The Crimson Pit

 For whatever reason every time I tried playing Shadow of Mordor something ended up coming in between me and that game that caused me to end each attempt early and never finishing it. Well last week I finally beat the game for the first time. And I have a lot to say about it so let's get into this malarkey right away! Shadow of Mordor obviously takes place within the Lord of the Rings universe. So by default it already has a very good setting with a lot of great lore it gets to explore. And you don't need to know much more of LOTR beyond having seen the trilogy of movies to recognize a lot of stuff here. As someone who really enjoys those movies that already made this game very interesting. Gameplay wise the biggest elephant in the room here is the well known nemesis system. Which I personally found a really great feature in this game. It essentially makes it so the enemy army of captains will have a sort of ability to have random orcs be promoted to new ranks by either taking ...

 One of my favourite band discoveries last year was The Night Eternal. I saw them at the Alcatraz festival in Belgium and became a fan right away! I was initially not even going to go to their set. But while walking around I caught a glimpse of their soundcheck and thought "hey, this sounds really good. I should check this set out". And I'm really glad I did because it ended up being one of the highlights of that festival.  Well last week they released a new album named "Cold Velvet". And I want to have a look at this one today. This is their third album and I've thoroughly enjoyed listening to the first two. They play a unique style of traditional heavy metal with a bit of an occult atmosphere floating around it. And with this third album they keep up exactly this type of sound. Let's have a look.  I always enjoy it when the opening track of an album feels like you're about to go on a big journey. This is pretty much exactly what "Where This Wo...

 About a month ago Splatoon Raiders released on Switch 2. And it has been one of the most fun releases of the year for me this far. I knew I wanted to try it because I haven't played a Splatoon game ever since the first one back on Wii U and I don't particularly care much for online multiplayer anymore. So this single player spinoff seemed like the perfect place to get back into the series. It's safe to say I had a really good time with this game. But before I go into more detail on that I want to mention that like usual with posts like this, I'm going to try and avoid story spoilers and such as much as I possibly can. So with that disclaimer out of the way, let's have a look! The general gameplay isn't much different from what I remember Splatoon being like. You play as a kid that shoots ink and can swim through said ink. You get a lot of special abilities you can use depending on which class you're using and this type of gameplay definitely falls under the...

 Last Friday I was looking through my release radar on Spotify. And low and behold, there was actually something useful in it for once! Here is a band called Maidenhead, who I had not heard of before last week. And as it turns out they just released their first full length album earlier this month! As I was researching this album it turns out there is a very impressive mix of people who worked on it. It was mixed by Randy Burns who has worked on a lot of great albums over the years including releases from Megadeth, Dark Angel, Death and Nuclear Assault. It features guest guitar playing from Chris Poland and Glen Dover, both former Megadeth guitarists. And the bass on this album is recorded by Rich Gray of Annihilator! That's an all star cast to have working on your album, I'm impressed! Of course there is also the band Maidenhead themselves, each of whom have done a very good job here I have to say. The band members themselves seem to be around the same age as I am, which has m...

 Not too long ago I made a post about my favourite Super Nintendo games. I've been wanting to do the same thing for other consoles as well and the first I really want to get to is the Wii. I first got a Wii around the time I started middle school and throughout middle school I've played a ton of great games on it. Including a bunch of my favourite games of all time even.  So let's have a look at the games I enjoyed the most. I don't think there will be any super obscure picks here. But at the same time it's not gonna be just the super popular games either. I think we have a nice mix of things going on here. Now without any further malarkey, let's get into it! #10 - Wii Sports Resort Okay this might be a bit of an obvious pick. Wii Sports Resort was the first game I ever owned for the Wii and I played it an insane amount when I just got it at the time. I also had Wii Sports but honestly Wii Sports Resort was where it was at for me. I spent a lot of time mastering...

 Let's look into another album today! I have one of my personal favourite releases of 2025 lined up for this one. It's the album "...with a Bang!" by Speed Queen. Speed Queen is a heavy/speed metal band from Belgium and this album is their first full length! And what a great way to get started.  I've been following Speed Queen for a couple of years now. I first heard of them when I saw them open for Night Demon in 2023. Then earlier this year I saw them live once again, opening for Mega Colossus this time at Musicon in Den Haag. Before we get into the album I want to mention that that was a fantastic show. They played in front of maybe 30 or so people. But they had the energy as though they were playing in a sold out stadium. I especially enjoyed the way the lead singer Thomas Kenis was manually controlling the stage effects during the set. But let me not get sidetracked too much and let's get into the album! One thing I noticed as soon as I first put this alb...