RPG Kitty, now in color

Earlier today, someone posted their latest art on a Discord server I'm in. The pic was a little cat guy garbed like a classic fantasy hero about to embark on a quest. I think the response I has to it is one of my best lines, ever: "Awww, he's a little solution looking for problems."

What's that I said in my Retrospective published yesterday morning? That 2026 wasn't looking to be much better? ...Yeah. Look, there's a reason I'll try to focus more on posting fun stuff about my blog and my gaming. Whatever breather I can offer, I'll give. We can all use it.

1. try not to post things that will get you arrested 2. try not to post things that will make your friends want to off themselves

2025 has been a tough year. Even if mine go well on a personal standpoint, these past 12 months were still taxing. But! I'll spare the details on that and talk about my blog-related joys of 2025, the best and worst that I covered, some fun tidbits, and so on. Here's to hoping 2026 goes better.

call me crazy but it really feels like “World’s Richest Man Creates AI Chatbot That Generates Child Porn” would’ve been a huge international outrage requiring a governmental crackdown not even 24 months ago

Quebec has a TV tradition called the Bye Bye, a sketch show that airs on Dec. 31st at 11:00 PM and lasts till past midnight, which mocks various cultural and political events of the year. This is probably the best visual to come out this year. (Apologies to those who hate being reminded of him.)

Well, being sick has its perks; tonight, I properly finished one of the games I had in my Year Plans... 2026. Yeah, I wasn't expecting that either, but hey, the review is written, I just had to finish the darn thing. Rather proud of myself, really; the game wasn't too easy.

Caught my dad's cold yesterday, so I'm not feeling great for New Year's Eve. Oh well - at least 2025 is ending. Here's to hoping 2026 does go on to be a little better. (My hopes aren't high, but hopes is the best I've got.)

In light of recent Ai related nonsense in the creative industry, I wanted to present some easy-to-digest facts about Generative Ai

Last Friday, I went over the 8 games that had remained in my Year Plans for 2025. Just an hour of each, like an amuse-bouche. This coming Friday will be the proper 2025 retrospective. I'm working on the next articles (on the menu: Music, video game movies, and retro gaming!)

I haven't actually finished the Yu-Gi-Oh! game whose review I've already written. However, I have made decent progress tonight, by beating that game's Seto Kaiba enough times to progress to the next stage. Kaiba should be a Stage 3 or 4 boss, not in Stage 2 alongside Weevil, Rex, Mai and PaniK!

Knives out: the upper middle class are squabbling vicious children who do not deserve their inheritance Glass onion: the new elite are the stupidest murderous cunts alive and deserve your scorn Wake up dead man: those preaching anger as salvation are leading you to death, hope and kindness matter

The article for next Friday is ready! The ever-present retrospective at the end of the year. Not my most demanding article, but one I like to make, even if it's probably less interesting for some people. I am currently working on another article about @needlejuice.bsky.social!

Welp, guess I once again had my hopes too high. Doug is just a goddamn idiot. Maybe good on him if he's been making jokes at Trump's expense, but he legit fails to see the gravity of the situation. He doesn't appear offended or outraged or anything like that.

Now a yearly tradition, my very last article of the year has me play just an hour of every game I wanted to play across these 12 months but didn't get around to. This year? Only eight games remained! Let's see what these are. I swear I'll come out of this article wishing I had also finished these!

We're a few hours ahead from Christmas, so I'll do it here before I forget (or family activities pull me away from the computer): Merry Christmas, everyone! May you have a great day, may you be surrounded with love and/or friendship and enjoy the eve and the holiday.

I want to take a moment of reflection. I don’t post a lot of threads anymore (bc really who wants to read them) but this seems like a good time to make a few points about wins & losses & surviving & fighting during the Trump administration’s siege on democracy. Especially as 2025 comes to a close.

I don't want to work from noon to 9 today... The last couple hours, in particular, will be so boring.

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

ACK! With everything today, I forgot to post the Other Results article! There you go. It's a lot more dry (I didn't include any images), and most conclusions were pretty simple to reach even without having to go through data collection/research, but I still think this is fun to share anyway.

Even I, who despise Doug, will be a little more nuanced about this and say that the most likely thing is: DHS needed a basic meme to "speak to the kids" about their shitty views and just picked whichever one they could find, and the one they took just happens to be that one of Doug/the NC.

And if you don't believe me? Here's a trick: Tell it it's incorrect about something it was actually *right about* and watch it attempt to backtrack, and spin up some other bullshit. Again, two or three "You're wrong/incorrect" will prove these are (technically and philosophically) bullshit machines

🚨 Andrew Tate has been BATTERED and comprehensively beaten by a novice boxer, Chase DeMoor

this is a Canadian petition to uphold charter rights for transgender and minority communities if youre Canadian, please sign it. if youre not Canadian, please share it. www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en...

At the end of October, I had set up a survey in which people could answer whether they played, owned, or knew about the games I covered across 12 years of Planned All Along. The fourth option was, "Never heard of this game".

Classic Canadian winter experience. There are so many videos like this one going around. My personal favorite is:

“AI is just being used as a placeholder” is the new “I am a fucking dickhead.”

what do they gain from this

Alright! Most obscure games list for this coming Friday: Ready for publication! Follow-up article to the list: Written, needs editing. Year Plans, What I've Missed: Almost finished writing, all 8 games played for an hour. Retrospective 2025 and 2026 plans: Not started yet!

This movie has the same chaotic energy as the Looney Tunes and Mel Brooks' movies. It's a damn masterpiece of animated comedy. (P.S. check out Snuff Out The Light, Yzma's song from the original, "much more classic Disney"-style script. Eartha Kitt rocks that song.)

I think it's kind of beautiful that this was Rob Reiner's final line on television

This man is a hero. There's no better word.

Currently planning out my 2026 gaming! I've got a list of 40 or so games, I probably won't play them all (Been doing this since 2023 and, so far, I never have), but the hope will be to do as many of them as possible.

Not gonna lie, I am a bit hyped for Avatar: Fire and Ash. I did see some discussion that the film might go with Quaritch (now a Na'vi clone of his former self) ending up joining the new tribe. And I could totally see that as a shadow/dark copy of how Jake joined the Omatikaya in the first film.

Just realized, the new Avatar and the new Spongebob movie come out exactly on the same day. Barbenheimer people have the option to do something really funny.

Hm... currently checking for which games I'll play (or try to) and review in 2026, and I realized I now have four sets of dual games: Two System Shock, two Ori and the Blind Forest, two Guacamelee and two Super Lucky's Tale. Wonder if I should do just one of each...

Dammit HowLongToBeat, why are you so damn slow this morning?

🐺🥕🍅🥦 Intermarché "Unloved"

You English speakers never got to enjoy the MCU where Tony mocks Ebony Maw by calling him Voldemort instead of Squidward, and where he also calls Nebula the Smurfette rather than the Blue Meanie.

ICYMI: Finished my RE4Wii review last Monday. That one was a lot of work, so I decided to take it easy this week and post nothing on Friday. (Besides, I'm busy preparing the final articles of the year and setting up my 2026.)

Just played my first hour in Final Fantasy VII, a game I had never touched before. It was in my Year Plans for 2025 but I ran out of time for it! Oh well, I still experience a small fraction of it. As I said before, no article tomorrow, I'm getting everything ready for the end of the year.

I published a lot these past few days... I think I'll take this coming Friday off. Expect my Top 12 nextm Friday (Dec 19th), my Year Plans: What I've Missed a week later (the 26th), and the year retrospective on January 2nd. Then, a music article, and then, three film reviews.

Last Saturday, I went to see FNAF 2 in theaters. Here are my thoughts.

If you're a deer that was at MFF, at the Hyatt Regency, that went thru TSA Precheck at ORD Terminal 5 at 8:45am, you left your deer head base on the conveyor! I stood with it for 15 mins hoping you'd come back, then told a TSA agent what it was (+ how $$ it is) and they put it at their front desk 🙏

Final part! The Wii edition includes several extras from previous releases of RE4; so, because I'm thorough, I'm playing through them as well. Separate Ways, an entire secondary campaign starring Ada Wong; Assignment Ada, a shorter thing also starring her; and the Mercenaries Mode.

My very last time asking for this, I promise! If you've got abouut half an hour of free time, help a guy out - I'm still looking for new responses to this survey of mine, so I can pinpoint the most obscure games I ever covered. Already filled it? Please share the link around!

For the next two years, I was thinking of very specific themes for my movie review months. For 2026, I've got a few movies I've wanted to review for a while, and all three involve someone being stuck in a game world. For 2027, I currently have 3 horror or horror-adjacent video game fims waiting.