Still Playing Sunshine

 If there's one thing people who play games, people who read book, or, well, people who do almost anything hate, it's censorship.  That idea that someone else can tell you what you can or can't play or read something tends to not go over well.  Enter the group Collective Shout: an Australian "activist" group formed by Melissa Tankard Reist.  Melissa being a pro-life, anti-porn activist, it was only a matter of time before she and her group eventually came after video games like they have this year. Not long ago now, Collective Shout decried that game stores were selling games that encouraged violence and/or were sexually explicit.  While some games that have made it to the stores, like the ever baffling No Mercy (one wonders how that even passed a sniff test, given its content), definitely needed to be reviewed and taken off the storefronts, Collective Shout wasn't happy with just removing the actually weird games.  They sensed blood in the water, and they ...

 Marvel Rivals started it's third season not too long ago, introducing a story set up between the Phoenix and the Symbiotes of Klyntar.  This is a constantly evolving game, with changes happening regularly, so ranking characters is always subject to changes, but for now, I wanted to put out there who I thought was the 5 best and 5 worst in the game right now!  These aren't in any order. BEST: 1. The Thing:  The Thing is a vanguard/tank character and as such, he's got a large health pool.  His skills in close combat can really do some damage, especially since he can use his Battle Blitz skill to leap towards enemies and grant himself 25% damage reduction or use Embattled Leap to leap towards an ally and grant both them and himself 30% damage reduction for 3 seconds.  The Thing can also get in on foes with Yancy Street Charge, which will have him dash forward, launching enemies up, and the skill can then be ended early to have Ben Grimm smash the ground and d...

       Most speedrunning sites will tell you that modding is against the rules and disqualifies any official run you do.  One only has to take a look at Speedrun.com to discover that.  To be sure, there are mods out there that absolutely should be avoided for speedrunning- anything that changes the speed of the game or messes with the gameplay shouldn't really be in use because you'd be giving yourself an unfair advantage over other speedrunners who are getting times on a level playing ground.  This could include things like Smash Ultimate gameplay mods or difficulty adjusters/damage reduction for Dark Souls.  These do change things up and allow different experiences, but that experience also changes the core of the game to a degree and therefore would be and is something that disqualifies official speedruns (These rules even apply to things like Games Done Quick and other big events), though it makes very little sense to file cosmetic mods under ...

 It's been a while, hasn't it?  Well, what better way to jump back in than talking about mods again?  I figured we'd start off easy with this by talking about 5 Smash mods since I've been messing with that a lot lately (results vary haha).  I'll add a preface to these sorts of posts just mentioning that there's a wide variety of these to be seen and I of course can't cover these in one post, but perhaps I'll make a series out of it haha.  With that said, let's jump right in with 5 neat mods to start with ( note some of these may be 18+ so use sense and discretion with what you download.) 5. Mitsuru Kirijo-Lucina When it comes to smash mods, the most abundant is going to be character skin mods.  Lucina is a character filed under "single slot" which means that really only on mod can be active on her at a time, unlike others such as Mario or Byleth, so if you get any others for her you'll need to rotate them out periodically.  This particu...

 It's time to talk about that thing game companies love doing.  Exclusivity is one of the most argued over practices in gaming, because we love it when we get them, but not when others do.  It's supposed to be the big draw that entices you over to one side or another, but really. it's about time this little thing ended.  Exclusivity is nothing more than a money grabbing gimmick that serves no purpose other than to block some gamers from playing.  Wanna get that new Wolverine game or maybe bring the Rare collection game wherever you go?  Well the companies say "Too bad!"  These games can only be played one a particular companies' console, and you'll just have to shell out the cash for that and the game.  What this does is entice gamers to spend more money than they should be because it's not possible to get the one game on anything else thanks to gaming heads.  Gaming should be a thing for everyone to enjoy, and unless the company keeping it f...

 Most folks who play Pokémon at least know what a randomizer is, even if they haven't experienced one. The idea of mixing the game up so you never know what to expect has been around for a long while, and you can see it on YouTube and Twitch a lot.  It's similar to the self imposed Nuzlocke challenge in that the game's difficulty is increased by virtue of player made changes.  The question is, does randomizing the game make it more fun or not. The inherent challenge, and thus, the point of randomizers, comes from never knowing what you'll see and where.  Trainer Pokémon have been changed, Gym types have changed, and even starters have changed, so you might even run into a late game Legendary like Entei or Zekrom out on an early game route.  This idea of never knowing what you'll run into or need to have for the gym is where the excitement comes in because the game itself will act as if it's still what it used to be, but all your tactics will need to change to ac...