Finishing this today. Bring out the swear jar, I’m gonna need it.
The World That Never Was – Riku (Continued)
Uh oh.
Pretty much every boss in this part of the game has a move that takes us down to 1 HP. Fuckers.
Riku has found Sora trapped in an energy sphere, sleeping, and being consumed by darkness. Out of Sora’s body forms a cloaked figure with red eyes. This thing, called the Anti Black Coat Nightmare, is a tough boss, and it’s a sign of what I should expect for the rest of the game. We’re almost at the end. That said, my first fight against this guy, and realizing just how difficult it was, encouraged me to go back and train some more. Not a fan of grinding, but I will if I must. I overcame this first challenge, the first of four final bosses.
I hope you haven’t forgotten to level up Riku; it’s only him for all four battles. Who cares about Sora, whom you’ve been playing for literally his own half of the game so far?
How long have these cutscenes been going on? I just want to mash my Keyblade in his smug face already!
Anti Black Coat disappears, and Riku tries to get through to Sora, the same words heard in the dream. To no avail. Riku hears Terra-Xehanort’s Heartless, Ansem, saying that Sora’s heart belongs to the darkness now. When the villain asks why Riku hasn’t returned to the real world, the teen understands: He’s been in Sora’s dreams the whole time. His shirt bears the mark of a Dream Eater, because he has basically become one. When he saw the hooded figure at the start of the Exam, he subconsciously landed into Sora’s dreams to protect him. Darkness appears under Riku’s feet and he is sucked in.
I watch the playthroughs from other people and realize, if I was struggling that bad... was it just because I was underleveled and didn't know? Could be, considering how often I went back to level-grind between attempts against all these bosses...
He reappears floating in a void, facing Ansem. The villain tries to get Riku to accept the darkness again, but the teen’s resolve is to fight it and its users. Stage 1 starts in the void, with Riku attacking the boss whenever possible, just waiting on a chance to do a Reality Shift. That move transfers the fight to solid ground, where Dream Eaters can help; Ansem fights using his Guardian, which can shield him from frontal damage (but leaves his back open).
His second phase is worse. Ansem merges with his Guardian, and that’s what we fight. This asshole loves to push you to the far end of the arena, and then load up lasers that hit fast and mini-black holes that you can get sucked into when going in for an attack, leaving you at 1 HP. This guy was, up to that point, the most unpleasant fight I’ve had in that damn game.
Those goddamned lasers. If you aren't already moving fast, you are getting hit. The only way around is Flowmotion.
The last few chapters! And we’re starting with the kingdom based on Fantasia!
Symphony of Sorcery – Sora
To think that the "sorcerer" from this short ended up being one of the most important characters in the entire KH franchise. That name, though... Yen Sid... Subtle.
Fantasia is a collection of shorts animated over classical music; the way this gets combined into a KH world is by having The Sorcerer’s Apprentice as its core, from which other shorts can be magically accessed. We even get scenes from Mickey’s short remade in 3D! Sora lands in Mickey’s dream of being a great sorcerer manipulating comets; however, he gets kicked out of it by the Spellican, the Nightmare we’ve been chasing. Sora comes out of the dream in Yen Sid’s office… or so it seems. Mickey in the sorcerer’s chair, wearing the sorcerer’s magical hat, and waving around as if casting an endless spell under a trance, says otherwise.
These worlds have dragons now. Or is it T-rexes?
Mickey has been trapped into this predicament by the Spellican. The mouse can only be saved by Sora going into a musical world and picking up a Sound Idea. The place he lands on is based on the short scored with Beethoven’s The Pastoral Symphony. The Reality Shift in these musical worlds triggers a mini-game in which you play along to the music using the touch screen, dragging notes across the screen or tapping them at specific moments.
At this point, enemies are getting annoying. So much of this game is walk forward, beat up a crowd of enemies, repeat. Said enemies have far more HP than before, on top of using more spells and status effects. Nothing quite like being affected by a debuff that prevents special moves right as you’re low on health. Or getting sniped from afar while you’re waiting on said debuff to go away so you can heal.
I can't wait to beat this guy to a pulp. There is just an aura around this guy, something I know I won't like.
Not much happens on the path to the Sound Idea. However, when Sora reaches it, he encounters the mysterious figure (MF) again. The opponent takes a moment to appreciate the beautiful world they’re in, before adding that he isn’t part of the dreams that are part of the Mark of Mastery. But, that if Sora remains asleep, then their paths will cross soon… After getting the Idea, Sora reappears in the Tower, where his trinket alone isn’t enough to rescue Mickey; but he knows he can trust Riku to do his part. Sure enough, the second Sound Idea appears and undoes the spell. With that achieved, Sora is ready to enter the final cursed spellbook.
Will my headache continue? We’ll find out soon enough!
The Grid – Sora
New armor? But I don't feel any more protected.
It’s still bizarre to me that KH has worlds inspired by live-action properties like Pirates of the Caribbean… or TRON. I’ve always been wondering: Does it or its sequel, TRON: Legacy, count as video game movies? Or just “computing” movies in general? (Either way, don’t count on me to review TRON: Ares!)
Apparently, the "dream" version is the real Grid. Just an excuse to justify the actors of TRON: Legacy being here and not met the first time Sora visited Space Paranoids.
Sora appears in the Grid wearing the armor of a Program. He spots a Recognizer (a large ship) and gives chase. The programs that come out ask him to identify himself, but when they don’t recognize his name, they treat him as a threat and attack. After Sora dispatches them, he runs into a masked program that flees after gathering data about the boy and his Keyblade. Three characters were watching this encounter: Kevin Flynn, his son Sam, and friendly program Quorra. All are depicted with far less cartoony CGI than any others, which is… so weird, next to the spiky-haired, anime-faced Sora. But, for true KH fans, this is nothing new.
The three explain that the program Sora was fighting is named Rinzler; but it is actually Tron, who has been corrupted by CLU, Flynn’s hacking program, who has become the Grid’s dictator. Kevin and Sam are trying to escape to the real world, but Sora believes he must save Tron. Kevin indicates that the only way to do so would be to recover Tron’s source code, which is protected by CLU. Quorra decides to help Sora. We won’t see the Flynns again on this side.
Programs CAN develop hearts, but I doubt CLU could. Not with his intentions. No Keyblade for you, mister!
Meanwhile, Rinzler warns CLU about Sora’s presence; the dictator is intrigued by the Keyblade…
Three new worlds to explore! We’d better pick wisely.
I’ll be covering each world all at once, because it’s simpler – but with the option of three different worlds to explore, you can indeed have each character explore a different world, and not see both sides of the plot in one world in one go. As an example, you could have Sora visit The Grid while Riku is on Prankster’s Island. But first…
La Cité des Cloches – Sora
Quasi, this elephant isn't friendly!
I can’t wait to see how Kingdom Hearts is gonna dance around anything tangentially related to Christianity in this world inspired by The Hunchback of Notre-Dame! I have a hunch they’ll play safe and not have Frollo be anywhere as creepy. That moment in the film of him sniffing Esmeralda’s hair makes my skin crawl. As it should!
I didn't know the Feast of Fools involved rhinos!
Sora meets Judge Claude Frollo, who immediately believes the boy to be a “g---y” due to his odd clothing for the area. I know this word has become a slur in recent times, hence the censoring – I’m hinting to it this one time because the word is important to the story of Hunchback, but I’ll avoid it from this point on. Before Frollo can attempt to inflict justice, he is informed by Phoebus that monsters have invaded the square. Sora rushes there to find Quasimodo on the back of a Nightmare elephant, celebrating as if he had been crowned King of the Feast of Fools. Here? Without a crowd? Huh. Esmeralda comes to help Quasi and they flee into the cathedral while Sora deals with the monsters.
Oh, there’s something about Frollo being consumed by his own rage and racism, and getting covered by an aura of darkness, too.
For the record, I have been working on this review for a month and a half, so it is entirely coincidental that I am publishing this on the exact week where the proper teaser trailer for Kingdom Hearts IV was released. Hey, timing did its thing again!
It's funny how quickly you get accustomed to the mix of American animated animal characters with humans that have a clear anime feel to their designs.
You’ve seen that title, so you know what’s coming. If there’s one thing the Kingdom Hearts franchise is known for, it is its interconnected story told over… oh, with the number of remakes and new games retelling events of past games, I’ve sincerely lost count. This story is harder to untangle than a Gordian knot. Especially if you haven’t been following the franchise closely, or missed an episode or five, which is bound to happen due to its entries being scattered across several consoles! And they’re usually action RPGs, so they tend to be story-heavy.
Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, developed and published by Square Enix, was released for the Nintendo 3DS on July 31st, 2012 in North America. Before this one, the only other KH game I’ve played (and reviewed) is Re:coded on the Nintendo DS. Well, I was glad to see that today’s game is a direct continuation of that one! It is also, according to sources, the last game in the chronology before KH III. Thus, it ties up a few loose ends in preparation. Then again, I’d bet that KH3D creates more unanswered questions on its own; that’s how it goes.
Again: I’m jumping in with very little frame of reference. Everything I know is from Re:coded, and the biggest plot point that game showed was that even non-living entities, like characters made of code, were still capable of becoming real Keyblade wielders, all it took was displaying heart and heroism. That game on the Nintendo DS also went over some of the events of the first Kingdom Hearts game, which helps but still leaves me with large gaps in knowledge. Bear with me, especially if you’re far better acquainted with this franchise than I am.
The Exam
Full disclaimer: Since you might not want low-quality images for the cutscenes (and there are many of those), I will be picking these off a playthrough of the 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue version of the game. Big thanks to SevuhnElevuhn for the longplay video. Check it out here!
The first scene takes place at a villainous lair, ten years prior. Some guy (named… Braid, I think?) is asking the POV character, whom he calls Xehanort, whether he recovered his memories, or never ever lost them. The POV character summons a dark blade, stabs Braid with it, and says his name is Ansem.
I don't even know if that will make sense after playing this game. For the record, Ansem here is Terra-Xehanort, which is Xehanort, possessing the body of a guy named Terra. This is the first minute and I already had to explain some lore, for Pete’s sake!
I figured I’d do this one real quick, because I mostly talked about one band last Friday, and figured I’d expand a bit. One thing I noticed that was missing from my previous Needlejuice articles was a quick mention of other albums I recommend for each band and/or artist I discuss. There’s a lot of artists signed onto the label, and though many of them have multiple albums on it, they also frequently have albums that aren’t on there.
I figured I’d give many of them a little bit of extra visibility by listing the albums I, personally, enjoyed the most and felt like adding to my own collection. Not every band discussed across these past articles is listed here; I already covered everything I’ve got from Nuclear Bubble Wrap, and some bands haven’t wowed me to the point of getting more. I might also discuss in a later article some albums listed below that are indeed available on the label, so this list is bound to be modified over time. The albums for each band/artist are listed chronologically.
So, to make this quick, and in the order that I’ve talked about them: The list!
I’m hard at work on the next articles, since I have huge plans for VGFlicks this time around. Plus, I didn’t get a mystery box of music last year, so I figured I’d just go through fewer albums this year.
I’ve done this intro each year since 2024 now: Needlejuice Records is an indie label from Nashville, Tennessee, that I greatly enjoy. I started off knowing just one band from their lineup, then expanded thanks to mystery boxes, and now I’m going as far as to try and at least hear everything their artists have put out. Some bands I’ve discovered this way are now big favorites of mine. Are you into indie rock? Maybe metal? Prog? Techno? Punk? Vaporwave/slushwave? Comedy music? Damn near every genre’s covered in some fashion. The label is very LGBTQ+-friendly, and has both a Bandcamp page and a website. (And a Discord server, too, accessible from Bandcamp.)
This time, I’ll do things differently by focusing on a specific band. This journey of mine began with one musical act: Nuclear Bubble Wrap (shortened NBW), whom I discovered around 2010. Crazy to think that’s been 15 years. Songs from the band were posted to a forum dedicated to “Weird Al” Yankovic by the band’s frontperson (and one of its singers), Jace McLain, which is how I first discovered them. McLain, one of the founders of Needlejuice Records, still puts out music both with this band and as a part of a few side-projects.
I did buy some physical albums from the label in 2024, including an anniversary box set of NBW’s fourth album, Exploding Head Syndrome (shortened EHS), packed with three additional CDs – so instead of bogging down a whole list of 10 albums with constant repetition, I figured I’d just dedicate an article to covering all four discs. Along with the other album of theirs I’ve got that I haven’t covered yet. And maybe throw in another album that felt like foreshadowing towards the existence of the label.
Once again, I rank from my favorite to the least favorite, starting with…
Psycho Delicacy
This was the first NBW, non-EP album to be made up entirely of original songs (zero parodies) that all have either a comedic or psychedelic edge. Sometimes both. At a sprawling 72 minutes and 21 songs, Psycho Delicacy, released on May 13th, 2014, is NBW’s longest official album, funded through Kickstarter. I backed it; along with the physical CD, my reward included a bonus disc containing demos from their next album, Multiverses, and other random songs.
One more entry in the Game Eulogies, this is turning into a yearly thing here. Okay, this one isn’t dead, but it might as well be.
Oh yeah - my copy defaults to French. Oh well!
Created by FOAM Entertainment and released on May 12th, 2016, Riff Racer is no longer available for purchase on Steam. Its concept, and the reason people loved it so much, was that it was like a more advanced version of Audiosurf. In both games, there are songs available from the get-go, and you could race on those for a high score, toggling difficulty to your liking. However, the big draw was that both games allowed you to upload your own music tracks, after which the game would procedurally create a stage based on your settings, with the song as basis and background.
I will give the game that; it looked really damn cool.
No no no!! I'm tailspinning! I'm going sideways! Ironically, none of this, not even falling off the track, is much of a step back.
Both games allowed; past tense. Audiosurf still does it, because it generates the game track client-side. Riff Racer used to do it server-side. As in, the server in FOAM Entertainment’s studios. Which means that, now that the game has been delisted and the servers shut down, well… you’re left with the inability to pick a track from your collection and turn it into a custom level. Unfortunately, that specific feature was the entire selling point FOAM Entertainment was counting on. Makes complete sense that they’d no longer sell the game, then – with that feature gone, what's the point. (A few games I’ve done Eulogies for should take notes and delist too. Damn things can still be bought even when they literally don’t work anymore.)
Excuse me while I stare at my collection of 3,000 songs that will never be used here...
And, if you've been reading this blog for a while, then you know that I’m a big fan of music in general, I listen to a lot of stuff. And for years I would amass music, because I wanted it of course, but there was frequently that tiny voice at the back of my mind, “hey, when the time rolls around to review Riff Racer, I’ll have all those songs to try out, it’s gonna make for fun gameplay recording sessions, right?” Well, I got around to it too late then, didn’t I.
Which isn’t to say that fans of the game haven’t found some way to make it work, creating their own servers and giving detailed instructions to let anyone connect their copy of Riff Racer to those custom servers. Which, for some reason, makes track generation possible again. Although I commend the effort and ingenuity, I don’t think I’d feel enough interest going through that just to play on some tracks. I just don’t have the attachment to this one that others may have had. And I was too late to cultivate such an attachment, too.
You have a couple of carsd to choose from, and you could earn in-game money to spend on... uh, stuff, I guess. Doesn't really matter much anymore, does it.
Yeah, there’s no way I’m gonna play 20 hours of that one. I doubt there’s much point in telling you to buy it, but yeah – if you own it and haven’t touched it, and have no plans of touching it, you’re not missing out. Go back to Audiosurf (1 or 2) instead.
The first screen of many. How can we get to that darn bird? Maybe the shady guy in a trench coat has a solution.
Developed by Studio Fizbin, published by Headup and released on September 27th, 2013, The Inner World is a hand-drawn point & click game. Asposia exists within a planet rather than outside, and gets its air from large wind tunnels guarded by monks. All Asposians have pointy, striped noses, except Robert, whose nose instead has holes, allowing him to play it like a flute. He works as a disciple under Conroy, the only wind monk whose tunnel still works; Conroy elevated himself to spiritual leader of Asposia due to this. Worse even, large flying monsters called the Basilians often pop out of the tunnels, turning Asposians to stone with their stares. The story kicks off when a pigeon flies into Conroy’s home and steals a pendant, and Robert falls down the garbage chute chasing it, landing into Asposia's streets. He meets Laura, a sarcastic Asposian with plans of her own. Robert will learn that in this world, very little is as it seems…
Still not sure (yet) why the barmaid gave us a beverage that feels like it could be more of a pipe degreaser than a drink.
I can use this funnel as a helmet now! And I should also take back my doll from that creature.
Most of this point & click's gameplay goes through the mouse, selecting elements on the screen to observe or (try to) take them. Holding down the left button reveals dots over every décor element that can be interacted with. You can combine items in your inventory, accessible at the bottom of the screen (ex. Putting together a reed and a hook to grab something from afar). You can also take combinations apart when their pieces are useful again later. Only a few items are carried between chapters, most notably a Conroy doll that gets destroyed over time (deservedly).
I saved this little mouse! It just took me putting three items together! Now, little guy, you're going into an ear horn.
I could clean this shield... but only if the shield, and the rust itself, are useful elsewhere afterwards!
You usually play as Robert, aside from one section where he is captured, and we play as Laura instead. The only difference is that Laura is snarkier (compared to the sheltered, naïve, sweet Robert), and she doesn’t have the flute nose, which you play to solve a few puzzles, through an option in the inventory. The flute nose has its own “mode”, a single mini-game accessible from the main menu. (Good luck getting a decent score on it.)
Flute-Nose Hero
Please ignore the openly propagandist messsaging of the "play" that Robert manipulates to find an open passage...
This game has the classics of a point & click: Puzzles with solutions that make marginal sense, even if you figure them out by yourself. A cast of silly characters with their own stories, and all sorts of shenanigans to inflict on them. Detailed scenes and backgrounds; if an area keeps being available once you’ve done everything, then you’ll have to go back for something else later. Just gotta figure out what. There’s even a hint system for players who get stuck, though there are achievements to unlock if you can play through the whole thing without them.
My favorite moment: Repeating to a sin confession machine a sin heard from someone else, and it's so outrageous that it instantly breaks the machine. Fuck, that was hilarious.
The story is rich and interesting, with tons of worldbuilding to find (and some puzzles hinge on utilizing knowledge gathered during the story). The tone is humorous, with some edge to be found in several gags; some of them get saucy, implications-wise. Our main characters form a fun team, and it’s great to see their relationship develop as they unearth their world's greatest secrets. Cutscenes and many puzzle solutions are fully animated.
The only true negative I have about this game is that, during a few sessions it tended to “break” in ways that forced a restart, during the pause menu or after combining items, with one specific instance being a total crash forcing a game restart. But with that aside, all in all, good stuff, really.
The Inner World is available on Steam at a big discount till tomorrow at 1.49$ USD, usually 14.99$.
Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series is one most people know of, though not everyone may know about its finer details. It’s fair to call it a franchise, too; six graphic novels originally released from 2004 to 2010, an animated short, a movie (which I reviewed), and an anime series released on Netflix (which I haven’t seen). It’s got enough of a following to get revived every couple years in some way, shape or form. Every iteration tells the story in a slightly different manner.
Alongside the movie came an associated beat’em-up video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and released to the PlayStation Network on August 10th, 2010 in North America and the next day in PAL regions, then to Xbox Live Arcade two weeks later. While the game is well-known, its claim to fame – or, should I say, to infamy – was its delisting from both digital platforms on December 30th, 2014 due to the license expiring at Universal. Thus, despite its association to a popular franchise, the beat’em-up could not be played at all, and would remain in that state for several years.
…until time came to celebrate the movie’s tenth anniversary in 2020, and efforts were made from both O’Malley and the film’s director Edgar Wright to rescue the game from purgatory, while we’re at it. Talks with Ubisoft led to interest, and so in September that year Ubisoft announced a remaster for release to several more digital platforms (Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PC, Xbox One and Stadia – lol, that last one is dead already). Even better, a deal was made with Limited Run Games, which specializes in creating and distributing physical formats of games, usually indie and/or only available digitally. The remaster, both on digital and physical formats, was released in January 2021.
I found the Nintendo Switch physical edition at a convention and practically threw my cash at the seller. I knew of this game’s tumultuous history, and I wanted to own a copy. Alongside the cartridge came a free shiny trading card, an alternate box art, an old-school SNES-style instruction booklet small enough to fit in the box, and a “concert ticket” for The Clash at Demonhead with opening act Sex Bob-Omb at Leo’s Place. Feelies, we have feelies, there’s something so nice about those.
Now that this is all out of the way, I can talk about the game!
Brawl Across Toronto
"Hey, are you a 1-Up? 'cause you give me a new life." Note: Playthroughs I'using for screenshots can be seen here,here and here.
Continuing today with the remainder of the albums from the mystery box.
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard – Live in London ‘19
The members of KGLW have released more bootlegs in 2024 than ever before (37!!), which makes their previous 14 bootleg-friendly live concert releases pale in comparison. The way the bootlegging program works is that the band openly offers the stems and files on their website, free to download, and any label can use them to create their own variant of any album made available, be it a live concert, a demos collection, Teenage Gizzard (which I discussed), or Polygondwanaland. The band’s one request is to be shipped copies of the created variant, to sell on their label p(doom) records’ own website.
Their most productive year for those, prior to 2024, was 2019. That year, the band’s albums were the boogie and blues-inspired Fishing for Fishies, and the intense thrash/doom metal of Infest The Rats’ Nest. Along came six live “official live bootlegs” recorded between July 12th and October 14th, three of which (Brussels, Adelaide and Paris) were released in January 2020 to amass money for a charity fighting the Australian Bushfires. The other three (Asheville, London and Milwaukee), released in late 2020 or in 2021, also prominently feature tracks from 2019's studio releases.
I heard them all. And despite being the only one I own out of those six, Live in London ’19, recorded at Alexandra Palace, might be my least favorite. I know live bootlegs aren’t the place for incredible sound quality (…or might not have been, but then again, compare this to the sound quality of their 2024 live output), but even here it doesn’t feel so great. Maybe it’s because I’m a lyrics guy and I like to understand the lyrics when I listen to music that has them, and it’s a bias.
Don’t get me wrong, this album has lots of fan favorites from King Gizz’s discography. The Mind Fuzz Suite (though it’s missing its finale!), Evil Death Roll, Rattlesnake and Float Along – Fill Your Lungs are examples. However, when compared to the other live bootleg albums from that year, London ’19 has little that makes it stand out. The longest track, Crumbling Castle, while still my favorite, doesn’t even reach 11 minutes. Very few songs here are given the jam treatment, so it feels like it just doesn’t have enough of what makes KGLW concerts interesting.
If it’s only your first or second time hearing a live performance from the band, it’s fine on its own. However, at the time, there were already plenty of live bootlegs with more adventurous setlists. Honestly, it’s only middling in comparison to the rest of their output; on its own, it’s pretty good and does feature the range of their sound from the time (let’s just say, they’ve expanded it a lot in 5 years).
Doing this again this year! Same concept as last year. I feel it’s just right to do this, as though I am doing my part to promote Needlejuice, a record label that has its big names, but also a lot of lesser-known artists that can benefit from the spotlight. Needlejuice Records, from Nashville, specializes in indie artists, providing physical versions of these artists’ albums (in vinyl, cassette and CD formats, and beyond). They have a Bandcamp, a website and a Discord server. From 2021 to 2023 ('24 was too busy a year for them to do it), they sold mystery boxes through which they pass their overstock, even adding extra goodies. Each mystery box I purchased contained three vinyl records, three cassettes and three CDs, with a bonus vinyl test pressing and an extra surprise.
In my previous article, I said I wasn’t sure why it took me a full year before ranking the albums from the first mystery box I purchased. I do have an answer; before making this list, I want to make sure I understand each album within the wider context of its creator’s discography. Which is a fancy way of saying that, like the madman I am, I shove every studio release from each artist into a single Spotify playlist and listen at random, getting a good feel of each artist’s stuff and giving me a new perspective on the album I received. I even plan to check which albums I enjoyed the most in that playlist, and will buy those too.
Why yes, my music collection is big, why do you ask?
I purchased a second box in late 2023 and received it in early January 2024. This has given me a year to hear these albums several times (some more than others) and do that deep discography dive. I threw into that playlist every studio album from these artists, and for good measure, I also included any new albums from artists I had already heard (from the previous list) and who had new stuff out.
Another 11 albums, once more ranked from favorite to least favorite. Remember that if I rank an artist lower, that doesn’t mean their stuff is bad – it can just be that it didn’t click with me. Maybe it will click with you. Oh, and the previous article was too long, so this time, I’m splitting it into two parts. Starting with…
Nick Lutsko – Swords
The sad clown says it all.
Nick Lutsko, from Chattanooga, Tenenssee, has been releasing music since 2012. He made a name for himself providing comedic songs for Netflix and CollegeHumor, including a longer stint making satirical tunes for entertainment company Super Deluxe. He has albums that are satirical, albums that are more comedy/horror (he has released a few songs every Halloween since 2021), and the occasional serious one, with today’s album being an example of the latter. He performs live with The $100K Band.
Keeping up with the news, even if to do funny stuff with it, means being constantly exposed to everything messed up about the world. Lutsko came out of a long period of writing satirical songs, I paraphrase his words, “disillusioned with the zeitgeist”. If there’s a group of people that’s painfully aware of the state of the world, it’s comics and comedians.
Swords is an odd beast; Lutsko hesitates to call it a concept album, though the signs are there. Each title is a single word starting with S (so… S-words?). Most songs are about a deeply troubling aspect of the world we live in. Starting with self-destructive willful ignorance (Sideshow) and xenophobia (Superior) and moving on to social media addiction (Straitjacket), hopelessness (Sometimes) and more. If the lyrics to Software, the closing track of the album’s original version, were too subtle, the video spells it out: It's about the general unwillingness to prevent school shootings from happening so damn often in the U.S.. Ouch. The songs are tied by recurring motifs and lines, and the instrumentation to many tracks incorporates circus-like music in some capacity. The result is indie alt-rock/progressive pop that sounds incredible from beginning to end.
Although this album has elements of his career up to now, it also stands as his most serious. The cassette I got included the tracks from “Seven Inch Swords”, a minidisc follow-up that includes Spineless, a song so good I keep thinking it’s part of the original Swords. It also includes two demos and two live versions. I think Swords is his best work so far, and I love it, even though he himself admits to it being “a bit of a bummer”.
If you want to hear more from him, Nick has the satirical Songs on the Computer duology; and he compiled his recent Halloween songs onto HAUNTED, released in 2024. He has also been working on a follow-up to Swords titled Ends, and I am HYPED for it. One single has already been released.
Developed by Cavalier Games Studio and Tequila Works, published by the latter, and released on April 11th, 2017, The Sexy Brutale takes place entirely within the mansion housing the titular casino. You are the elderly Lafcadio Boone, one of several guests invited by the Marquis, owner of the mansion, to a masked soirée. What the guests don’t know, however, is that they’re targeted for murder. Awakened by a mysterious girl drenched in blood, Boone is handed a stopwatch that allows him to toy with time itself. His new quest? To prevent every murder.
I mean, if you had the ability to rewind time while living a murder plot, wouldn’t you try to prevent it from happening?
Witness every murder. How else can you later stop it?
However, you’re limited: you cannot be seen by anyone wearing a mask, or the room will go dark, and their mask will attack you. If someone is in a room you’re about to enter, a fire will appear over Lafcadio’s head. When that happens, you can peek and listen through the door (using X) instead. Alternately, you can hide into closets. Time at midnight resets back to noon. The map, accessible with the Esc key, will store any relevant information, and you can even use it alongside a time slider to keep track of every character’s schedule, provided you’ve followed their trail. You can wind clocks to get a new respawn position when looping back to noon, though it requires finding the right key for each clock.
For the record, the bell rings on every loop where you do not rescue this woman. At the same hour every time. Even after you did save her once. Let's just say, you can never forget that this happens over and over.
Whenever you save a guest(s), you obtain a mask with a new ability, which will become necessary to save the next. These abilities, in turn, let you unlock more areas of the mansion, with each guest (or pair) to save being confined to one area. However, the puzzles themselves might not be confined to that area, and thus the game encourages exploring over and over.
The puzzles involve figuring out the right timing and sequence of actions to rescue each person, which means snooping on them, as clues can be found in their dialogue, or that of anyone involved in their demise. Between loops, you get to remember significant information but you lose items with a few exceptions. On top of the main quest, you can also collect every guest’s invitation, as well as all 52 cards of a standard deck.
The bottom right stopwatch also helpfully indicates who is gonna bite it this time (by showing their masks), and when. Therefore, you know how much time you have to act.
For a place that starts out looking normal, time loop notwithstanding, there sure are a lot of giant spiders, voodoo trinkets, and other supernatural crap lying around! That's not even mentioning the [spoilers]!
The game looks great and has excellent music; you’ll be humming the songs heard in the casino. Even better is its sound design, as a lot of events are alluded to that way, and you can use the noise of footsteps in other rooms to figure out whether someone’s coming, or significant cues related to your current mission. Then, beneath the surface, there’s a lot of smart details regarding art and literature to look for. Gameplay is unusual, since you move Lafcadio around with the right-click of the mouse instead of the arrows or WASD. It does work out in the end, though.
And yep, you can even follow the characters' movements around the map.
Lucas, the Marquis, remains unseed and a complete mystery up until it's time for his part in the plot. So, he's either the final person we rescue, or the brains behind the murders.
And though it’s very strong in so many areas, nowhere is it stronger than in its plot. We could mull over the clever construction of the intrigue across the 12 hours we visit over and over, and the various character interactions we see as a result (and how we influence each loop). But there’s even more brilliance to be found here: Each rescue reveals some pieces of the wider puzzle behind this strange situation, sure. But there’s a ton of little nods and clues you can find on your own, that are hidden in plain sight, and reveal so much more about the actual twist – and some of these may be dismissed as mere gameplay or stylistic elements, until it all comes together at the final stretches. It’s so great. It’s expertly written, and if you don’t know what’s coming, you’ll be astonished. The story alone makes this game worth playing.
The Sexy Brutale is available on Steam for 19.99$ USD. With all this done, I can focus on the task at hand. Just a rewind and I’m
