Tag: video games

Phone it in Friday XXXI: Kirby!

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It’s the last full day of our family trip, and I’m still behind the proverbial eight-ball with posts.  My apologies to those who have contributed posts for publication; I’ll get them in next week.  What I have found is that posting later in the morning like I have been doing tends to result in lower views, so it’ll be best for those guest posts to go live next week when I am (hopefully!) back on schedule.

All mea culpas aside, here is a very, very brief edition of Phone it in Friday featuring everyone’s favorite little puffy pink guy, Kirby!

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Midweek Video Game Review: Pokémon Brilliant Diamond

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Monday was the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr., Day (and Robert E. Lee’s Birthday, for those so inclined), which meant that many folks here in the United States had Monday off for the federal holiday.  Yours portly was one of the many societal leeches suckling at the teat of this paid holiday, and I enjoyed it to the fullest.

While I was quietly productive on the day itself, the rest of the weekend saw me lolling about in indolence.  For whatever reason, the last couple of weeks left me exhausted, and I indulged in some relaxation Saturday and Sunday.  Besides some light housework, I kept myself occupied with an excursion back to my childhood:  Pokémon.

I managed to pick up a copy of Pokémon Brilliant Diamond, the 2021 remake of 2006’s Pokémon Diamond, last fall for half-price (around $30).  With work and lessons and what not, I hadn’t had time to play it, so I was more than a little excited to rip off the cellophane and pop this little baby into my Nintendo Switch Lite.

I vaguely remember playing some of Diamond on the Nintendo DS, but I know I didn’t finish it, and I’d forgotten a great deal of the game, beyond some of the starter Pokémon.  I have not finished the game—not by any stretch—but managed to put about eight hours into over the three-day weekend, and it was much like playing a classic Pokémon game.

That is both a good and bad thing.

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TBT: Game Review: Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution

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I’ve been on a YouTube history kick lately, listening to long historical biography videos while doing things around the house.  If you’re a history nerd like me, listening to the intrigues of medieval kings gets you hankering for a piece of the action, albeit a sanitized simulacrum of the real thing.

Yes, that means I have been playing a great deal of Civilization VI.  I was a bit sick this past weekend, so I had hours in bed conquering the world as Poland.  If your fantasy is a world in which an Eastern Orthodox Poland controls all of Europe, Asia, and most of Africa, as well as large swaths of North and South America, then you’d have loved that game.

With turn-based strategy still fresh on my mind, I’d thought I’d look back to this review of a far more primitive game in the legendary Civilization series: Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution on the Nintendo DS Lite.

With that, here is 30 November 2021’s “Game Review: Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution“:

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Lazy Sunday CLXVIII: Video Games II: Ponty’s Picks

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Ponty is a regular fixture here at The Portly Politico, and readers most likely know him from his extensive film reviews.  But when he’s not watching movies, he’s playing video games, often with his lovely girlfriend, Tina.

The good fellow has written three killer video game reviews of late, two with distinctly spooky themes, so why not give the old boy another edition of Lazy Sunday?

Apologies for those brief descriptions—my rotten dog has been hounding me (no pun intended) all morning, and is currently scratching vigorously at the door.  These games are quite good, and Ponty gives them the love and affection they deserve.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Ponty’s Friday Video Game Review: Little Nightmares 2

The Portly Politico9 Comments

What’s better than a spooky game about evading monstrous grotesqueries?  A sequel to that game.

A review of that sequel is better still, and that is what good ol’ Ponty offers up today.

As I noted last Friday, I’ve owned Little Nightmares on Steam for some time now, but I haven’t fired it up yet.  I doubt I will have had an opportunity to do so in the last week, but I’m hoping to dip into it (and some other games) soon enough.  Ponty’s reviews have me itching to try both installments of this macabre little gem—and possibly to revive my dead-in-the-water Morrowednesdays segments.

There’s not much else to say, despite my increasingly legendary ability to write introductions.  I’ll let Ponty take it from here; so with that, here is Ponty’s review of Little Nightmares 2:

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Ponty’s Friday Video Game Review: Little Nightmares

The Portly Politico6 Comments

It’s the witching season—the time for all sorts of ghoulish, spooky things to go down—and what better way to toy with dark forces than via video games?

Good ol’ Ponty has been dying to review this game for some time now, and he has finally delivered the goods—tasteful bedroom photos of his allegedly hot girlfriend.

Oh, wait—wrong e-mail [just kidding, Tina—Ponty wouldn’t do such a thing, and I wouldn’t ask]!  No, no, Ponty has offered up his review of Little Nightmares, a game of Tim Burton-esque grotesquery.

It’s long sat in my Steam library, just waiting to be played; after the Spooktacular this weekend, I will have to do just that!

With that, here is Ponty’s review of Little Nightmares:

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Ponty’s Friday Morning Video Game Review: Canis Canem Edit (Bully)

The Portly Politico17 Comments

I’m blessed with many contributors to this site, and their efforts have really lightened my load, especially as school has resumed.  One of my most regular contributors is the indefatigable Pontiac Dream 39, also known as Always a Kid for Today.  Here, we call him “Ponty.”

Like myself, Ponty is a gamer.  I don’t have much time for games these days, but I do enjoy the occasional round of something fun with friends—or just playing casually alone.  So it was a pleasant surprise to receive this review from him.

I actually pitched the idea of making Friday video game reviews a regular/semi-regular feature, but Ponty demurred.  That said, I’m hoping he’ll continue contributing video game reviews (he wrote a good review of a game developer for the site some time ago), although as we’re about to kick off our competing lists of the Top Ten Best Films, he may need a bit of a break from all this scribbling!

I never had the pleasure of playing this game, which was released here in the United States as, simply, Bully, before the usual band of moral scolds got the name changed to Canis Canem Edit, Latin for “dog eat dog.”  I do remember seeing it advertised, and finding the premise—a boy fighting against all the hierarchies, social and institutional, of a boarding school—an intriguing premise for a semi-sandbox-style game in the mold of Grand Theft Auto.  Based on Ponty’s review, it sounds like I missed out!

With that, here is Ponty’s review of Canis Canem Edit, or Bully:

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Zelda Game & Watch

The Portly Politico13 Comments

A few weeks ago I ordered a treat for myself:  the Nintendo Game & Watch: Legend of Zelda.  It’s a nifty little device, based on the old Nintendo Game & Watch LCD handheld games.  Nintendo revived the concept with handhelds themed around Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda.

The units usually retail for $50, but Amazon had this unit on sale for $42.50 (now it’s around $45, I believe).  Amazon was also offering $10 off any order to try their location pickup and locker service, and I used some credit card rewards to whittle the final price down to $25 out-of-pocket for yours portly.

I then promptly forgot about it until nearly a week after it had shipped to the store for pickup.  I realized that I was too late, but hoped the pharmacy pickup location had not returned it.  I managed to rush over there between lessons one afternoon, and was thrilled to find my purchase still in their storage:

Zelda Game and Watch Packaging

This little unit is packed with goodies:  The Legend of Zelda; Zelda II: The Adventure of Link; and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.  There’s also an old-school Game & Watch-style game featuring Link, and a full-color clock that emits a quiet electronic “tick” every second, and features Link scurrying around Hyrule, slaying monsters.

Those three Zelda games are my favorites.  I still remember getting Zelda II: The Adventure of Link one year for my birthday, and my mom telling me to go ahead and play it before my younger brother woke up, because he would demand the controller (some things never change). The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening was one of my favorite Game Boy titles.

I’m also a huge Zelda fan, and always have been.  The series and its focus on exploration, action, and puzzle-solving have always drawn me in, and I used to design my own maps and monsters as a kid.  The music has also always been inspiring, and I even arranged the iconic theme song for my old group, Brass to the Future:

I finally cracked the unit open last week, and pretty much lost all of my free time to playing The Legend of Zelda.  I realized I had never beaten the game before, so after nearly thirty-five years (the game reached the United States in 1987, and I think we got our Nintendo Entertainment System Christmas of 1988), I decided to sit down and finally defeat Ganon.

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TBT: SimEarth

The Portly Politico4 Comments

I’ve been on a video game kick lately, diving back into the Civilization games and listening to a lot of the Gaming Historian on YouTube.  As such, it seemed like a good time to look back at another video game post, one about the planet simulator SimEarth.

SimEarth was one of those games that I found instantly appealing—a massive simulator of an entire planet, going through all its geological, biological, and civilizational phases.  Even growing up in a household that rejected the theory of Darwinian evolution (a theory I still don’t accept, although I acknowledge that adaptation and mutation are both possible and happen frequently), the prevailing scientific understanding of our world made for a fun video game.

The possibilities were endless.  Want to be a Deistic god and let the world run on its own?  Go for it.  Want to interfere frequently in your planet’s development?  Do it!  Want to make starfish or Venus fly traps sentient beings capable of forging an advanced civilization?  Why not!

I used to be able to make pretty compelling planets in this game, with rich histories and multiple species in succession rising to sentience, before heading off an intergalactic journey of the stars.  Apparently, I lost any skills I had, as my last game a couple of years ago (detailed below) ended in nuclear winter.  Oops.

With that, here is 27 May 2020’s “SimEarth“:

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Civilization Series: Slayer of Productivity

The Portly Politico32 Comments

The school year is winding down for yours portly, but before the clock stops and summer begins, there’s a flurry of last-minute activity.  This week is exam review week, which means an odd mixture of light and easy classes alongside frantic preparations for exams.  For students, it’s studying for the exams that has them stressed; for teachers, it’s putting the exams and their related review guides together.

In college, exam week was the time of the semester I squeezed in the most gaming.  Paradoxically, it was when I had the most free time.  I’d spend a few hours over the course of the week reviewing notes for history exams, or memorizing the singing exercise for my Jazz Theory final, but would spend the rest of that unstructured time diving into games, notably The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

Now I have far more responsibilities, but exam week still offers some unstructured time to get things done (most importantly, grading all of those exams!).  Unfortunately, I picked this weekend to dive back into Civilization VI, specifically the vanilla version on my Nintendo Switch Lite.

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