AUSTIN, Texas — Local man Greg Halpern, 36, whose social media profiles describe himself as “normal dude who doesn’t like to get political,” is moments away from launching into a monologue that will, without question, be a mind-boggling string of nonsense, buzzwords, dog whistles, and conspiracy theories you will ever witness outside of a 4chan post, employees at the bar you are in warn.
“Yeah, I just don’t really get into politics,” Greg lies, as though he’s about to follow it up with a calm reflection on bipartisan cooperation. Instead, within the next 30 seconds, you will be listening to an unhinged tirade about how Wi-Fi is erasing 9/11 from people’s memories, armadillos are government drones sent to spy on Texan culture, and how the show “Survivor” is just a false flag operation to disrupt the governments of lower-middle-income countries.
Locals are very much aware of Halpern and his, supposed, apolitical stance.
“He claims that the shit he says isn’t political because he ‘hates everyone equally.’ He’ll casually reference ‘the way things are these days’ and drop vague mentions of ‘doing research’ and then he hits you with the wildest thing you could possibly imagine,” bartender Turner Casey said while avoiding making eye contact with Halpern. “He’s like a human mad-libs just spilling combinations of proper nouns and verbs you’d never think would go together. One day it is about how Lucky Charms are radicalizing kids and tomorrow it’s about how Ancestry.com is using our DNA to create brain matter that can legally vote. I mean, I can’t say it’s political because I don’t think he even knows who the president is. And trust me, he doesn’t have schizophrenia or anything like that, he’s just…Greg.”
Dr. Linda Crowley, a professor of Conspiracy Theory Psychology at the University of Texas, weighed in on Greg’s unique worldview.
“Individuals like Greg exhibit what’s known as cognitive scattershot syndrome,” Crowley explained. “They take unrelated concepts—like Bigfoot and the IRS—and combine them into elaborate narratives that feel internally logical to them. It’s like their brain is playing a game of six degrees of government interference. To them none of this feels political because, in their mind, it’s not about left or right—it’s about uncovering the ‘truth.’”
At press time, Greg was saying something about nanochips in organic kombucha without picking up the hint that you stopped listening a long time ago.
RENTON, Wash. — Wizards Of The Coast is releasing a new format to address concerns about Magic: The Gathering’s cost and complexity being an impediment to newcomers.
“Magic has been a beloved brand for more than 30 years, but we want to welcome new players of all abilities into our world. To address this, we’ve developed the ‘Barrier To Entry’ deck retailing for $200, which is quite reasonable considering the value of cards on the secondary market. The set features simplified foil-embossed card designs, and we’ve made adjustments to make it easier to learn and play,“ said Hasbro Marketing Representative Audrey Ryder. “Magic collectors will also love the new mechanics, additional mana colors, resized cards, and new sleeves and other accessories.”
Aspiring players are excited to purchase the new deck as a way to dip their towns in the Magic waters.
“Magic was popular when I was stationed in Afghanistan, but for obvious reasons, it was impossible to jump in,” said newcomer Crystal Rafferty. “When I returned stateside, the hostility to teaching a newcomer was more tense than the warzone. So the ‘Barrier To Entry’ set was perfect, but when I got home, I realized I just got the Land Deck. Once I buy the additional Spell Deck, Creature Deck, and required hardcover New Players Guide, I’ll be ready to hold my own at my local comic shop’s Friday Night Magic tournaments.”
Longtime players seem skeptical about incorporating yet another style of play.
“I have devoted decades of my life to MTG, learning dozens of formats, investing my Christmas money on the best Commanders I could get, scraping some of the best decks because of lame banlists only to build myself up again, but nothing makes me happier than nuking noobs and collecting antes,” said Tournament player Stephan Fulton. “But enough already! I love Magic, as anyone on the subreddit will tell you, but how many times do I have to grab up new decks, learn new play styles, deal with new house rules? Sure I’m grabbing the new set, but Hasbro will hear about this, they’ll have to send all the Pinkertons to shut me up!”
At press time, WOTC announced they will be sundowning the “Barrier to Entry” set, and announced a completely new product “Planescrawler” set for new players.
Cricket: Jae’s Really Peculiar Game is a pretty familiar JRPG – they put it right there in the subtitle, after all – with particular influence from the RPGs of the Super Nintendo’s catalog. For its combat, the most direct point of comparison is something like the various Mario role-playing game series. Character statistics, equipment options, and available actions in combat are all relatively uncomplicated. Combat is supplemented by opportunities to increase damage dealt or reduce damage taken with timed inputs, similar to the Action Commands in Paper Mario, Mario and Luigi, or Super Mario RPG.
And for the record, they’re called Action Commands in the SMRPG remaster. You can’t touch me, oldheads.
Cricket is also the story of a group of kids with complicated parental relationships trying to travel to the moon to be granted wishes. Jae, his best friend Zack, the mysterious-yet-bubbly Symphony and a party of new friends they meet along the way are trying to reach a place on the moon called Yimmelia, where wishes are granted. Along the way, they’ll fight shark gangsters, take over for an indisposed singer, attend a fan convention, and witness grim episodes of ancient history through a series of mysterious magical fires. It can be a bit much.
Generally, the difficulty level is not terribly high. I assume that this is intended at least in part to maintain accessibility for children, and I can’t fault the developers for not trying too hard to satisfy the weird obsessive RPG nerd in me. There is also a button marked Win in the combat menu, which does in fact make you win the fight. This is a great way to give the player control over their experience of the game, but I can’t say it reflects positively on my experience with the game’s combat that I found myself habitually skipping encounters.
In its overall atmosphere, tone, and presentation, Cricket draws heavily on the comedic elements common to many games in the genre. In particular, with its party of young children fighting with things other than weapons, assortment of weird enemies, and main plot kicked off by a character crashing to earth outside a small town and delivering a somewhat mysterious call to adventure to our heroes, Cricket wears its love for Earthbound on its sleeve.
Symphony (pictured immediately following her own crash landing) does fare better than Buzz Buzz in the longer run, though.
A brief aside: as someone five years younger than Earthbound, I have to say that the combination of elements reminds me of nothing so much as the MARDEK series of Flash games. Admittedly, I make this particular reference not so much to help the average person reading this review understand me as in the hopes of making a handful of readers go absolutely wild that someone mentioned MARDEK.
Like many games with comedic elements, Cricket does not devote itself entirely to laughs, but seeks to balance its humor with a more serious story. All of the main party’s characters have problems in their relationships with their parents, which act as major defining elements for their characters. Jae’s mother is recently deceased and he hopes to use his wish to return her to life, Charlie is affected by their parents’ absurdly high expectations, and Zack wants to challenge his absent father to a boxing match to prove his own worth. I found all of these relationships compelling. They make for great motivations, and the character writing surrounding them is consistently excellent.
In a thread that plays out mostly in parallel to the others, the party occasionally comes across strange white flames. If anyone other than Jae touches these, they just get burned, but when Jae touches them he experiences visions of unknown people in various scenes – some tragic, some nostalgic, and some desperate and terrifying.
Naturally, the paths of the story gradually converge, but the white flame story spends quite a lot of time on the sidelines, playing out in tantalizingly small moments interspersed through the game.
Ultimately, for most of the time that I spent on Cricket’s gameplay and more comedic writing elements, I just wanted to get back to the serious parts. On one hand, I like to think that reflects more positively on the quality of the dramatic writing than it does negatively on the other elements. On the other hand, it still makes for a frustrating experience.
I like Cricket well enough, but I certainly don’t love it. If you like the comedy or the combat more than I do, you’ll probably find the game suits you better. And if anyone involved in writing for the game has done anything a little more focused on the dramatic, I would be thrilled to give that a try. – Bex Kane
[Cricket: Jae’s Really Peculiar Game, developed by Studio Kumiho and published by PM Studios, is now available for $24.99 for PlayStation 4&5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Steam, and the Epic Games Store. This review was written using a Steam review code sent to Hard Drive by Cricket’s PR representative.]
——–
Meanwhile, on the other end of the emotional spectrum, I’ve been killing a lot of people in I Am Your Beast.
I needed something fast and snacky, and that’s IAYB: a parkour FPS where every stage is only a couple of minutes long. It’s an elaborate carnival of bespoke violence that rewards you for creative kills, quick decisions, and never slowing down.
You play IAYB as Alphonse Harding, a government assassin who retired to a quiet life in an unnamed forest. When his former commanding officer Burkin sends a couple of goons to retrieve Harding for what would be his sixth “one last job,” Harding has a moment of weakness and kills them both. Burkin does not accept that as an answer, and the situation rapidly degenerates into an all-out war between Harding and his former agency.
When you write out its premise like that, it makes IAYB sound like it’s an intense, desperate stealth game in the spirit of Metal Gear Solid. It isn’t. Harding vs. an actual army is an even fight, as Harding is a superhuman monster who can punch heads off, ignore multi-story falls, and run at full speed across telephone lines. I kept expecting a story beat about how Burkin wanted his nanomachines back, but one did not materialize; Harding’s apparently just cool like that.
As a result, IAYB could be usefully described as Tom Clancy’s Friday the 13th. Every stage opens with you emerging from hiding to lay waste to another squad of hapless soldiers with whatever you can get your hands on. If you die, it’s more likely that you screwed up than that the soldiers were actually able to kill you.
Your goal is always to accomplish your objectives and escape in as little time as possible, but every soldier you drop along the way gives you a bonus to your final score. This is less about figuring out the most efficient intended path through each level and more about your personal execution, as there’s always room for creativity along the way.
It’s hard to convey how fluidly IAYB moves with still shots; it’s worth watching its trailer to see it in action. Its graphics are relatively simple; every soldier is the same anonymous goon in cold-weather gear, and every piece of dialogue is plain text against a still image. That’s all in service of emphasizing the raw speed at the heart of the experience. IAYB has been stripped down to its barest elements, in a way that’s vaguely reminiscent of Harding himself. It’s simple, but it works.
I do want to draw a straight line between this and last year’s El Paso, Elsewhere. Both it and IAYB were written by Xalavier Nelson Jr., who also voices both games’ protagonists, and he’s given them both the same sense of humor. Both Harding and James Savage are so anesthetized – Harding by his experiences, Savage by actual drugs – that the best reaction they can muster to anything is usually a little ultra-dry quip. I still got a chuckle out of a couple of moments in IAYB, but after clearing El Paso, I had a distinct sensation of deja vu.
In more germane commentary, it’d be nice if IAYB was a little more precise. It feels like the developers added in some generous auto-aim to compensate for fiddly physics, as every once in a while, I found myself scoring clean headshots against distant targets with no effort whatsoever.
That didn’t translate to some of the movement mechanics, especially Harding’s stomp, where you can take out a grounded target by landing on their head. There are a couple of stages where your only initial move is to jump off a ledge onto some unsuspecting soldier, and it’s too easy to overshoot them for no particular reason.
It also has a weird gimmick where several stages are gated behind your level rank, so you’ll occasionally have to replay older stages in order to unlock later story missions. It’s not a bad way to train the player to handle some of the tougher challenges in the endgame, but it does create a dissonance between the narrative and the gameplay. In an experience that’s mostly about momentum, IAYB forces you to shift into reverse several times, and it’s never not jarring.
Even so, a blind run through the story campaign takes about 6 hours, if that, and IAYB has the good sense to end before it runs out of ideas. If you’re in the mood to play something that’s fast, accessible, and doesn’t burn an hour on setup before it gets to the good parts, I Am Your Beast has you covered. – Thomas Wilde
[I Am Your Beast, developed byFrosty Pop and published byStrange Scaffold, is now available for $19.99 on Steam. This review was written using a Steam code purchased by Hard Drive.]
HOLLYWOOD — Joker fans across the globe were reassured today after Joker: Folie à Deux’s writer and director Todd Phillips confirmed that incel sensitivity readers were used during production.
“There’s nothing more important than fair and accurate representation,” said known anti-union activist and self-proclaimed director Todd Phillips in a press interview. “Our massive audience of incels sees something in Joker. Identifies with him. As a voluntary incel myself, I knew the only way to accurately portray the character was to recruit a team of sensitivity readers well-versed with this culture.”
“It’s important for us to continue to push boundaries,” Phillips continued. “Right now, Hollywood won’t let you say anything controversial. You have to be opposed to Hitler and want a decent standard of living for everyone if you wanna succeed. Well, not on my set. It’s time to take a stand and give voice to the most oppressed minority of them all: men who hate women.”
Todd Phillips wasn’t the only one to speak about the sequel’s direction. Many of the sensitivity readers were happy to speak out about their experience on the film.
“It’s been an honor working on the sequel,” said sensitivity reader Robert Cane. “As much as I’d enjoyed the first film, I had some criticisms. Like the abundance of minorities and how that Sophie chick didn’t immediately sleep with Arthur, even though he clearly deserved it. That was really offensive to the community. But Todd’s looking to make amends,” Cane continued. “He’s already agreed to several important changes, like cutting out any female dialogue that isn’t laughing at Arthur’s jokes, and promising a minimum 80/20 wage-gap split in favor of male cast members. It’s taken until 2024, but finally, men around the world have a film made in their best interests.”
However, amid the praise, concerns have been raised. Some sections of the incel community are worried about Phillips’ ability to continue the Joker franchise.
“Nothing against Todd of course,” said comic book writer and inadvertent gay rights defender Chuck Dixon. “He did a fine job with Joker. If it weren’t for the Hangover 2, I’d be fully on-board with a Phillips sequel. Yet if the past is anything to go by, there’s just no guarantee he’s got what it takes. I mean what was with his insistence on showing us that Asian guy’s dong?”
At press time, Todd Phillips was ushered off stage after breaking down into tears, claiming he was a “nice guy.”
The year is 2024. Humanity has fallen. A semi-niche fantasy RPG with dragons and magic includes minority groups I personally dislike.
Clearly, the world has come to an end before my very eyes.
As I write this, from my secured apartment bunker in an undisclosed location right next to a cute little corner store still untainted by the forces of Woke, I hear banging at my front door.
“SELECT THE OPTION!” I hear them yell, as the Mad Mew Mew battering ram slams into my door. “SET YOUR GENDER OPTION TO NONBINARY, NOW!”
I clutch my Macbook, burning my hands as it struggles to run my stolen early copy of Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I don’t even like Dragon Age, but alas, for the forces of Facts and Logic, I must play. I must look. I have to.
I won’t relent. I may only have a 6th grade education, but God damn it, I know that boys don’t have boobies, and girls don’t fart. The transgender horde can’t convince me otherwise.
How could they? How could this game I don’t really care about lay down their morals? It’s a medieval setting! They can’t do complicated surgeries! Their magic doesn’t let them! It’s just not historically accurate!
My door comes down with a slam. The Woke Mob with their pronoun pins and blue hair, grab me by the shoulders, claiming my suffering laptop. “No!” I yell. “You can’t do this! The franchise’s integrity—”
I’m cut off by what appears to be their terrifying leader, a towering, glass-eyed shark-thing, fins plush even as the ‘IKEA BLAHÄJ’ tag scrapes my cheek. “Shh, we have you now. Put on the thigh-highs, and you will be spared.”
I thrash and scream as the socks are put on. Cheap, striped, straight off Amazon, another company bent to the will of the Left. I feel my will fading. I black out.
When I come to, alone in my suspiciously pristine apartment, I look down to find my Macbook in my lap, Veilguard open. To my horror, my untouched character now has *horrific* top surgery scars. I gasp in shock at the tiny, barely visible lines below my character’s chest. I can’t remove them — that would mean they’ve won.
Sobbing, I curl up on the floor, writing a tweet and sending it as tears stream down my face.
The Lost Woods – After having a large rock dropped on his head by a deranged silent lunatic, a local Korok was shocked to learn that he is no longer covered under the Great Deku Tree’s health insurance.
“I was just minding my business, hiding from my buddy Hestu, and this blonde kid uprooted the rock I was under. After realizing he wasn’t Hestu I tried to reason with him, giving him my one and only possession, he took it and still clonked me on the head!” said the small woodland creature sporting a large head bandage, “After describing my assailant to law enforcement they told me the one person who matched my description died 100 years ago, can you believe this?”
The Koroks, who are children of the forest, protected by the Great Deku Tree, are typically covered under a lucrative health insurance policy complete with great benefits and a low copay.
“I have no idea how this coverage plan could have lapsed,” said the Great Deku Tree, stoically sitting where he has for the last 10,000 years. “I guess I have been pretty busy watching over this sword that seals the darkness, and then there’s the whole Calamity Ganon thing people are freaking out about, maybe I just spaced on that one payment, I do have over 900 children after all, you try keeping all those insurance records straight.”
Dr. Omar Ellixson, a Hyrulian health care practitioner, is one of the few Hylians who can see the species of little wooden people, making him the sole Korok medical professional this side of Death Mountain.
“It’s an extremely busy practice,” said Dr. Ellixson in between patients. “Some of these little guys have been living under a rock for decades, overdue on vaccinations and routine medical checks. I wish we could provide affordable healthcare to all the species of Hyrule, but the greedy capitalists in Hyrule Castle would rather squeeze every last rupee out of the little guy.”
At press time, the poor concussed Korok has had to join the Hestu Dancers just to afford his skyrocketing medical bills.
HYRULE — In the wake of Princess Zelda finally starring in her own adventure, it’s come out that her salary for the project was the equivalent of 20 green rupees for every purple rupee Link was paid despite him taking a back seat this time.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous honestly. Zelda works just as hard as Link. More actually because she actually speaks,” said Zelda’s advisor Impa. “Not only was she paid less than what Link gets paid for his adventures but she was paid less than what Link was for this adventure. The Princess was more than happy to accept the salary because she just wants to make sure that girls finally have an adventure for them but I won’t be as nice about it. It’s one thing when she’s just a supporting character but she’s saving him this time, why is Link still making more? She can barely buy a pack of bombs with this salary.”
Rauru, one of the seven sages, was quick to defend giving Zelda a smaller wage than Link.
“Look, it has nothing to do with her gender, it’s just economics. When it comes to these adventures, people come for Link, he’s a known draw so he gets paid accordingly regardless of how much more work Zelda does or the fact that she’s the star of this one and he’s barely in it. When people hear The Legend of Zelda, they want to hear about one of Link’s many legendary adventures, it’s a risk just having a Legend of Zelda be about Zelda. Boys think that’s icky. Also she’s a nepo baby, she’s fine regardless of what we pay her.”
For his part, Link was very supportive of Zelda getting paid more for her work.
“…..” said the Hero of Hyrule before giving an enthusiastic thumbs up when asked if Zelda should get a higher salary.
At press time, Zelda was reportedly breaking into homes and smashing pots to increase her earnings.
NEW YORK – What do saving the Ranchini Queen in Mass Effect and majoring in communications have in common? Both have little to no impact in the grand scheme of things according to new research.
A Nielsen Media Research survey exploring the connections between gaming and hopelessness found that 99% of millennials who played Mass Effect 3 reported being less surprised by most of their decisions being irrelevant later in life. Brenda Mahoney, Head of Gaming Research with Nielsen, broke down their findings in a press conference at Nielsen headquarters earlier this week.
“In our response pool of over 25,000 millennials, we found that those struggling with finances, work-life balance, or family matters had an easier time accepting how pointless their choices were if they completed Mass Effect 3 in its entirety,” lamented Mahoney, a late-millennial herself. “If something as big as curing the Genophage and restoring the Krogan race meant so little, who gives a crap who you marry or have kids with, am I right? In the grand scheme of things, your choices just do not matter. That’s a pill a majority of millennials are finding easier to swallow these days, thanks in part to playing Mass Effect 3.”
Researchers at Nielsen were dumbfounded by just how universal these findings were. No matter the respondent’s sex, gender, socioeconomic background, or side they took in the console wars, Mass Effect 3 was continuously cited as a major factor in hopelessness. Mahoney continued the press conference, breaking down the methods used in the survey.
“We simply asked millennials when they gave up hope. The prompt asked for a year, but respondents opted to type in video games instead,” Mahoney said, pointing at a pie chart mostly made up of Mass Effect 3 responses. “We also found that gamers who gave up hope as a result of playing Mass Effect 3 were more likely to engage in questionable behavior like enrolling in graduate school, racking up credit card debt, or playing Destiny 2.”
It’s not all doom and gloom out there though. Mahoney wrapped up the press conference by discussing ways millennials can combat that general feeling of hopelessness.
“You can die,” Mahoney said sternly. “If that’s not an option you can always replay Baldur’s Gate 3.”
At press time Mahoney had retired to her office for the day to replay the Garden of Salvation raid in Destiny 2.
Alright hey howz it going. My name is Salvatore Del Smuccio I’m from Brooklyn, OBVIOUSLY, and I’m here to review this here new Penguin show on HBO Max or whatever the heck it’s called nowadays. I’ve watched every episode of this thing and I gots lots to say and I think you’ll find all of my thoughts on the matter well researched and insightful.
Oh! Whoa! Hey what’s going on here? We gotta bang bang right away and then bada bing this fat son of a gun is dumping a body and shooting at a bunch of kids! Whoa! Oh no no no. That’s not a what mama taught me. No sir, this here Penguin is one bad Goombah and now he’s gotta little goombah driving him around whoa!
Aye What da hell is this show? Come on?! What are ya even showing me?! What the hell is the matta wit you, come on now? What do I look like? Where’s the gabagool at? I can’t watch this no more! What would my mama say?!
Oh! Whoa! No! Waz he doin’ now would ya look at that?! This Penguin oh my god! Come on! Come on!?! You gotta be kidding me! Whoa oh oh Whooooaaaaa! What’s a goin’ on here now this guy is one dirty son of a focaccia, Oh!
Whoa! No! I Know he not gonna do this! Don’t do it you bad bambino I swear to god if you do it Oh no! Oh he did it the big broccolin did it. Oh Penguin you fat son of a gun wazza mara you? Where’s the respect, Oh! He ain’t no piasano I’d share a gabagool with. No no no.
Oh Whoa whoa whoa! No no no! Ah Penguin you fat dirty rat oh no. What is this? No I can’t keep doin this with you Penquin. Oh! Where’s the Batman when ya need him. Gotta come get this evil son of a pepperoni. I can’t stand this goomba! Ah! Turn it off Lucia!
Wha?! Whoa! No oh oh! Waz goin on now? No no no no! This guy right here. What are we doin here come on. I mean what are we doin here!?!?! What is this supposed to be? No oh oh oh whoa whoa oh!
Ho oh oh! Whaz this here? No not his mama. Oh no. Oz what are ya doin’ here. Come on now! Whoa!?! Not that! Oh no no no. No more please. What is this here, oh whoa! Ah! Oh he made his face look like a pile of ol gabagool oh no! Whoa!
Alright then. That there was all my thoughts on the penguin show. Guy seems like a big bad galoomba who ain’t worth nothin’ but hey that’s just me. I guess ah 4 out of 5 stars and Colin Feral was uh pretty good. I’d share a slice with ‘im. But not that dirty fat penguin! Whoa!
NEW YORK — A recent poll of experts showed broad consensus that learning to code is the easiest way for Americans to remain competitive while trying to get a job in 2014.
“It has never been a better time for people with a degree in coding and also a time machine,” says Jack Riggs, founder of a coding bootcamp that made $20 million last year. “I always recommend people learn to code. Then I tell them to watch ‘Orange Is The New Black’ and buy a Wii U. Coding is an essential life skill, like doing math or churning your own butter. Plus, coding teaches people how to toil away in obscurity; and there are always new roles that require people to toil.”
Similar sentiments were echoed by from Sheina Wang, a former HR professional who runs a staffing agency in Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
“If you can choose any career, I’d recommend ‘NBA Player’ or ‘Influencers With A Famous Ass’, but learning to code is good too,” Wang explained. “Companies always need code – this is why they spent so much time teaching computers to write it for them. And, compared to 2014, the job market in 2024 is much broader and more diverse. And by diverse, we mean it’s mostly being done by cheap overseas workers and robots.”
MIT Professor David Tinsdale believes that concerns over automation may be overstated.
“Artificial Intelligence can already beat most programmers in their three major skill-sets: writing code, automating repetitive tasks, and lying about their level of knowledge,” the Professor claims. “However, that doesn’t mean it will eliminate programming jobs. It’s just going to the nature of the work programmers do. For instance: previously, programmers spent most of their days fixing errors and writing boilerplate code. In the future, they’ll have new responsibilities – like driving an uber or filming homemade pornography.”
At press time, Riggs advised today’s youth to pay $20,000 for an unaccredited certificate in PHP and figure out the time travel part later.
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