Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 4

Game review: Unit 13 for PS Vita

Readers, I come to you a broken and defeated reviewer. In the last two weeks, I have tried and bounced from five games. Some, like Pillars of Eternity and Kao the Kangaroo, I knew were going to be iffy at the start. But then there was Party Hard 2, a game I wanted to love, until they kept tossing in new ingredients I never asked for. (Why was “Kill everyone” dubiously upgraded to “Follow a boring checklist” anyway?)

Running out of options, I decided to go back and play something I started ages ago, but never reviewed, Unit 13. Back when I first got my PS Vita, I bought the digital version of the game, only to discover that any attempt to play it in English caused it to revert to French. At the time, my Italian wasn’t strong enough for me to play that version, so I ended up getting a refund.

But it always stuck with me for reasons I couldn’t put into words. The simple premise for a third person shooter, a mercenary team taking out terrorists, had just enough meat on it to carry forward a set of missions of increasing difficulty within a limited number of locations. It’s kind of like if Counter-Strike had a single player version.

Coming back into it, and now having a good enough grasp of Italian to understand each mission, I’d say the story still works, mostly. It’s definitely in the popcorn movie range of ideas, meaning don’t think too hard about who is funding the group or who is hiring them. Just go in and kill bad guys because they are bad, and you are good. Each mission is graded by stars, but even a two-star run can feel rewarding after I just barely survived a four-on-one firefight inside a cramped building.

I do have to lament the dialogue of the terrorists. When I first played and they were chatting in their native languages, the subtitles being in French or Italian made everything they said sound so mysterious. But now I can understand the subtitles, and their conversations are mostly banal stuff like “I’m hungry,” “I need a new rifle,” or “I’m so bored.” There’s a conversation among patrolling terrorists about getting a stomach ache from bad food, and looking forward to going home so their mommy can cook for them. I am completely, one hundred percent dead serious.

Now every once in a while two guards will be talking about something in the mission, and that’s enough to convince me to sneak around and eavesdrop instead of going in with guns blazing. I just wish more of the dialogue had that quality instead of “What are we having for lunch?”

When the game is working right, missions feel tight and challenging. Enemies don’t just run at you in a straight line. They seek cover, and many times will work to flank or pinch your position if you try camping in one spot for two long. They’ll toss grenades in an effort to smoke out a mercenary’s position and have pretty damned good accuracy no matter what weapons they use. The game wants you to strike, move, and strike again, and it hands out extra points if you can do this fast enough to keep a bonus meter filled.

However, the cover system is all kinds of wonky. Sometimes a mercenary slides up to a corner after pressing the circle button, but the mercenary turns away from the corner instead of toward it. So I try to turn them, and they back out of cover and get shot. Other times, they might go into cover in the right direction, but because they aren’t right on the corner, they won’t take aim with their rifles. Lastly, there are times when mercenaries will enter cover, and any attempt to move, even just to turn around, results in them standing up, which is not ideal when one is trying to avoid being seen and/or shot.

Also, if there’s any way of aiming explosives that makes sense, the game never did a good job of explaining it. Each mercenary only has two or three explosives per mission, and for me the first always bounces off a doorway and comes back at me, or it flies so far past the target that it does no damage.

But even with its warts, I came back to Unit 13 because of its rinse and repeat cycle. Sure, I cleared a mission once with the recommended mercenary, but then I can try again with one of the others, or try a different strategy to get a better score. Each mercenary has levels, so finishing a mission and scoring well enough to level up means going to the next battle with upgraded stats.

There’s a lot of freedom in how to tackle each mission. I might sneak around and use a knife to thin out the enemy patrols, or use a sniper rifle to take targets out from a distance. That one is actually pretty difficult because the sniper has the lowest health out of all mercenaries. It often only takes one or two bullets to put him down. Using him on a hard mission is like taking a handicap, just to see if I can still make the objectives and escape. And then some missions want you to sneak in and “do the thing” without killing anyone or getting spotted by patrols. That one is really hard for me because it goes against my hyper-violent tendencies. But no matter who I play as or what the objective is, it all feels fun and challenging.

Perhaps the best part for me is, I don’t feel the need to binge it. It’s fine in bite-sized bits. I play a mission or two before dinner, put it away mid-mission, and come back to it in a day or two. That was one of the best selling points of the Vita for me, which a shame that none of the third party publishers embraced it. Hitting power instantly suspended a game and left it right where I stopped last time. So I can play when I’m waiting in line at the post office, turn it off when my number is called, and turn it back on when I get home. It’s that freedom from worrying about needing to restart that made Unit 13 so appealing on the Vita.

Sadly, there is one problem in all of this. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be, so I can only play for around half an hour before things get blurry. I’d love to play this on my TV or monitor, but that’s a whole other hardware purchase with the PS Vita TV, and I’d much rather save up to get a PS5 at this point.

But I am glad that I gave Unit 13 another chance, even if I can’t play it in English. Between this and Borderlands 2, the Vita made a great case for first and third person shooters in a portable form. If any of the other shooters that came out had been half as good, maybe Sony wouldn’t have abandoned the platform as quickly as they did.

Not that I’m bitter about it or anything.

That’s a lie. I’m totally bitter about it.

In conclusion, I’d give Unit 13 4 stars. If you still have a PS Vita and you want some hard core third person combat, this could be your jam.

Book review: The Forest Demands Its Due by Kosoko Jackson

Before I get into the proper review, I want to mention that I just joined The Storygraph, which is a new alternative to Goodreads. If you are worried about losing all of your collected ratings and reviews, you can export your stuff from Goodreads, and then import it to The Storygraph. (Which does take a while, but I can confirm it got both my ratings and reviews over.) Anyway, if you want to check out my profile click here. And if you’re already a member and want to add me as a friend, please do. I don’t yet know anyone over there, and it’s kinda lonely. (‘;_;)

With that out of the way, you may notice that this is my first book review of the year, and I hope to do more of these in 2024. One because I’ve missed reviewing books, and two because most of the games I’m playing lately need a lot more than a week to get through. (And I was serious about playing Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands again. In fact I’m playing two builds on alternating days, it’s that good. But I digress.) Don’t call it a resolution, more like a flickering flame of hope. I can say that it would be a hope easier to keep alight if all the books I tried were as good as The Forest Demands Its Due.

I will confess though, that for someone who has often lamented not judging books by their cover, the vividly, morbidly gorgeous cover was definitely what caught my eye and convinced me to go to Amazon to read the blurb. Everything about it, from the creepy scrawled font to the spooky forest background and deer skull with majestic antlers spoke to me, and it said, “Zoe, this is a book for you.”

And I said, “Okay!”

Right from the first page, the introduction of Douglas Jones hit me in all the feels. His reasons for being in the counselor’s office for “anger issues,” his troubled path leading him from a familiar home into the hallowed halls of a prestigious private school, and his inability to just go with the flow like everyone is telling him…yeah, all of that speaks to so many of my own life experiences.

So of course I was hooked even before the story began to flesh out  the curse that hangs over everyone at Regent Academy, and boy howdy, this curse is a doozy. I’d love to talk about how scary it is conceptually, but that would be spoiling the reveal. But I can say, the longer I thought about it, the scarier it felt.

What I will talk about in more detail is the monsters of the book, who come in two flavors. Emissaries are like giant guardians of the titular forest that surrounds the academy and partly swallows the nearby town, Winslow. Each one is different, and the descriptions of them start out mysterious, but get more vivid later on. I’d like it to the original Alien, when at first all anyone could see was a vague outline, maybe a flash of teeth and a splash of blood. But that kind of slow reveal worked for me because then it ratchets up the tension for the big reveal, instead of trying to keep the same scariness going with constant added details.

The second crew of monsters are called Perversions, and they’re created from the victims of the forest. Much like the Emissaries, their appearances are all radically different, mixing rotted wood and back with animal and human features to great effect. However, they get more detailed description earlier, perhaps because the Emissaries only patrol the forest, while the Perversions are more invasive for reasons that get explained near the end of the story.

There’s also other bad guys, but it’s best to sort out on your own who they are. I’ll say that when one of them was revealed, I went, “Oh yeah, that makes sense.” They just oozed evil intent, you know?

I’ll give The Forest Demands Its Due 5 stars. I’d recommend it to fans of YA horror who want a little slice of gay romance on the side. Also, I’m going to have to stay on the lookout for more novels from Kosoko Jackson, because he’s rather good.

Game review: Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands for Steam

When Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands got some meh reviews from folks I followed, I put it lower on my priority list, but not on the do not buy list. This is because the same folks gave Borderlands 3 a meh, and while I felt it could have wrapped up the plot faster, it was altogether a stronger story than the first two entries. I also really liked Tiny Tiny’s first BnB campaign when I played it with hubby, and I think that flavored my expectations going into it. So here’s Tiny Tina with another mega-session of Bunkers and Baddasses, offering stronger writing and a far shorter playtime than the planet spanning flagship.

Did it work? I’ll put it this way: I only beat the main game after intentionally holding off on the final boss to play a whole bunch of side quests. I’d already hit the level cap when I got there, but I was enjoying the side quests stories so much that I just wanted to see a few more before reaching the ending. And then not long after reaching the end, I started a new character so I could experiment with a different build.

Far from being a meh game, this might be closest to the perfect looter shooter for me. It’s not too long, the writing is cute and full of puns and dad jokes that make me smile even when they can’t quite get a laugh. (There’s also some pop culture and meme references so old they fart dust.) Buuuuuut, there was an early joke so funny that Hubby got mad at me for laughing too loud. So what I’m saying is, this really worked for me…most of the time. 

Being set between Borderlands 2 and 3, the opening sees Tina recruiting a new group to run a campaign against the dread Dragon Lord. After a bit of exposition, the newbie is tasked with being the Fatemaker, while Valentine and Frette act as the peanut gallery…er, the advisors. I’m ashamed to admit it took me a couple hours to recognize Andy Samberg as Valentine, and only a little later to recognize Wanda Sykes as Frette. I adore Andy Samberg, both from Lonely Island and Brooklyn 99, so his presence here as color commenter was like a friendly warm hug throughout the game.

I can’t get into too much of the story without massive spoilers, so what I will say is that I found the main quests just as compelling as the side questing. Back in Borderlands 2, there was a poetry romance side quest that led to a “funny” (which is to say not funny) suicide. Fast forward, and now there’s a similar romance side quest, but one that leads to a happier and funnier payoff. Lots of the side stories in Tina’s world are worth exploring, with some even cross referencing each other. For instance, a band member in one quest mentions stealing a page from his mom’s grimoire, and in a quest much later a witch inquires who stole her page. And like I said, even if some quest don’t reach laugh out loud funny, they are at least more cutesy and way less cringey.

Another change from the Borderlands formula is the Overworld, a map between areas where you move your character as a miniature figure. There are random encounters like RPG video games, but also optional dungeons and side quests, shrines to repair that unlock extra bonuses like more experience points and higher critical chances, and shortcuts to unlock that open new areas or dungeons. It’s also a fine way to grind in shorter encounters for those times when I just needed a few more points to get to the next level. The Overworld helps Tina’s game feel quite different from the main games, and I think it could be a great way to build on her future games that helps them stand out on their own.

It’s also wonderful to have a wider choice of voice options for characters. Beyond male and female, the character creator offers two varieties of Gallant, Clever, and Strange, and each can be pitch adjusted to get the right voice for you. Plus, it’s not just different actors reading the same script. Each vocal style brings in a different script. Yes, the responses are the same, but offering a different character reaction helps make each style feel unique. I liked the other two options, but I loved Clever because it feels close to what I would say while playing any game. (“Oh no, more bad guys, whatever shall I do?” is on brand for me minus the fantastic accent.) It is a shame that we couldn’t get an option to modify body shapes aside from height, but between the choices for voices and even a gender neutral option for labeling characters, I just want to celebrate the choices we got in this outing and hope for more progress in the sequel.

I also like how the classes are meant to feel more like a role play gaming session. Several classes get animal companions, while most get an action skill and a spell slot. Some of the meh reviewers lamented that the focus on melee was pointless, so here’s my take. If you went into this thinking of melee as optional, you’d feel that the new additions were useless.

I heard it was meant to be used more often, so I did, and all the different ways it interacts with other abilities makes it feel vital. Are you playing as a spell caster? Then use a weapon that reduces spell cooldown with every hit. Are you tanking? Use one that recovers ward strength and health. Or choose one that amps gun damage, or one that steadily raises the melee critical hit chance before scoring a crit and resetting. I tried them all, and I liked how each one changed my reasons for charging in for a melee fight. Also, there’s a subtle charge forward when using the weapon to prevent swings from whiffing too often. Whiffing can still happen, but it happens a lot less than in mainline Borderlands games.

When I got to the point of unlocking dual classing, I chose to give my Stabbomancer a second Spellshot class because their abilities seemed to synch up to deliver a lot of elemental damage. The Spellshot can use two spells instead of an ability and a spell, and by making use of mostly repeatable spells, I could turn even the ugliest battles into a dance of elemental death.
That said, starting in the third act, I ran into some bosses clearly meant to be played by four people. Running them solo was massively aggravating, which is why the final score can’t reach a perfect ranking. Most other fights, even the final boss fight, were tough but fair, and all of them were fun and interesting, something that cannot be said of another game I’ve stalled on reviewing due to connection woes. But there were several fights that were so rage inducing that I almost considered walking away. I’m really glad I didn’t, but it could have gone another way if there hadn’t been so many other good fights to balance out the bad ones.

Also, while there’s much to praise in terms of improvements, the subtitles are wonky to say the least. Sometimes they work, and other times they either don’t show up at all, or they show something from hours before. And if you’re in a vending machine trying to sort out what any of the vendors are saying, well forget it, because subtitles don’t carry over to those interfaces.

The other caveat to mention is the DLC content. I got all of them as a package deal, so I didn’t have to pay the regular prices for them individually. Even so, they’re just not as good in terms of design or writing. They’re set up as a series of linked single map encounters, and in each one there’s a main objective and secondary goal to find a pair of secret chests.

Which would be okay, but as I wander to look for these chest, there’s always one other enemy spawning in to annoy me. They can’t do enough damage to be a threat by themselves, and by that point, I was wearing mostly legendary gear, so I could just one-shot them. But it’s like every time I turned my back to search a room, I got another “Yar, I’m going to swab your deck! I said DECK!” Yeah, lady, it was funny the first time, but you’re the tenth deck swabber in the same level. Give it a rest and let me find this stupid chest already.

It also doesn’t help that the DLC is lacking the color commentary from Samberg and Sykes, and the demon presiding over these chambers can only trot out some terrible puns or lame jokes that don’t help to liven up an already dreary experience. So even if you can get the full package on sale, I’d say just go with the base game. The Chaos Chamber at the end of the game is a way better experience for pushing a build without all the lame jokes and dragged out searches for the MacGuffins of tediousness. You just go in and kill stuff until that area is cleared, pick your next “curse” to make the next area harder and rinse and repeat. Sounds too simple on paper, but in real play time, it’s good stuff.

Oh, and then there’s the loot dice. It’s a nice idea in theory, but if no one tells you about it, you won’t get good gear until your second or third playthrough. Scattered through every map are twenty-sided dice. When used, they burst and drop loot, supposedly based on the number they roll combined with the number of dice you’ve already collected. But even near the end of the game when I’d collected most of them, a 19 or a 20 roll would still drop mostly crap loot, or if it was good, it wasn’t right for my build. It was only near the end that I found really great gear, and that was by going into random encounters on the Overworld map and breaking open the loot dice at the end. I did get a few pieces from the DLC, but I quickly found stuff in the random encounters that made the DLC stuff feel weak by comparison.

In conclusion, I love this game. Is it perfect? No, but it’s everything I want when I sit down to play a fantasy game. It’s cute and emotionally rewarding to complete all the quests, and when I start rolling another character less than an hour after beating the last boss, that’s a sure sign it’s going to be in my regular rotation next to Dark Souls and Portal.

I’m giving Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands an enthusiastic 4 stars, and I recommend it to anyone looking for a cute, dumb power fantasy romp with goofy friends egging you one to do something stupid, just to see what happens. Just try to find some friends to help co-op certain bosses, or else…oof.

With that, I’ve got to get back to a side quest to crown the most metal band in all the Wonderlands. See you next time!

Game review: Cursed To Golf for EGS

Cursed to Golf is one of those games where many folks know right away if they’re going to love it or hate it just by describing it in genre terms. It’s a rogue-like side scrolling platform golf game, and any of these terms could be a deal maker or breaker for you. For me, the one that’s a sticking point is rogue-like, as opposed to rogue-lite. The difference is, every new run, the whole world is reset, and nothing carries over.

But let me set that aside and talk about what makes this a unique experience. After a tutorial explains how an almost legendary golfer end up in Golf Purgatory, players are tasked with battling eighteen holes of side scrolling golf to win a shot at returning to their body. In their arsenal are a driver, an iron, and a wedge. (I was annoyed by the lack of a putter until I realized the wedge can do the job by applying really low power to swings.) One button press activates a power meter. Pressing it again activates the angle selection. If you don’t like the look of a swing, it’s possible to back out of the swing, either to select a different club, or just to adjust the power level of the swing.

Each level starts with five swings as “par,” and falling to zero mean losing and returning to the clubhouse to start over. However, within levels are statues that can be broken to unlock more swings. Gold statues grant five swings, and silver statues give two. So really, even if the so-called par is five, most levels end with swing counts of ten to fifteen, and some go as high as twenty, and they’re still considered par. Riiiiiight.

There are also cards (because of course there are. Every game needs cards now) that can add more turns, and also give the ball super powers. Clearly, this is not regulation golf. Cards are very randomly rewarded between holes, but it’s more common to buy them as packs, which amounts to a loot box of three choices. Some powers like halting a ball’s momentum are useful in very specific situations, but there’s also a ball splitter, a U-turn card, and two variation of rocket-propelled balls that can be steered. (Both of which suck in my opinion because they are both painfully slow and fiddly to steer.)

In between holes are shops to buy more cards or pins to change the rules or level the playing field a tiny amount, but as with most rogue-likes, half the time the money earned in game isn’t enough to buy the items in the first shop. It’s almost like all indie game makers believe that the only way to have fun is to be as stingy as possible with their in-game budgets.

But the real deal breaker for me comes when reaching the boss levels between biome changes. Because then the game pits the player against a boss in a stupidly long hole that just grinds on and on forever. To win and advance to the next level, I can’t just swing for the gold and silver statues. No, I also have to waste time swinging for statues that will strike the boss with lightning and make them miss a turn. I can’t convey my annoyance at this mechanic enough. The only way to win is to attack the other player and force them to lose turns. I have to cheat to win? What? If I miss even a single knockout statue they’ll win and then it’s back to the clubhouse for me.

Let’s not even get into the level of cheating going on with the final boss, on both sides, or how the story has all the bosses waxing poetic about the purity of a golfer who has to cheat to win against them. All that really matters is this: Cursed To Golf has a really good premise and a relaxing game loop that’s hindered by boss fights that drag on way too long and the kind of stinginess that makes every shop visit aggravating.

For that, I’m giving it 3 stars. If you like the idea of playing mini golf with obstacles like TNT, vortexes, and zombie hands in addition to traditional sand traps and water hazards, this might be your jam. But for me, it’s all the grind of an old-school NES game with none of the lingering rewards found in a more enjoyable rogue-lite.

Plus, who doesn’t give players a putter in a game that’s glorified mini golf? Evil people, that’s who.

Tabasco: the definitive review

It’s fair to say that I’ve been a fan of hot sauces since childhood, and that Tabasco sauce has been a vital kitchen component almost from the time I moved out to live on my own. In recent years, the number of sauces they make has expanded, but whether that happened fast or slow is a guess for me because all I understand of their development is mostly down to what I can find locally here in Italy. So first we got green jalapeño Tabasco, followed by chipotle, habanero and then by sriracha.

But there is one version that I learned about online, scorpion pepper sauce, which was first just a limited edition version. I told myself I wouldn’t get to try that, but then I found a collection of all the sauces together, and scorpion was in the line-up. All in all, it was five bottles for a very reasonable price of twenty-five euros.

I originally imagined doing a longer review on this topic, making notes for each sauce using spoons, pizza, chicken nuggets, and chicken wings. Then again, I also imagined doing all of this in one sitting. But just doing the spoon ladder proved that it would be better to group all the impressions by sauce type, and also to spread out the sampling time by several days to avoid spice blow-out corrupting my results the farther into the test I got.

While I expected the pizza test to mute the heat levels, I was surprised to find that chicken nuggets were able to suppress the heat far more effectively. Something about the breading or the blandness of chicken breast absorbed a lot of the spiciness as well as the tang of the vinegar. They were still tasty, but the nuggets even tamed the scorpion pepper sauce, a hell of an accomplishment as my review will soon cover.

Oh, by the way, this was never going to be a versus series post because I love all of these sauces equally, and I think they all have a place in my kitchen for different applications. I’ll try to suggest what I like to use them on, but I highly recommend getting the collection wherever you can and experimenting to find the foods that work best for you.

Lastly, the sauce collection I bought did not include sriracha, but I already had that in my fridge, and I feel like it belongs in the review. So it’s listed here in the heat scale that I feel it belongs in.

With that out of the way, let’s dig into this lovely collection…

Jalapeño Tabasco
The mildest sauce of the bunch, this recipe brings to mind jars of sliced, pickled jalapeños, the kind you’d put on nachos to give the cheese more flavor and only the slightest hint of heat. This has that same pickled warmth, making it perfect to add zest when something just isn’t hitting the right notes on its own. I love this on omelets and scrambled eggs, but also in fried beans and potatoes. (a recipe of my hubby, not to be confused with the equally delicious Mexican recipe for refried beans.) It’s great as a dip for chicken nuggets, plain tortilla chips, or french fries. It gets lost in the mix of a pizza slice, though, so I wouldn’t suggest it.

Original Tabasco
There’s so much that this sauce works with. The level of spice is high enough that it tingles even for a seasoned pepper fan like me, while the kick of vinegar enhances whatever it’s mixed with. I love to add a generous shake of this to broth in winter because it’s just hot enough to clear my sinuses. (Though due to a deviated septum, even a slightly higher than average dash of black pepper can make my nose run, so it’s not a reliable heat scale indicator.) It’s also good in minestrone, chili, or any soup that needs a little more kick than black or white pepper can deliver. I love it on pizza, in tacos, and slathered on chicken wings Buffalo-style. I even tried it on vanilla ice cream and found it to be delicious.

Tabasco Sriracha
I was already a fan of several brands of sriracha from Thailand, Korea, and China, so picking this up was an easy choice. Like all variants, it’s got that lovely Tabasco tang, but this is blended with notes of sweet and garlic flavors. I’d say it’s almost identical in heat level to the original sauce, and goes just as nicely on the same foods. This is also one of my favorite sauces to add to chicken or vegetable ramen packets to augment the savoriness of the broth with heat, sweetness, and vinegar bite. I’ve tried it on tortilla chips, but in my opinion, the sweetness gets a bit too overwhelming once the tongue is primed by the salt on the chips.

Chipotle Tabasco
Maybe it’s only my imagination, but the addition of dried and smoked jalapeño peppers seems to slightly raise the heat level above the original sauce. I love the added smokey flavor, and it’s perfect to add to store-bought tomato-based barbecue sauces to help balance the sweet flavor with spice and smoke. These are also perfect on smoked chicken wings, omitting the barbecue sauce to get a wing that hits just the right level of heat to make a cold beer the perfect companion between wings.

Habanero Tabasco
Wow is the first thing I thought doing my first spoon test of this sauce because it’s so different from the others. First, there’s a fruity sweetness that you can’t find in the others, and a few seconds after the sweetness and flavor of the peppers and garlic have coated the tongue, in comes the real heat. This is several steps above the other sauces in terms of spice, and if you can’t handle this one, it’s understandable. But if you can, this is another sauce to go on everything. I mean everything. Dab it on eggs, meat, (beef, pork, chicken, and fish) chips, pizza, in soups, on fries; hell, dab it on a chocolate bar or drizzle it over ice cream. I like to buy hummus at the store and add a generous shake to take that chickpea dip to the next level.  I run out of all varieties pretty fast, but this one is the one I run out of first because I can put it on everything.

Scorpion Tabasco
I just got this sauce for Christmas, so I’m not ready to give a full list of what it’s good on. The first spoon test was so good, but the fruit sweetness isn’t as bold even though it is still present. What’s more obvious before the heat kicks in is the vinegar bite, then the sweetness sneaks in for just a second. When the heat does kick in, it ramps up and up for a good minute before peaking. This recipe is for the folks who had the habanero version and thought, “Yeah, it’s tasty, but I want to punish my tongue in that special sadistic kind of way.” If you want to feel the full punch, put this on fried chicken like I did. I slathered this on, took a bite, and instantly got a ringing in my ears. Ten minutes later, I could still feel it on my lips and under my dentures. Not for the faint of heart, but damn if it isn’t as delicious as it is spicy.

That’s the review, with one caveat: these are only the sauces available to me. Tabasco actually makes a few other flavors that can’t be found here, but if I could get them, I would.

You hear that, Tabasco? IF YOU SHIP ALL YOUR SAUCES TO ITALY, I WILL BUY THEM ALL. Please. Pretty please, with habanero Tabasco on top.

That’s it for this week. See y’all next week with something new.

2023 in review

The last day of the year, and what a year, right? Globally, so much bad stuff is happening that it might seem impossible to look for a brighter side, much less to find one. Locally, there’s still continuing food price inflation, higher energy bills, Covid quarantines uncomfortably close to home, (measured in literal meters, so I’m not exaggerating) and mysterious illnesses for me and my hubby. (Mine going back decades, which was previously diagnosed as MS, but now the doctors aren’t so sure. Oh, fun side note, one of my symptoms is losing my sense of smell for brief spans, so now every time it happens, I have to ask, “Is it the usual shenanigans, or is it Covid?”)

But personally, this is the year when I got back my drive to create, and the urge to explore. For a few years now, I haven’t really felt much desire to listen to new music, or to read much from comics or books. I think I was just overwhelmed by all the crappy things happening here and abroad, but also, I had started feeling like I’d hit a rut and had nothing new to offer.

It was close to the start of the year that I decided to get my head back in the games, committing to publish at least one review a week. When that wasn’t possible, I decided to try and make filler just so I wouldn’t get back in the rut.

Of course, part of what helped that was getting a wireless internet connection, allowing me to download stuff faster. It’s hard to review one game a week when the internet connection might need a week and a half to get my game up and running. It does have limitations, as the upload rate isn’t nearly as fast, so online games are a bit meh. (A future review will be hitting on that problem, I can assure you.)

I discovered a manga app from JUMP and that was a great find that let me dip back into comics and rediscover one of my favorite hobbies. I admit, I soured a little on it because if a manga print run ends in Japan, the publishers only give readers a few more weeks to catch up before they yank the whole collection offline. So I didn’t get to read the ending to Mashle, and I’m now reluctant to get into One Piece because it will definitely get yanked long before I get to the middle of the story. Still, it’s been great for reading re-editions of Claymore and Dragonball alongside newer titles like Kaiju No. 8.

If you looked at my Spotify wrap of 2023, it doesn’t seem like I listened to much new stuff, but that’s because I only used Spotify while riding my bike, and most of my music sampling was done on YouTube. This year, I found new favorite artists like Japanese Breakfast, Boygenius, Lil Yachty, and Ninja Sex Party. (whose early parody work cannot prepare you for their covers of songs from Tears For Fears, Pink Floyd, A-ha, Def Leppard, and Toto. Seriously, they got good. REAL GOOD!) Then sometimes, I just put on my headphones and let nostalgia sweep me away to the 80s or 90s.

Somewhere toward September, I started feeling the desire to write fiction again. I’m sure a lot of it was absorbing new influences to help reignite my creative spark. I wrote a premise, and then a second one, and I just let them both steep for a bit at the back of my mind. When NaNoWriMo rolled around in November, I got to work on the longer premise and found that I didn’t struggle to make new words each day. I was happy to do it, and excited to see where the journey took me and my characters.

In 2024, there’s more to be done to get myself back on the creative groove. I need to get a new tablet so I can get back into making proper covers for new books, (and possibly a couple for older books that just got the plain text treatment and suffered for it) and I’d like to start uploading gameplay videos to YouTube again. Streaming isn’t an option, but that doesn’t mean I can’t put out new content. I just need to find a game I want to share that won’t take one hundred episodes to get through. So perhaps Party Hard 2 will work. I’ll find something, I’m sure.

Closing this out, what I wish for all of you in the new year is finding the drive to do what you love in spite of the bad things happening around you. It’s hard not to give in to despair or even anger, and it doesn’t help that there are so many individuals looking for someone to tear down just so they can feel good about being assholes. But I truly believe that if you take some time to care for yourself and find your own spark, you can make 2024 a good year, maybe even a great one.

So to all of you, happy new year, and let’s all get out there and try to make it memorable.

My top 5 games of 2023

Well, look at the time! Another year has passed, and I have to say, compared to the years before this one, it didn’t suck nearly as bad. Sure, it still had its share of downs to equal the ups, but looking back, I think this is the year I could say, “Yeah, I’d do that again if I could.” It was a combination of good food, good company, and good games.

I know this is new for me, as I’ve never been much for recapping what I played, but I decided this year that I want to give a spotlight to the games I think went beyond good and sailed into great, taking up so much of my time, but in a good way.

So join me after the cut as I look at my top 5 games of the year. (In order of lowest to highest ranking.)

Diablo Immortal
I tell you honestly, I didn’t expect a free mobile game to ever make a list of top games for me, but from the moment I downloaded it, Diablo Immortal has been my go-to game to go. I’ve played it everywhere, whether I just needed to waste a few minutes or fill up long times on a train ride. I love every character class equally, and I’ve tried just about every option available apart from PVP. (Which I’m not really a fan of in any game, so that’s me, not them.)

What keeps sucking me in is the ease of picking one of my characters and dropping into the game to do whatever. One character might be used to run through the story again, while others are just for wandering around to see what kind of dungeon crawl or boss raid I feel like doing that day. In both cases, every session brings new loot that changes my character’s abilities, which encourages me to always be trying new build ideas instead of falling into a rut. So as we rush into a new year, I’m still happy to keep playing, and I’d call that a major accomplishment.

Party Hard
So much carnage and chaos in this tiny package. For a morbid murder simulator, I’m shocked at how often I ended up laughing with Party Hard. Part of it is “phoning in” support from a variety of killers, which change from one level to the next and includes aliens and zombie as well as more pedestrian options like a team of pest fumigators.

But more than that, it’s getting into an insane rhythm and finding the right time and place to take out huge swaths of party goers. Doing that and not getting caught always made me laugh in a way that might cause polite company to scoot away from me quickly. But at the same time, losing and getting caught by the cops, slain by a fellow serial killer, or curb stomped by a panicked party goer elicited a similar amused response before I pressed the button for one more try. I enjoyed this so much that I’ll be getting Party Hard 2 soon, and while I can’t say yet if it will make the top games of 2024, I am going into it with high expectations.

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion
I got this just based on the title alone, and once I bought it again on the PC to play with my controller, it took me less than a day to see all it had to offer. I could do with more games like this, with a little price tag and just a few hours of game on offer. But more importantly, I love everything offered in this tiny package. The story is good, the characters are cute and quirky, the music is fantastic, and the controls are simple and easy to get used to.

I’ll admit, I didn’t expect the story to take a turn for the dark side, but once the game asked, “But why are vegetables talking?” the answer kinda makes sense in that old school sci-fi kind of way. It all ends with a truly bizarre mega boss fight that I struggled with because I’d already forgotten some of the abilities I’d picked up. At least when I play it again in a few months with a fresh run, I’ll know what to do. But for sure, I will be playing this several more times because it’s just the right amount of bite-sized fun that I need between all these hundred hour runs in RPGs.

Gotham Knights
Hoo boy, I was told how much I was going to hate Gotham Knights, and I went in with my expectations so low that the height of that bar would make limbo veterans flop sweat. Imagine my surprise when I walked away from my first few hours wearing a huge grin. Aside from a couple boss fights that I didn’t care for, the open world sandbox and the set of grappling hooks and bat weapons felt so good to use. I actually wanted to spend time patrolling Gotham instead of just pushing through the story, and on the other hand, I loved the story and wanted to see it through to the end.

I didn’t go in for all the collect-a-thon activities, or for the dungeon crawl that’s clearly meant to be played with a full crew of online allies, but it doesn’t matter. What really matters is, I beat up a lot of bad guys, and I did it with a smile. So if they ever decide to make a sequel to this wild what if sandbox, you can count me in.

Vampire Survivors
I got Vampire Survivors in January based on it showing up on so many game of the year lists for 2022, and it is without a doubt my top game of 2023. It would have made the list at a lower ranking before the DLC offerings got updated with proper maps, but now those improvements plus another DLC and a steady stream of free updates keeps me coming back for both the new stuff and to mess around with all the older levels and characters. In fact, they just dropped another DLC with a new level, a collaboration with Among Us that includes 15 new weapons and four new music tracks. It’s on my to-buy list for January.

They’ve also just released Adventure Mode, but I can’t talk about that yet because I’m still downloading the update as I type this. Even so, it’s a safe bet that I’ll be playing well into next year, and maybe even farther. I can see it, like the Dark Souls trilogy, remaining in constant rotation around newer games because it’s too much fun to ever truly let go of for good.

So there you have it, folks. All told, it’s been a great year for gaming. (Well, for me, anyway. For a lot of studios, greedy publishers have taken to gutting their teams rather than admit they have set their profit expectations way too high.)

Next week, I’ll be doing a proper end of year review, but I’ll offer a teaser: this is the first year in a long, LONG, L O N G time that I will look back on with fondness rather than fatigue or regret. That’s something I have to treasure, knowing that 2024 could go right back to the suck. Let’s hope it doesn’t suck, or blow, unless we paid for it.

See y’all next week!

Game review: Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion for EGS

I originally got Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion (Hereafter shortened to Turnip Boy) on the Google play store because it sounded like everything I wanted in a mobile game. But it turned out that I was too much of a klutz to complete it using touch controls, so I wasn’t able to finish it, thus I could never review it, even though I liked what I played.

Fast forward a few months later, and I saw Turnip Boy on Epic Game Store, and I decided that even though I had to buy it again, I liked it enough on my phone that I wanted to see how it ends. As it turns out, I liked Turnip Boy enough that I don’t even mind buying it twice.

I think it helps that despite being a Metroidvania, one of the genres I’m not keen on, it does manage to make the formula work for me because the game isn’t that big. I get a new item, and it’s close enough to me hitting a roadblock in another area that I think, Oh, that’s right, I needed this to get into that other area.

Whether we talk about Turnip Boy on mobile or PC, it is exactly the kind of shorter game I need sometimes. In a market crowded with Live Services promoting that they can take hundreds of hours to finish, sometimes I just want a little game that can be finished in half a day.

Turnip Boy does that, but it also offers a cute premise that eventually blossoms into a full on post-apocalyptic adventure with both a normal ending and a secret ending that comes from collecting all of the secret items. (None of which are hidden, so it’s not that hard to get both endings in the same day.)

The story goes that Turnip Boy gets a notice that his taxes are due, and he rips them up. So Mayor Onion takes over his greenhouse and forces him to do manual labor to pay off his debts. Along the way, lots of characters will offer side quests, most of which can’t be completed at the time they’re initiated. But just like every other aspect of this bite-size gem, once I collected the item I needed, I always remembered who I needed to take it back to. It’s all of the joys of  Metroid without any of the aimless wandering because I forgot where I needed this new item/power-up.

The more jobs Turnip Boy does for the mayor, the more the story veers from wacky adventure into post-apocalypse, but it’s barely a few minutes from the big reveal of The Truth before the final boss fight and credits roll. Even if you missed some documents and need to keep playing, getting to the secret ending takes only a few minutes more, leading to an even bigger final boss fight.

All of this is great, by the way. This is the kind of game most people can finish in a day, but if you’re like me, it’s going to stick with you, and eventually you’ll get to the point of deciding it was so much fun, you’re ready to play it again.

There’s nothing to dislike this time. The graphics are adorable, the music is great, and the controls are intuitive enough that even the trickiest boss fights can be overcome within two or three attempts. If I absolutely had to go looking for something to nitpick, I would have liked the ability to skip cut scenes that I’ve already seen, but most are so short that it’s not a major issue.

Which means that finally, I get to conclude a review with an enthusiastic 5 star rating. Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is the perfect diversion between bigger games, or even to use as a break from those AAA Live Services when they just get too overwhelming with their demands on your time. As an added bonus, it’s priced low enough that you don’t have to feel bad for buying it, even if you buy it on every platform you own. Go on, treat yourself, they deserve it.

As for who I’d recommend it for, I’d say EVERYONE. It’s a gem that reminds me why I love gaming. This is just a fun adventure with a wild story and enough variety spread across its levels that it always feels fresh and exciting. The only folks I can think of who wouldn’t like that are already dead.

How’s that for a ringing endorsement? =^p

Versus series: Diablo Immortal VS Diablo IV

This installment of the versus series became inevitable pretty much right after I did the Diablo IV server slam. But that little weekend-thin slice wasn’t enough to build a solid idea of what the full game would offer. Since then, I’ve played a lot of Diablo Immortal, and I got Diablo IV around three weeks ago. You’d think I would play one character to the end of the story, but no, I played every class. My main, a Rogue named RhodaRargh, has just entered Act III at level forty, and all my other characters are around level thirty. At this point I can safely say I’ve seen the core loop even if I’m not yet ready to fire off a review.

What I am ready for is an in-depth examination of what Diablo Immortal offers in relation to Diablo IV, and I’ll say right up front, I am genuinely shocked at who is winning this contest with flying colors. I’m coming into this contest with years of bias against free mobile games and all their bullshit. So believe me when I say how shocking it is that I am endorsing Diablo Immortal as the winner by a freakin’ landslide.

Before I get to the apples to oranges fight, let me be clear to avoid drama with the die-hard fans. I’m not saying that Diablo IV sucks, okay? I’m just saying that Diablo Immortal manages to do a better job of getting me into the game while respecting my time and my budget.

Let’s start at the beginning with the tale of two tutorials. Diablo Immortal walks players through the basics by explaining the controls before adding a basic attack, a core skill, and a movement technique. It explains how to work with the map, use equipment, and then how to salvage with a blacksmith and upgrade equipment.

Once all that feels comfortable, the game begins dropping gear that changes the way core skills work, sometime in radically different ways. After the basic introduction is out of the way, new modes are introduced and explained. All of it is drip fed at certain level gates until players reach the point where they can do everything the game has to offer, and nothing is a mystery. Of course, on following plays, it would be nice to turn off the tutorials, but still…

Moving over to Diablo IV, the game pretty much assumes you’re a returning veteran, meaning there’s no explanation of anything. You get a primary attack with all the other buttons locked off, but from the moment you have to choose your basic attack from a list of four, NOTHING is explained.

Expanding on that, every skill and ability in Diablo Immortal has explanations for what they do baked in. With Diablo IV, I had to open a browser to get explanations for what Thorns are (retaliatory damage) or how Overpower attacks and Lucky Hits are calculated. There’s so much jargon in the game that they apparently just assumed players would either know, or look it up elsewhere, and that’s off putting to anyone just entering the franchise now.

Next up is a major surprise for me, the inventory size. I’ve seen a lot of mobile games be stingy with inventory size to force the purchase of more space, but Diablo Immortal has easily twice the inventory space of Diablo IV, making it so much easier to Hoover up the loot and keep doin’ what I do best, mauling woodland critters with ridiculously overpowered weapons.

Adding to this issue is that the respawn rates in Diablo IV mean that if I should dare to teleport back to a hub to scrap my current haul, it’s one hundred percent guaranteed that I’ll use the portal back to pick up that one pair of pants, only to discover twice the monsters populating the space. Every time my inventory fills up, I have to debate leaving behind loot or risking a goatmen gangbang by using a portal.

Up next is respect for my time, and Diablo Immortal wins again by making most questing in the game available in bite size bits. Say I’m waiting for a pizza to deliver home. I can hop in the game to do a Legendary Crest dungeon and put away my phone right as the pizza arrives. Or if I have a bit more time because I’m at the laundry mat, I can run through some story missions, or just wander around to fill out the rest of the map.

With Diablo IV, even the side quest dungeons can take thirty to forty minutes to complete, and they’re all based on the same formulaic process. Step one, kill the three mini-bosses. (Or kill everything to unlock the next section.) Step two, find the random number of keys to unlock the next area. It might be two mechanical keys, one ward stone, or three bloodstones. But every dungeon drags out the process of getting to the boss.

To add insult to injury, a lot of these dungeons have the same cookie cutter bosses so that nothing stands out. When I was playing through Diablo Immortal the first time, I kept commenting to anyone who would listen that it had some amazing bosses. And yes, once you start doing Crest dungeon runs, they do repeat. But it just feels like there’s more variety to the bosses and mini-bosses in Diablo Immortal.

Oh, and here’s a real important difference. In Diablo Immortal, it’s pretty easy to transfer talents from lower level gear to higher tier stuff. This is really important if you find an ability that you love, but it starts getting weaker within just a few levels.

But in Diablo IV, transferring involves super rare materials to hold onto so-called Aspects of Power, and while the in-game information suggests that these materials can be salvaged from any legendary equipment, the truth is that it’s possible to salvage five or six weapons and still not get one material item. Oh, and you need two to transfer an aspect. So, you know, get on that hamster wheel and keep grinding, bi-yatch.

Lastly, Diablo Immortal is just more generous with content. They launched new zones and new modes as well as a new character class, all for free. This month, they’re launching another new region to play in and releasing familiars to fight alongside the players.

Now to be fair, maybe there’s similar additions in the roadmap ahead for Diablo IV. But I haven’t heard anything about it yet, and so far, the only new stuff is coming out with paid temporary expansions. (More on that later.)

Moving on to examining Diablo IV’s side of this fight, there are some things it does better, such as making it possible to use transmogs to keep a certain style of outfit if I think it looks badass. I can still swap in new gear and get the joy of numbers going up, but my Fashion Souls game can always be on point. And if I do want to see what a new pair of boots looks like, I can just turn off the effect in my inventory, and then turn it back on if I’m not feeling the new stuff.

Of course, Diablo IV has an actual skill tree instead of a list of stuff that unlocks at a set level. This means I have an insane amount of build options to play with no matter which class I decide to play.

For example, I love the Rogue. With their class, I’m able to knock back enemies with the basic attack and topple a whole crowd of monsters to the ground before unleashing a Legolas-like rapid fire volleys of arrows. But when the mobs pack in too tight to make that work, the Rogue can swap to melee weapons and Blade Shift, meaning that they can walk through enemies for several seconds. It is then possible to escape a mob trap without using the dodge or dash. Oh, and of course, dashing can both do damage and stun enemies if two dashes are chained on the same mob, which gets me right back to using that rapid fire technique to mow the monsters down before they can recover. It’s pretty sweet.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with the list of abilities from Diablo Immortal, particularly because of how legendary gear can alter the same skills, allowing for just as much build customization. But Diablo IV brought back the thing that I really loved most about Diablo II, being able to design my own version of Death Incarnate. It’s truly a delight to come up with a new build, and then bring it all together around level thirty.

Finally, what I absolutely love about Diablo IV is being able to skip the whole story and just get into the nitty gritty of making up a new build and running with it. The game without the story offers lots of activities that players won’t even see in the campaign mode, and these can help offer new loot and easier ways to level up.

In the campaign mode, I might not get to level twenty until playing for a day or two. Turning off campaign mode and just going free form berserk, I can do it in about three hours. Getting to forty obviously takes a bit more, but by twenty I can see what my build will look like and decide if I want to invest time to get the other skills. It’s everything I love about dungeon crawling and boss slaying, without having to deal with cut-scenes and all that “No, guy I talked to three times! You were my best friend! *choked sob*

Since we’re about to cover things that both games do well, I might as well mention that neither game’s story left much of an impact on me. I’d give Skarn from Diablo Immortal a slight edge as a villain because I still wanted to kill him when I got to the end of the game. Meanwhile, I didn’t even get out of Act I in Diablo IV before I wanted to join Lilith in wiping Sanctuary of every last Light worshiping fuckface. But still, I wouldn’t give either game credit for writing a good story.

One thing both games do is put a clock on the screen at all times, and I tell you, I wish more games would do that. It’s very easy to fall into that “one more quest” trap and end up staying up late enough to see the break of dawn, and that’s not healthy. So it’s good that in both games, I can look at the time and sort out if I should be pushing for one more quest, or if it’s time to save and quit to get my ass to bed.

Both games offer options to pin a location and created a trail to follow to the goal. This is great because when I need to find a new fast travel point or the entrance to a dungeon, it is way too easy for me to get lost without these in-game navigation tools.

Granted, if I’m just roaming for adventure, both games also let me leave the navigation off and just go wherever I feel like wandering. It’s the kind of freedom I enjoy in gaming, so it’s nice to see both games nail that sense of letting me choose my play style.

This last item is something both games have, but Diablo Immortal wins here as well. The Battle Pass is a familiar means of milking money out of players, made popular by free-to-play behemoth Fortnite. You would think that Diablo Immortal would have the costlier battle pass to make up for being free. You would be wrong. A battle pass for Diablo Immortal is 4.99, and the pass for Diablo IV is 9.99, over twice as expensive. But wait! Act now and pay 24.99, and you can unlock the accelerated battle pass so you don’t even have to earn the items through regular gameplay. That’s right you can just buy all that digital junk by paying one third of the price of the game…every. Single. Season.

A lot of folks gave Diablo Immortal a ton of crap for being a blatant cash grab, and in theory, I agree with them that it has some shady habits like pushing the store front and the limited time seasonal stuff. But did any of you have on your gaming BINGO cards that the mobile Diablo would come off as both less greedy and less stingy with content updates? Because I sure as shit didn’t.

I’ll tell you something else, too. I can see there being a point when I burn out on Diablo IV because the game loop there is kind of limited right now. Maybe Blizzard will come up with better ideas for the season pass, and maybe they’ll add more regions and character classes to try and make it feel fresh. No one can say yet, but right now, I can feel there’s a limit to how much of this loop I can engage with.

Compare that to Diablo Immortal, where I am literally counting down the days until their next update so I can jump back in and check out the familiars and the new zone. I’m even going to give them that 4.99 when the new pass drops on the same day because they have earned it.

So again, could any of you have ever predicted that NetEase would make the better Diablo experience? Because I didn’t, and I don’t think I’ve ever been more pleasantly surprised by a free mobile game.

That’ll wrap up this edition of the versus series, but I want to mention not to expect a review on Diablo IV anytime soon. I’m ready to declare it the loser in this contest, but that doesn’t mean I’m not having a great time with all of the classes. And yes, I’m playing all of them at the same time. So when I come to you with a proper review, you’ll know I’ve squeezed and teased out every last secret this demon stomping simulator has to offer.

Until then, y’all have fun ya hear?

My top Netflix picks for 2023

Some time back, I kind of gave up on doing Netflix nose dives on the blog, mainly because it’s really hard not to do spoilers on second or third seasons for a show, particularly if you haven’t already seen the first season. So I’ve mostly stuck to posting mini reviews on Twitter under Netflix Impressions, and I plan on continuing that. Meanwhile over on BlueSky, I’ve tended to post my thoughts between episodes, and once X implodes, I’ll probably combine the non-spoiler episode impressions with the overall season impressions.

I started thinking that I could do something to help promote the shows I really loved this year by doing a list. Again, in this way, I avoid spoiling anything for you, but I might also be helping you find something outside your normal viewing habits, which Netflix’s algorithm can hide if you haven’t liked anything similar.

Note that this is not everything I watched in the year, or even that I liked, but it is the shows that left a strong impression. So with disclaimer out of the way, here’s my favorite Netflix shows and movies of 2023…

Bee and PuppyCat
This one is going to be a divisive pick for some of you, because there’s some hurdles to overcome. First is the voice acting, which feels phoned in at times. Even in the best of times, everyone sounds somewhat bored during what should be emotional moments. Then there’s the very abstract nature of a lot of episodes that can be kind of off-putting if you were coming in expecting something at the level of Adventure Time or Stephen Universe.

BUT…but for me, the questions raised in the first few episodes were so interesting that I jumped over all the hurdles to see if they got answered. And they do, finally, and the ending is open enough to lead to another series, while also being a satisfying enough conclusion that I’m okay if nothing else comes of the setting and its characters. If you’re willing to overlook its flaws, this is a weird and wonderful series about temp labor employees picking up jobs all over the universe while also running from a mysterious cosmic enemy. Weird? Absolutely, but also delightful in so many ways.

Murderville
Will Arnett headlines probably the most brilliant improv setup in recent memory. Will plays homicide detective Terry Seattle, and every week, he get partnered up with a guest star. Everyone but the guest star knows the plot, and the guest star is improvising their role. At the end, they have to guess who the killer is, and whether they win or lose, almost every episode is pure bliss. The best episode for me is with Marshawn Lynch, but I’ve rewatched them all several times because everyone is clearly having so much fun with the premise. I’m hopeful a second season gets made, and if it is, I can’t wait to see who else they can rope in to play Terry’s partners.

Lockwood and Co.
Based on a YA book series following three ghost hunters as they compete against a much larger company to identify and capture ghosts. In this setting, there was a spiritual apocalypse that killed a lot of people, but exactly what happened and how is mostly hand-waved away in favor of following the more intimate stories of Anthony, Lucy, and George as they struggle to find work and keep the lights on.

Though the series wasn’t renewed for a second season, the eight episodes are divided into two four episode arcs that provide enough closure to feel satisfying. Plus, if you really need to know more after watching the series, you can always get the books, which is what hubby chose to do.

The Law According to Lidia Poët
Set sometime around 1883, this drama follows its titular character on a fantastic reinvention of the real life person who became Italy’s first woman attorney. The show starts with her being disbarred from practicing law and being forced to work with her brother to solve cases. At first, Enrico Poët come off as somewhat antagonistic, but within a few episodes, it becomes clear how much he loves his sister, even as she continually vexes him by pushing back against the role society wants to foist on her.

Lidia is also aided by her brother-in-law, a journalist named Jacopo Barberis. With his connections and her brother’s legal degree, Lidia champions the cases of people that the courts had prejudicially decided were guilty. It’s one part legal drama, one part mystery, and one part historical thriller, and it rocks. Filming wrapped up in October for season 2, so it should hit Netflix early next year. I already feel confident that it will have a place on next year’s list.

Aggrestsuko
Technically, this show started quite a while back, but this year saw what is likely the fifth and final season. I can’t think of too many shows where so many characters evolved in such satisfying ways. Just the transformation of Director Ton from monstrous boss to being Restsuko’s biggest fan was an incredible journey, but add in Haida, Fenneko, Washimi, Director Gori, Tadano, and Tsunoda, and it becomes a show that keeps giving new reasons to go “aaaawwww.” Hell, even the members of the idol band all get the chance to develop beyond just being background props. All of these developments are done with a ton of humor and heart.

If you haven’t joined the Restsuko fan club, you need to give it a chance. It’s hilarious, a little soul crushing at times in the early going, but it all builds to the most satisfying conclusion for everyone, tying all those loose ends in pretty, happy bows.

Extraordinary Attorney Woo
A Korean legal show following an autistic attorney with an obsession for whales seemed like a tough sell for me, but with just one episode, I was hooked and watching two and three episodes per night. In two seasons, it manages to tackle a lot of tough issues, and that it manages to walk a tightrope between humor and drama is a testament to the writers.

Credit should also be given to every member of the cast, many of whom start out with biased assumptions about their newest attorney, only to learn how wrong they are, and to ultimately become her allies. It’s the kind of show that gets more satisfying the longer you watch it, and the only regret I have at the end is that there won’t be a third season.

Handsome
Jeff Garlin and Natasha Lyonne play detectives on a murder mystery that starts with Steven Weber confessing to being the killer of the show. Think of a modern day Columbo, only with more jokes. (Many of them quite raunchy thanks to Lyonne.) It’s a fun movie that feels like a pilot episode to a longer series, and as I said on Twitter at the time, if Netflix decided to go all in for a full season, I would be coming along for the ride.

Uncle From Another World
Like a reverse Isekai anime, a man wakes from a long coma with only his nephew Takafumi still caring enough to watch over him. It turns out that the whole time he was in a coma, he was living in a fantasy world, and he has the magical powers to prove it.

Thanks to one of his spells, he’s able to show parts of his journey to his nephew and Sumika, Takafumi’s best friend. A gaming obsessed nerd, Uncle is oblivious to the harem building around him, and also just as oblivious to how dangerous he becomes as he accumulates power in the fantasy world. It’s a great premise that only gets better with new characters being introduced in both the fantasy setting and the real world. Another show where I’m keenly waiting for the second season to drop.

Bloohounds
Two Korean boxers take jobs working for a kindly loan shark who is trying to track down the head of a scam loan company taking advantage of business owners and the homeless. The conflict between these two forces gets violent and bloody, and it was refreshing to see a villain who is so calculating and believable that when he first outlined his plot for his underling, hubby and I both went, “Wow, that’s actually a really good plan.” It’s also nice to watch a show that gets in to lay out the story, and then closes out without the need for any cliffhangers or concerns about whether a sequel will be greenlit. (And with Netflix, any longer series is at risk of getting cancel-hammered.)

The Wandering Earth
Without seeing a trailer, just the premise of one of China’s most ambitious sci-fi movies was intriguing. With the sun dying, the countries of the world united to build massive rockets to brake the Earth’s rotation, launch it out of orbit, and then fly out of the solar system with the aid of a very risky slingshot maneuver around Jupiter. Roll those words in your head and imagine what that should look like. Then watch the film and see how much bigger and cooler the idea becomes. It’s one part action and one part disaster film, and this combination mixed with awe inspiring special effects, a fantastic cast and a stellar soundtrack make this probably one of the most memorable films I’ve seen this year. The best part? This is PART ONE, and there’s a second film coming soon. Eeeeeee!

The Fall of the House of Usher
The last entry for this year is also the most surprising for me. Based on the trailer, I had zero faith that this idea could work. Instead, the first episode hooked me in with just a few loose ends, questions that I had to get answers for. By the second episode, I was in love, and that continued to the end because every episode is itself a loose adaptation of one of Poe’s stories.

The characters are compelling even as many of them prove just how villainous they can be, and each death of an Usher family member is appropriately horrific, yet oddly satisfying in several cases. Plus, having finally seen the last season of Major Crimes, it was nice to see Mary McDonnell role reverse from hero to reviled monster. Granted, the first episode is a little slow at first, so it might lose some of you before it gets to the good stuff. If so, fair enough. But I think if you stick with it to the second episode, you’ll find it rewards your patience.

So there you have it. As I said at the start, there was a lot of other shows I watched, and many that I liked. But these were the ones that left an impression and had me thinking about them long after we finished them.

On a final note, we’re looking at getting Prime Video this year, but we’re still keeping Netflix. I have yet to decide if I’ll combine both steaming service into a single list of recommendations or if I’ll make separate lists. I might also make more frequent posts like this during the year to promote the stuff I’m loving, so hopefully they won’t get cancel-hammed like so many shows that I loved and wanted to see finish properly. (Not that I’m bitter or anything.)

(I’m lying, and I’m totally bitter over every cancelled good show like October Faction, The Neighbor, God’s Favorite Idiot, Cobra Kai, and Diablero.)