The Crimson Pit

 I can always enjoy a good arcade racer. And Screamer had been on my radar ever since I saw the trailer for it back at the Game Awards last year. Luckily for me the game went on sale during the Steam summer sale this year. I bought it and started playing almost immediately. This game doesn't seem to have gained a huge amount of traction given the huge platform it got shown off on. And people generally seem very mixed on it. I personally really enjoyed playing through Screamer so let's have a look into it.  I've always preferred arcade style racing games over realistic ones. And Screamer definitely falls under that category. The gameplay has some unique ideas that take some getting used to. But once you've got it all figured out, it feels really satisfying. This game has a boosting and attacking mechanic which isn't anything too crazy on its own. But the way the game goes about it I find very satisfying. When you succesfully attack a driver, the car basically explode...

About a week or so ago I went to see Sacred Reich at Tivoli Vredenburg in Utrecht. They played together with Angelus Apatrida and Velozza. These were all bands I had seen before so I more or less knew what to expect, though it had been a long time since I last saw Sacred Reich so I was curious to see if they were still as good as I remembered. I'm going to go through each set and give my thoughts on them starting with the opener. Velozza This is a band that wasn't new to me, as I had already seen them a couple of months prior to this evening at a different show at Willemeen, Arnhem. So I pretty much already knew what to expect. Bands like this are a great way to open up evenings like this. They complement the other two, more well known bands very well and I imagine shows like this are a great way for them to get new eyes on their music as well. Their newest album "Humanity" is really good by the way, I would check it out if you're into unfiltered modern thrash met...

I've been finally getting into the Final Fantasy games recently. I had never played any of the games before but I've always wanted to try them. During the most recent Steam summer sale I bought the pixel remaster bundle of the first six games and said "you know what, it's time to finally get into this franchise".  So I did. And I've now played through the first three games (and am currently working my way through the fourth). Since these three are relatively short compared to the rest of the series, I figured I'd give my thoughts on all three of them in one go. I will try to keep this as spoiler free as I can just in case someone reads this that still needs to play them. Let's get started! Final Fantasy I  I have to start off by saying that you can definitely tell that this was the very first game in the series. And for me personally it's probably the weakest one out of the first three. I know a lot of people would disagree there but we'll get ...

As a result of the Stonehenge festival in Steenwijk (The Netherlands) I’ve been on a huge death metal listening spree for the past few weeks. And at the very forefront of it has been my personal highlight of that festival, Cryptopsy! For whatever reason I’ve never really listened to their music much before. But leading up to the festival I started listening to all the bands on the line-up and Cryptopsy definitely stood out to me as a band I should keep my eyes peeled for. I stood in the front row for their set and had a fantastic time! What an amazing performance! I especially enjoyed how into it their vocalist Matt McGachy was. His facial expressions were top notch! Since then I’ve been slowly listening through their discography and very much enjoying it. I haven’t been able to listen to every album yet but so far I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve heard. I do think I lean more towards their more recent stuff over their classics. I know, blasphemy. But it’s true, there’s something about...

The Super Nintendo is the console I grew up with. I played a lot of games on that thing. Now what games do I talk about from that library? The answer is obviously “yes”. I don’t want my first post to be about one specific thing and I love me a good top 10 list, so screw it here are my top 10 favourite Super Nintendo games! #10 - Super Metroid I figure most people will consider this to be a very low placement for this game. Admittedly, if I actually played this game as a kid it likely would’ve been higher up. But I was already 26 by the time I first played it so there’s less nostalgia involved. In any case, despite not playing this game until later in life I still had an absolute blast playing it. The exploration feels great, and I have to mention the music as well. This game may have one of the best soundtracks in the SNES library. #9 - Pop ‘n Twinbee I’m typically not the biggest fan of shoot ‘em ups. But somehow this list will feature multiple of them (spoilers I know). Wha...

So... I am finding out really fast that I do not know how to start my random rants. In any case, welcome to the Crimson Pit! My name is Joe Crimson and my two main interests in life are silly video games and very loud music. The purpose of this blog is to write out my random thoughts on games I play, albums I listen to and concerts I visit. Throughout the years of me discussing each of these things in online spaces and occasionally also in real life situations, I’ve realized that a lot of my opinions tend to be a bit out of the ordinary. But they are very explicitly mine and no matter what another person may think on them, I will not shy away from it. I’ve been told numerous times that people enjoy hearing my opinions on things because of how unique they tend to be, and I’ve realized that I usually very much enjoy putting my thoughts to words. And so the idea to start this blog came to mind, and now to life. I’m not going to make this introduction post much longer, because th...