

When it came time to play through Zelda II, I broke down and used a guide to navigate the final temple.  I remember my brothers painstakingly mapping it out on graph paper one summer, but there are limits to nostalgia.  The Internet exists for a reason.

I haven’t picked up the old ZG&W much since beating all the games, but it might be time to dive back into it.  With the newest Zelda game out on Switch, it’s a great time to revisit the classics.

With that, here is 31 May 2022’s “Zelda Game & Watch“:

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Monday Morning Movie Review: The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)

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Those of us who were children in the early 1990s will remember Super Mario Bros. (1993).  It was the first time a video game had been adapted for film—ever, and, sure, WarGames (1983) was about playing a computer game, but Super Mario Bros. was the first time an actual video game IP had been made for the big screen—-and we were all super (no pun intended) excited to see our favorite 8-bit (well, 16-bit, by that point) heroes, Mario and Luigi, on film (note—there was a WarGames video game, but it was released in 1984 and was based on the film, not the other way around).  I was eight when the movie was released, so I was old enough to be aware of the hype surrounding the film.  The schoolyard was abuzz with anticipation.

Unfortunately, you probably know how the rest of the story goes:  it was an abysmal failure.  The film bore little resemblance to the 2D platformer we all loved, and while Dennis Hopper certainly makes for an intimidating antagonist, he bore little resemblance to Bowser (he was “King Koopa” in the film).  I remember watching the movie as a kid (we rented it) and being baffled by what was happening.  Why was everything so dark and dystopian?  It was a far too impressionistic endeavor to work as an adaptation of a beloved video game that captured the imagination of children.

The film was such a disaster, critically and financially, that Nintendo shied away from any more forays into cinema for thirty years.  Other than some cartoons on television, Nintendo did not go near Hollywood for three solid decades.

Now, when movie-going is struggling to revive itself after The Age of The Virus, Nintendo has reentered the ring with The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023), a film that may very well save Hollywood from its penchant for wokery and poor box office receipts.  More importantly, it’s the Mario Bros. movie we should have gotten thirty years ago.

Better late than never, eh, Nintendo?

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TBT^2: SimEarth

The Portly Politico4 Comments

The school year is grinding down at an agonizingly slow pace, which means my mind increasingly is turning away from serious matters and towards video games.

As a grown man with too many responsibilities and not enough time, I don’t indulge in video games much anymore.  I’ve always been more of a casual gamer in the sense that I play in short spurts for fun of it, not necessarily “beating” (finishing) a game, but enjoying playing with its mechanics or discovering some bit of its story.  I play games that would be considered “serious” among gamers, but I don’t do so with the intensity of those more committed gamers.

Increasingly, though, my gaming habits have turned towards more casual games—puzzle games and the like.  I don’t do a ton of gaming on my phone, but there are a few that I enjoy.

One of those is TerraGenesis, a game in which you take on the terraforming of a planet.  The game starts you with Mars, and by the time you read this post, I should have completed my first successful terraforming of the red planet.  The game draws heavily from the style of the board game Terraforming Mars, which is one of my favorites in the “make-this-planet-habitable-for-humans” genre.

Playing that got me thinking about the granddaddy of all terraforming games, SimEarth.  I wrote a loving tribute to this DOS classic a few years ago, and it seemed like a good time to give it another look.

With that, here is “TBT: SimEarth“:

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