SSFF Media Consumption Blog #1

Hello supporters!

Welcome to our first Media Consumption Blog! This will be a weekly blog posted every friday just talking about what Grace and Derek have been up to this week outside of our video projects.

DEREK

Killing Floor 2 has become my relaxation game lately. I love gears of war horde mode and this is basically that but with evil clowns (part of their summer thing) and mid-00’s metalcore/screamo. I play with headphones because I don’t want to subject Grace to hours of that nonsense! Online has been great, lonewolfing in this game will get you killed almost immediately so teams just naturally work together. It was a free PSN+ game last month and I’ve been getting my money’s worth out of it! Speaking of which, Just Cause 3 my big free plus game this month but I haven’t had a chance to dive in yet. Maybe I’ll talk about that next week

For me the big PAM17 game was Resident Evil 5. We still haven’t actually beaten it but it feels good to finally get it off my bucket list. Though, I have to say it’s about as underwhelming as I thought it would be. First off, Mikami officially exited the RE franchise after RE4 so this was the first game without him and it shows. RE5 is just not as polished as RE4. Controls and weapons don’t have the same tight movement and punch to them. Shooting dudes just aint that fun! RE4 had more variety, vehicle segment, puzzles, and weird set-pieces helped to break up the action. I appreciate things like the lava dragons, mine carts, and trap rooms in RE4 so much more. Basically RE5 is non-stop action that’s not very satisfying. Our copy is the “Gold Edition” though, which has the RE1 throw back DLC (at least I think that’s what it is), and people have told me that’s the best part of the game. So we’ll definitely keep going.

Seven Samurai

Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 epic, revered as one of the greatest films ever made, has been haunting me for years. I bought the blu ray criterion version years ago and i’ve been so intimidated by its three and a half hour long run time. After we wrapped up PAM17, we needed some rest and it turns out this was the cure! Kurosawa’s work, the handful of his films I’ve seen, is surprisingly watchable, long but very deliberately paced and never boring. If you haven’t seen this film you may have seen the western remake Magnificent Seven or A Bugs Life. The film is incredibly well-shot, especially the action scenes towards the end. Had a great time watching it, just need to watch the 2 film-historian commentaries and 3 documentaries on the second disk …

Azumanga Daioh

I don’t like anime, but really really like Azumanga Daioh. A charming show about the otherwise mundane lives 6 high school girls. There are long, series-spanning character arcs, but episode-to-episode it’s pretty much a “show about nothing”. What really makes the show for me is it’s pure heart (mostly), it’s incredible sense of comic timing. Anime is too often about cranking it to 11 at all times, Daioh knows when to let a joke breath and then release for the punchline. It lets them explore the weirder sides of the characters or have whole episodes drift into the abstract. This is something I felt was lost in Nichijo, an anime pitched to me as the “follow up to Daioh”, it was the standard anime thing of outrageous and over the top. But it had no chill! Daioh has chill! And it’s wonderful.

GRACE

Hello everyone! 

When you guys took the patreon survey, one of the recommendations we got was to make a “what we’ve been up to” post. You know, outside of show stuff! Which made me realize that I actually needed to take initiative and make sure I do stuff that isn’t work or show related! 

I struggle with that! Most of the time when I’m done for the day I just play games on my cellphone. The past couple of weeks I’ve been all about Road Not Taken by Spry Fox, which is also out on PS4, Steam, etc. The main thing that draws me to the game is the art style, which is a fun contrast to the grimness of the plot! Basically, you’re some sort of immortal cursed to rescue children from the forest. Why these children in the forest you may ask? It’s because that’s where the immortality granting berries are, of course. It’s overall a pretty competent puzzler, but it also gives you the opportunity to date/marry people by giving them gifts. I have a major crush on the hunter. The puzzles are randomly generated with incremental difficulty, which means there’s a lot of replay value. I can also play it on the bus without getting sick! A major win for me. 

I’ve also been playing Bayonetta 2. Wow, this game is fun as hell! It’s a video game ass video game. My first experience with an action game with similar mechanics was Nier Automata earlier this year, and while B2 is not necessarily a better game, it’s absolutely more fun. Mastering Bayonetta’s combos is pretty difficult and  I even had to bump myself down to easy because I need to practice. Still, I’m working through it and having a blast. I’m sure I’ll have more to report next week.