The load-bearing wall of Giant Bomb that is Chucktowski recently wrote a list of first-person dungeon-crawlers that is woefully incomplete, and I've half a mind to suggest we start a podcast with a few of the other site mods about playing a bunch of DRPG classics. We could all it Cops and Blobbers.

That's a heck no for the Steam Machine. Going to have to hope this base PS5 and 3060 PC will last me a little while longer. And people wonder why there are so many AI haters.

Top Ten Reasons Why You Shouldn't Swallow a Lithium-ion Battery (#2 Will Shock You)

Thinking about how many N64-related items I've been seeing on my feed since I started up "64 in 64" again and had that brief solipsistic fantasy that maybe I had something to do it... until I realized the whole reason I rebooted that blog series was because of the N64's 30th anniversary next Tuesday

If all goes to plan and he's not bewitched too long by the seductive charms of Garry Kitchen's Battletank, Jeff Gerstmann's "Ranking the NES" series should see its finale either tomorrow or next Friday. To celebrate, I created a little tribute. Just a little one. giantbomb.com/user-lists/u...

Man, September (and the first week of October) is going to suck if you're the type who has to buy every game new. Fortunately(?) there's way more broke people around now so I suspect we'll see a lot of long tails on these things instead.

Good to know BlueSky has AI doing all the moderation in addition to the engineering.

Following on from a Giant Bomb meme, I'm hoping that when Falcom finally gives Ys V a big Oath in Felghana/Memories of Celceta-level remake they subtitle it "Kefin's Back, Jack!".

Definitely appreciate Nintendo just remaking old games for the Switch 2, since it means I no longer need to get it. It's like the Wii U but in reverse.

Aw man, Frinkiac got slopped to hell, too? Well, look at the wonders* of the Computer Age now. (*blunders)

They're a Waluigi if they miss, right?

The thing with AI is that it's one of those technological fields like genomics or nanomachines that's liable to break bad very horribly, and we've dozens of examples of speculative fiction that go into how that might happen.

It's odd, but my PS5 was one of the few console purchases I've been second-guessing since I got it (I have a decent enough PC and almost all of the PS5 library is also on Steam). Now that its default RRP is about to be 150% what I paid, it makes me a little happier to have bought in when I did.

Really hoping blogging picks up again on GB, maybe after a few necessary updates once the more pressing stuff gets handled. I'm like 60% of that feed right now and that's a pretty tragic situation no matter who you ask.

In three months' time, if all goes unwell, the US will be led by an 80-year-old Nazi. Or, as they're sometimes called, an achtungenarian.

I'm guessing YouTube engineers are about to face a wave of layoffs and need to push some new code around to prove they're still useful. I can tell because YouTube's usability is way down and half the videos have stopped working.

As soon as I've put "metroidvania" in the grave I'm going after "roguelike/roguelite" next because it's damn embarrassing that you have to keep distinguishing between a genre and its diet version like that. It's like describing a game "it's not as violent as KOF; it's more a Shover than a Fighter."

Been playing some of the fourth SFC Goemon game (Kirakira Douchuu) and, damn, this is considerably worse than the previous three. To the extent that it feels like a completely different team worked on this and biffed it horribly. Makes sense now why they didn't add a numeral to this one.

It should be so easy to make it look like he died naturally of a heart attack, what are we doing here?

If I ever become one with the internet like the Lawnmower Man I'm just going to go around deleting errant apostrophes from the possessive "it's", plurals, acronyms, and numbers in everybody's posts/comments. Like the Greek gods of old I intend to get obnoxiously petty with my omnipotence.

YouTube is perhaps the only website I visit regularly that can both crash and freeze up. A marvel of technology. Will its owners spend any of the billions that site makes on fixing it? Nah, they should spend more on AI algorithms that demonstrably don't work and then pocket the rest. Business 101.

I've been watching someone play Mario 64 for the first time with a sense of smug superiority, since I know the game back to front, when all of a sudden he grabs one of those koopa shells inside the oysters and I'm all "wait, you can do that?". There really is no end to that game's little secrets.

Whenever I see Greg Bovino's name on here I keep thinking it's this guy: achewood.com/2007/11/01/t...

Getting the Plat for Kena was roooooough. That game on its highest difficulty thinks it's Dark Souls and it very much is not. Great looking game though; dig the whole Kubo and the Two Strings aesthetic. Oh, and I recorded this for anyone curious about the difficulty: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkYT...

Now that RetroAchievements has implemented Multiset compatibility I can finally unlock all 852 Dark Cloud 2 achievements in a single playthrough. Should tide me over for the weekend at least.

I'm glad I found out that the PS5 saves video clips of every trophy earned by default sooner rather than later. That would've filled up the ol' SSD quick.

In honor of his creator's passing, Dilbert's tie will be raised at half-mast today.

2025 is officially over with the last Mento's Month of the year! Shoehorned most of my GOTY content into this one, since I'd already written about them all elsewhere, plus thoughts on the season/year's anime and a dramatic finale to that Master System thing I was doing giantbomb.com/users/4945/a...

The monkey power-up alone turns Astro Bot from a 5-star game to a 4-star one. Unforgivable to make speedrun courses with this garbage. (The game also has serious hitbox issues throughout but, man, that horrible ape climbing mechanic in particular though.)

I'm finally done talking about Blue Prince in lists/blogs/whatnot and sad I never got to use the alternative title I came up with, 50 First Estates.

Everyone else was writing GOTY stuff and I let the peer pressure get to me, so here's the Giant Bomb Site Moderators (a.k.a. "Those Jerks") GOTY list that I contributed to: giantbomb.com/articles/gia...

As a writer, I've let go of most of my linguistic bugbears over time because the internet is largely ESL doing the best they can and I don't need to litigate every its/it's typo. Yet using "prequel" incorrectly will always irk the hell out of me. It's a very specific word w/ very specific usage.

I hope the developers of Clair Obscur don't feel dismayed by how many people only refer to it by its subtitle, because to me that suggests everyone wants more from the series and they're only referring to this one by the subtitle to preemptively distinguish it from its sequels.

While writing my year-end review I've been trying to find the right term for an apparent phenomenon where the Japanese government boosts anime/TV about raising kids to address the country's flagging birth rates, and I managed to land on "papaganda".

This one hurts, ngl. www.eurogamer.net/falcom-is-th...

I hope there's a "Best Unseen Character" category for GOTY awards this year, between the jacked nudists of Expedition 60, whomever kept leaving me money in Blue Prince, and this dude (who is someone I can get into) from Avowed:

After seeing folks struggle on some of its new superbosses, I think Clair Obscur's major design insight was taking Final Fantasy X as a template and (correctly) deducing that Sin wasn't the real final boss but rather it was the time when you had to perfectly dodge lightning 200 times in a row.

I'm all for some studios using genAI. With tons of games coming out every year (not to mention the backlog) it'd make things so much easier to know which of them I can safely abandon because they're made from garbage-ass lake-guzzling beep-boop slop.

Just under the wire before the big site transition, I managed to publish the November edition of my usual round-up of game and anime talk. Stick around for thoughts on many potential 2025 GOTY candidates along with... ALF, for Master System. Truly, time well spent. www.giantbomb.com/forums/gener...

Man, I've been playing some Blue Prince but this is not doing anything for me at all. The run-based aspect is really putting me off. I've heard it said that it grows on you once you understand it more so I'll give it a few more runs, but... well, plenty of other games came out this year.

Credits rolled on Clair Obscur. Damn. Lot I want to say but that'll wait for a review. Yet to play much from 2025 but I can't imagine anything will surpass it as my GOTY. Last time a French RPG made me this sad and confused was when I got ate by that giant panther head signpost in Drakkhen.

Of all the surreal and confusing things about Expedition 33, the one that keeps me awake at night is how no-one can do basic math about the Gommage (a.k.a. Compulsory Carousel Age) mechanic.

Look, guys, the holiday Coca Cola commercial might be super rushed AI slop this year but it was vitally important they got it on screens before November 3rd, the first day of Christmas, so what other choice did they have? They're just a tiny company, after all.

Liking Expedition 33 so far but the whole time I was thinking "old French RPGs used to be way weirder and more obtuse than this, it's not really honoring its antecedents". But then I got hit with whatever this is and all was forgiven:

I'm a big fan of City Hunter because it's in my favorite genre, Saebapunk.

New monthly update has landed and I perhaps overdid it this time with the word count. Talking points include: formative frights, puppet parries, aristo assaulting anime, spooky Sega, intriguing Indies, sketchy sudoku, and a really cool Picross 3D variant. Check it: www.giantbomb.com/profile/ment...

Follow @wario64.bsky.social and repost for a chance to win 1 of 5 Steam codes for Once Upon a Katamari courtesy of @gamesplanet.bsky.social. Giveaway closes on Oct 27th, 6:30 PM PT Game is $32.97 on Gamesplanet w/ code KATAMARI buff.ly/j4qOsMG

On the one hand, YouTube updating their video UI so it covers a quarter of the screen for some reason is kinda bad, but at least it's an update that doesn't explicitly involve vindictively screwing with people that use adblockers.

One month before my plan to spend a bunch of Bing points on Game Pass to play some of the year's biggest games before GOTY season, and they just go ahead and discontinue that offer while hiking up the price. Classy.

September update is in the bag. Discussion topics this time: three whole exploraction games since I have no self control, prototype picross, a deluge of SNESsy goodSNESs, crimesolving ducks, space turtles, and the summer's best anime (that I felt like watching): www.giantbomb.com/profile/ment...