The Crimson Pit

 Earlier this month I finally finished my death metal themed battlevest (for now at least). So let's have a good look at it because there are a lot of patches on there that I want to talk about.  First of all as is probably obvious from the pictures I tried to keep to a specific colour scheme with this one. The vest itself is black with the patches all featuring white and red. This was the third vest I started (though for some reason the fourth I've finished) and I hadn't done a colour scheme like this before so I figured why not?  I think it's safe to say that it has turned out really well! I'm happy with how the mix of white and red looks here. I guess a little bit more red wouldn't have hurt but I think this is good. I've left some space empty above the backpatch just in case I end up running into some local band at a concert or festival that I really want to give a spot to on this vest. Let's look at some of the patches. I'm not going to call out...

 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...

 I'm sure plenty of enjoyers of the interactive medias can relate to that one. But jokes aside, the more I'm clearing out games from my backlog in recent months, the more it feels like I'm just putting drops in the ocean.  So let's have an in depth look in my backlog for a moment. I'm not gonna mention everything that's in there or else we'd be here for days. But I wanted to have a look at how big it truly is and how I'm probably never going to clear it all.  Let me start with the physical backlog. The day before writing this I decided to dedicate some cabinet space specifically to physical games that I have yet to finish. And as you can see in the picture above, there's a lot of it.  Throughout my years of collecting games I've maybe bitten off a bit more than I can chew. One thing that I notice right away in this picture is that there is a lot of Playstation and Xbox stuff. I've had various stints throughout the years where I collected for ...

 I haven't been great at keeping up with new album releases recently. But one thing that I want to do with this blog is share recently released albums that I'm really enjoying. And the first album I want to give an in depth look to is "Eros & Thanatos" by Mouflon. Mouflon is a band who I've been following ever since I first saw them live all the way back in 2017, before they even released their first studio album. When I first started going to local concerts my main city to do so was Arnhem, because it was the only city that was reachable within reason for me at the time that had a venue that housed a lot of metal shows. And with Mouflon being a staple of the Arnhem death metal scene it was inevitable that I was going to run into them at some point. I have now seen them 10 times and hopefully an 11th time will come soon when they celebrate the release of this very album next month. In any case, let me not get too caught up with all the sentimental malarkey and...

 My favourite new release so far this year has to be the new Starfox on Switch 2. I played that game as soon as it came out and I thoroughly enjoyed every second I spent with it.  When this game first got announced it was met with a lot of criticism online (a lot of which seemed very disingenuous I might add). But I thought that this was the best thing they could've done. Because what better way to reboot a series than by making a definitive version of its best entry? Of course there was a lot of discourse about how this was "the same game for the sixth time", but this felt a bit like moving the goal posts to me. Sure, there are multiple games that tell the Lylat Wars story, but that doesn't mean that they are the exact same game. And it's not like there have been multiple remakes already as well, because as far as I can tell this is the first proper remake in the franchise. In any case, with all that malarkey out of the way let's get into the game itself now....

 Not too long ago I made a post where I went through my thoughts on the first three Final Fantasy games since I've been going through that series bit by bit. About a week ago I finished Final Fantasy IV, and this is the point in this franchise where they warrant their own seperate posts per game. Before I get started I want to say that I'm going to try to keep this as spoiler free as possible. I know that some people might read this who are still planning to play these games and I don't want to ruin the fun for them obviously.  I already enjoyed the first three games quite a lot. Especially II even though that seems to be a very disliked entry. And I think I'm getting to the point where I can safely say that I'm going to enjoy most games in this franchise. If not all of them. But first let's get into my thoughts on FF4! A big elephant in the room is how much bigger this game is compared to the first three. It took me well over twice the time to finish this one. ...

 My personal favourite festival of the year has to be the Stonehenge festival in Steenwijk. It's a small festival that's centered around extreme metal. What I love about this festival is that they have always stayed exactly who they are. And they do exactly what they're good at. Just one long day of non stop loud music with a great atmosphere to back it up.  There is no desire for endless growth or biting off more than the organization can chew or any of that type of malarkey (looking at you, Dynamo Metalfest). They know who they are, they know where they stand and they just stay exactly there. Which is a huge part of why this is my favourite festival. Well that, plus the bands that play this festival are always fantastic as well. I love the mix of more well known extreme metal bands and local names that fill the bill here. And with that, let's have a look at some of my personal highlights this year in terms of the bands I've seen! (By the way, the picture below is ...

 I've been playing Monster Hunter since the release of Monster Hunter Tri on Wii back in 2009. Admittedly I wasn't there since the very beginning of the series but I still started playing in what you could effectively refer to as the "old" style of Monster Hunter. And honestly, while I appreciate what the newer games do, I wish they also still made games in this old style.  Back in the day you had to do a lot more preparation and management for your hunts. You also had to figure a lot of stuff out on your own that the newer games basically give you for free. In Monster Hunter Wilds not only does the game immediately give you the location of the monster, but you can straight up press a button and the game will autopilot you to it. I don't find that very fun. I much preferred it when I had to explore the map and figure out where the monsters were myself. And only when I found them I could mark them on the map. This makes me feel like I'm actually hunting a monst...

 I've been making a pretty big dent in my backlog this year. That was very needed because it was honestly getting out of hand a little bit. There are a lot of cool games I've played recently, including some smaller titles that simply aren't big enough to warrant an entire post. So I figured I'd make a little compilation post here to talk about some of the smaller games I've played recently that I really enjoyed. Let's cut the malarkey and get straight into it! Mina The Hollower This is a game that I played on release, so it technically wasn't in my backlog. But I don't know when else I would ever talk about this game so I'm going to include it. This game was developed by Yacht Club, who are mostly known for Shovel Knight, a couple of months ago and I knew I wanted to play it quickly.  It's essentially a sort of mix of soulslike and Game Boy era Zelda. I love myself a good soulslike game and obviously I love Zelda style gameplay as well so this wa...

If you're into thrash metal you're undoubtably familiar with the big 4 of thrash concept. Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax are typically regarded as the 4 biggest thrash metal bands in history. And as such they have adapted this name when they played a show together back in 2010.  I however, have my own little big 4 of thrash. Four lesser known thrash metal bands from Europe who each are special to me in their own way. And I want to talk about each of them for a bit here. Because these four bands together have consistently been my favourite thrash metal bands for the past 10 years or so and I want to show them to as many people as I can. I will include some images from times that I've seen each of these bands live. Let's get started! Crisix We go to Spain for the first band on this list. Crisix has recently returned from a two year hiatus with a new single, that has admittedly had a mixed reception. But in all honestly I'm just happy they're back. Crisix ...