Video Games

Thanks to a very thoughtful Christmas gift, I have been obsessively replaying the original Mass Effect trilogy and ruminating on what it's like to play all three games.

I've been mulling this one over ever since the president of Square Enix, Yosuke Matsuda, penned this missive on the subject, and I'm no closer to a real understanding of how it is a good idea to move away from the model of people playing games because they are an enjoyable pastime and towards a model that says you should be playing games to get a tangible reward.

I'm legally blind, the result of a condition called retinopathy that is causing the blood vessels in my retina to, well, explode.

I don't know about y'all, but I'm ready for the weekend.

Hedgehogs are so adorable.

I cannot play a ranged caster class in almost any game.

The true sign of a new year is the arrival of Awesome Games Done Quick.

It's fair to say I have played the various games of the Mass Effect series multiple times.

There are certain characters, settings, and properties that just feel tailor-made for a video game, especially when the industry is capable of turning major media into surprisingly good experiences like Guardians of the Galaxy — heck, even Oswald the Lucky Rabbit has gotten a game.

The subtitle to this post could just be and why is it Arcane because Arcane is one of, if not the, best video game tie-in stories I've ever seen Yes, even better than The Last Guardian, my previous favorite. The Last Guardian is one of the best novels ever set in a game world, which may not be a surprise as it features characters like Medivh and Khadgar and is written by Jeff Grubb, longtime AD&D designer and author of the Azure Bonds tie-in novel, which introduced Dragonbait the Saurial and yes I admit it I loved that book because it made dinosaur people canon in D&D.