The Crimson Pit

 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...