Going mainstream, abandoning integrity and buying a yacht.

I feel an amassing of good will around the name BVGROTI, my critique has been poignant yet fair. My claims bold, yet tempered. I am relatable, friendly and even approachable. I can sing my own praises, but that’s nothing new. What is new is my inability to capitalise on that fact. Let’s face it hoe, Friendly faces don’t pay bills. If you want to survive in the jungle you’ve gotta be mean, and i’m not talking about statistical averages. Thing is i can’t help who i am, changing my persona to be more degrading to my swine (audience) can only do so much. I need a better audience.

Kids. i don’t like them and they don’t like me. them, on the count of being able to smell fear; and me, on the count that they can smell my fear. Is that the correct use of a semi colon? Yeah, why not, i have no idea. Kids don’t know either. literacy rates among kids have dropped to i don’t know i’m making this up but that never stopped the daily mail. My point is that i need a pliable audience that both lacks critical thinking and has access to currency. An overlap that can be found in young children; though it’s normally V-bucks and i can’t feed my children with those because i don’t have any (leaving that ambiguous FYI).

My supreme ability to think rationally has left me penniless, and the implication of that joke makes my sound like a libertarian, hence swaying them into my demographic. Weirdly enough they fit into the Goldilocks zone too, welcome on board my fountainhead mules: the compulsory donations to truth and liberty to end taxation is in a buck to your left.

Advertisement. As far as i can tell ever since the financial crash of 2008, everything has been bad and only people with money spend it anymore. Hence why everything is done via advertisements. Companies pay us, the shitposters, to be vehicles for your indoctrination into stunning website design at the click of a mouse that you can listen to anywhere on the move and even… i got distracted shitposting a chat. Where was i?

Oh yes, patreon. Honestly i kind of like the idea. Free money has always appealed to me hence why i always try for a dump at work, even if i went before hand. It’s matter of principle. I mean i am technically getting shit done. It’s just a matter of where, and we don’t shit where we eat, which is why no one eats in the manager's office. This would be true if i had a spine but i’m as much a shill there as i am here. Say anything, do anything, reject meaning. Accept currency acquire females or males, or anyone else for that matter… money doesn’t judge you, so why should i?

Am i a shill yet? well my revenue stream is about where it started minus potential earning i’ll lose for drafting this in my own blood. Time to sell some Merch! It doesn’t even have to be tasteful, i think the tastelessness might even help a little. People with taste often have some degree of critical thinking and we, like a stunted giraffe are aiming for the pale meek leaves at the bottom of the tree. Merch! makes you stand out and nothing highlights a person more than a T-shirt with the words “KILL YOUR FAMILY” printed in big capital letters.

Finally, an empire needs a culture, unless you’re Rome. Rome fell and it’s pretty clear this was the case because they didn’t have a good sense of cultivated identity and were pillaged by barbarians after their military costs spiralled out of control, the emphasis there is for scholars to debate. People stick around longer if you give them a community, or better yet a designation used to mask the fact there is no group there at all, just people who supply you with money. Divide people on an arbitrary basis colour code each and whoops you’ve created a group identity. People aren't just fooled because you lie to them, they have underlying biases that will aid you in your efforts.

This is what people who know stuff have termed “psychology”.

Marketing is therefore applied psychology, the one true science with total empirical control over the universe due to its ability to subvert what empirical means and how we observe things. This entire piece (piss) being the culmination of its effect, a haze of psycho-distortionary effects to weaken the mind and induce a pliable state of buy my merch.

In blade runner the idea of dystopia was married to skyscraper billboards, more recently and in slightly riffing of the idea the point was made that the persona can be co-opted to be used as an advertisement, by south park of all things…

Bizarre synth noise plays with overlong distortion and fade out to create ominous overture
“You're in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, an ice cold can of pepsi is crawling towards you.”
“What desert?”
“The desert of the real. Anyway. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun beating its legs trying to turn itself over but it can't, not without your help, but you're not helping.”
“What do you mean i’m not helping?”
“You haven’t donated to their patreon.” 

Have i stoked enough fear yet to be wealthy? 2/7 no horses this time.

New year, New me! How i took hold of my future and shaped up in January... while playing total war

A dark and stuffy cabin on the fringe of the civilised world. Four steadback riders faun their attention over the fickle and inane. Stuffing their face with wine and brie, until one man cries,
“This new government of the our people, the nation of France is nothing but a sham!” stoked to action a young artillery officers rises to his feet Notpoleon No-Bonaparte, handsome and devilishly charming, sure to never succumb to male pattern baldness, he puts the vile dog in his place with an impromptu speech and then he beds two red head maidens…

I’ve never been to Corsica and i’ve never written self insert fanfiction about myself, one of those is true for me but neither for our dear emperor circa. 1804-1814. He is the subject of much discussion by historians, which is code for: he killed lots of people. Also they made a total war game about him and you can do all his battles and stuff and that’s worth talking about maybe?

Do i need to explain a total war game to anyone in the room? No? Thank frog, i honestly struggle to sleep when i have a strategy game like that installed on my pc as i suffer from chronic over-musing syndrome, an affliction i discovered after thinking about it too much. Feverish fitful nights were spent in tight white cotton leggings screaming
“je m'appelle BVGROTI,” while directing brutal cavalry charges against fleeing Austrian soldiers.
When i started playing, i confess, i knew little of strategies of the day. My last total war game was rome and while i will spend some time discussing it at a later date for now imagine a toga wearing latin spitter thrust into to the advent of the new pedagogical age. Turns out the melee-mash phalanx was the strategic equivalent of duct taping to leg to your enemies and thrusting it into a woodchipper.

Innovation was required!
“If you want a thing done well, do it yourself. you lazy sausage,”
I was commanding as napoleon, napoleon was an artillery officer before he became emperor. so maybe, i reasoned, cannons might be pretty useful. My first attempt was a failure, the dirt directly ahead of the embankment i placed the cannons in was utterly smashed beyond all recognition in a somme like hail of death. Unfortunately the enemy army were behind the dirt i was pounding and so i got overrun and lost the battle.

Step two, the second! I needed a real enemy, so i hopped on with a friend to play a quick match. My cannons, numbered twice the standard complement were poised to smash his line before he got in range, unfortunately he charged them mid reposition with his cavalry leaving me anchor-less… then his internet broke and so i won by default, progress had been made.

Next i actually learnt how a firing arc worked and took account of terrain when positioning my guns. You know, like an artillery officer would do. This was the turning point, but it came at a steep price, an hour of watch history videos on youtube. A boot camp in war, death, slaughter and pain all narrated by the acoustic voices of the digital domains finest. Still didn’t quite get the whole friendly fire thing but hey if you kill as many friends as enemies you’re getting double points right?
“An army marches on its stomach, pass me that croissant mon philip,”

Battles were won, close cut things. Carried to me by the grace of fate.
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake or eggs Lorraine.”
But with each slaughter my tactics evolved and with it came stronger victories and fewer team kills. A major step forward was taken when i began using “stinger” forces, yes i am obsessed enough to name my strats. Two infantry and a cavalry group. AKA two in the pink one in the brown. The cavalry are used to bait the enemy units into switching to a cav-square, horses don’t understand squares making this a strong counter. At which point the infantry charge the enemy having reduced their effective fighting action power (E-FAP) in half, with the subsequent application of the Lanchester's square law. One sees why they are then wrecked.

A refinement of design took place until i struck upon my master stroke, the MAW. (Makes enemy Army get Wrecked) with cannons in the centre of my line overlooking a topographic depression, i know the feeling. I had on their flanks units of line infantry backed up with cavalry, and ahead in the depression a tiny morsel of bait. The plan was simple, lure the enemy into the MAW and rain canister shot on them with my flanks holding them tight and engaged at range.

I don’t want to say the tactic trivialised most encounters, but it actually did.
“Numbers count for nothing when funnelled into the rotating knives.”
occasionally, just the once actually i blundered and marched a nearly depleted army into enemy territory, outnumbered 2:1 my MAW’s left flank was ground down and over run but not before we had whittled two thousand men down to about three hundred. A pyrrhic loss for austria that spelled their end. Not one to seek challenge, especially in a strategy game, i rinse-repeated until total conquest was mine.
“Ability is nothing without opportunity, and a ratatouille.”

At this point i’d lost enough sleep to my war fever, so i uninstalled the game and got back to living as an exile on some butt-frog island in the middle of nowhere. The game has horses, some of will pull your cannons, colour me french.

Was 2018 the worst year of video games since 1967?

I promised a 2018 rundown but honestly i don’t much feel like it. That being said one doesn’t put out a gaming blog out of some intrinsic interest in the media, it’s all about big bucks and flashy ad-revenue. Mind you the only audible i’ve heard from is the audible dulcet moans of Mr. and Mrs. Graham banging next door. Everyone has their ideal work conditions and mine involve having ambient fornication to really get into the mindset of video game fuckery.

Oh yeah, just like that, I've been a naughty plummer; the Nintendo switch is a thing, i guess, and was pretty big last year, is that still the case? I’m not really sure to be honest I've been far less attuned to the discourse around gaming where i’m not directly concerned. This is a deliberate thing i don’t want to spend my time reading about petty trivialities, when there are big things happening in the world; leaves me with more time to check the president's twitter and roll my eyes accordingly.

Memes continue to be a thing in 2018, the less said about the better.

There is only one game I've bought that was release this year and that would be post scriptum, more on that at one point. I could use my personal anecdotal experience to extrapolate a trend in the market and then blame it on whatever thing I've decided is the problem in society but if i did so my conclusion would be so profound and all encompassingly accurate that it would undermine the hundreds of journalists that have done so already, and make them look and sound like a bunch of angsty bedroom dwelling hacks. Not going to kick that hornets nest, sorry.

With all the out the way i’d like to cash in my cheque for my predictions regarding fallout 76, where i boldly stated (let me just check a second) “Todd howard, who will use the revenue from said collector’s edition to fuel his industrial scale psychic hive-mind of kidnapped children to driver us ever closer to an actual nuclear apocalypse.” goodness me, i’m not sure i could get enough from this to ride the bus, which in my rural backwater is actually fairly steep, and i’m not talking topographical impositions, which there most certainly are. Remember when i used to be funny? Me neither, Anyway here wonder-wall.

Mr Graham has climaxed early, again. The fact he shouts “geronimo” through a set of ill-fitting dentures as he expels materials, that he often confuses with his cataracts, is all the stimulation i need to finish expelling my own material. Sorry, i think we were talking about something, oh yes, 2018. To be honest a year now feels like a massively indistinct haze of experience, it’s hard enough to tell one week from the other. Looking back on it, it feels like the springs on a worn out bed creaking back and forth as two winkled old…. I’m not sure where i was going with that or why it came to mind.

Okay, i’ll actually talk about fallout 76 a bit. I’ve not played, no surprise there. But my friend, who i thought would love it regardless of whether it was critically received well, did. One man disagrees with the critics, guess the whole profession is useless. Well, no. i mean it is useless but not because of that. Some people act like real pinheads when a piece of media is bad. A lot of games are really quite disposable in the sense they they only fuel an ongoing discourse that is predicated on having strong opinions about them. They’re like story-lines in a soap opera, and any media used to push hygiene on people is objective satanic in nature and needs to be wrestled down into a blubbery pit of greasy mud and discarded honey, where it can be beaten within an inch of its life while nearly suffocating.

Games journalism could stand to be better, i will be the one to bring the honey!

Side note: the term pinhead did not appear on a list of List of disability-related terms with negative connotations on Wikipedia. Not a defence of my use of the term, just thought it was interesting.

Why Arn't more games musicals?

Yes, yes, i missed my last deadline, 2018 round up pushed back to next time, meh. That happens when you live a high octane life like mine, somewhere in between racing classic cars down in the south of France and picking up a cheese and onion slice at Gregg's it must have slipped my mind. Taking time out from a busy schedule can make all the difference when developing a video game, a few years ago the assassin's creed series did so much to my total nonchalance as i’ve not played any of their games since or before black flag.

Wow that actually neatly set up what i could talk about today, shame i spoiled it by pointing that out, but hey can i really blame me? Let's spend the next paragraph discussing the issue with needlessly verbose prose. This is getting a bit much.

Ass creed, haha, ass. Assassin creed, haha, double ass! Creed is 2015 sports drama and successor to the much beloved rocky franchise. In which, the son of rocky’s rival is taught to be a real good phili boxer by ya boy rocky. Brawling is a very limited element in black flag, the game is much more focused on pirate songs, and why not?

Immersion is all about the construction of a version of reality that streamlines the experience. Fortunately an entire genre of film is devoted to going this via music, the aptly named musical has been a staple of film ever since les miserables was released in 2012 but some ‘historians’ claim it was even earlier as live music has been used an accompaniment to film before the use of synchronised recorded audio but this was before Hugh jackman started acting so can it be really be called a musical? This review is starting to show a few red flags, huehuehue.

Okay it’s three hours later and i got tied up trying to help a canal boat but ultimately skipped out because of more pressing matters, this. I suppose given that many a fierce pirate has died running a ground this can at least be written of a somewhat related tangential spurt. My point is that assassins creed: black flag isn’t just a Ac game with some boat stuff tacked on, it’s also the first game which is a explicitly a musical! There are plenty of games with good soundtracks integrated into the story, transistor i’m looking at you, yes yes take a bow.

But there is no music in the cut-scenes and the assassin parts of the game, so how can it be considered a musical. This is quite true but the cut-scones aren't the game, they’re bits that break up the game, like raisins, and secondly the assassins (still giggling about that btw) is entirely boring and tedious and i don’t like it and it’s repetitive and i’ve even done this very same joke before but better when it was fresher and it’s completely unchanged from previous versions so why?

So with two thirds of the game discarded as tripe, tripe of the blandest most congealed sort, that leaves the extended adventures of a pirate and his crew plundering, looting and otherwise rumming it up in the Caribbean. Yes, you play as a pirate in the Caribbean but it’s about as fun as the first film and not the sequels but we don’t get zombie skeleton pirates and why not? I’m serious, copyright infringement aside i hold that the game could be made better by leaning in and going full camp with it’s premise.

The ever shifting sea lanes means enemy brigs can creep on up you mid battle and change the tide, (GET IT? ) in a heartbeat. So too will pirate hunters give a slow burn of anxiety as they chase you across the map drawing ever closer forcing you to ask: “do you fear death jack sparrow.” Shoot the ship, board the ship, loot the ship, be in bed by 8pm. A pirate's life for me.

Back to the previous point. This being: the game is a musical. Whenever you’re not in combat your crew is belting out hearty sea shanties, the use of diegetic music is rare in video games and rarer still is it’s fluid integration into setting. I know it seems a petty point to praise a game on and that the music isn’t even linked to stages in the story like that one time they did it in read dead and i felt all sad and stuff, but credit where it is due.

Also taking the idea of camping it up, turning this into assassins creed: treasure island (the Muppet version) would have made this an immediate 10/10. This does beg several questions such as why am i praising a game for what i envision it could have been? Would long john silver get his own musical number? YES! And why i am asking so many questions today. Well to tell you the truth, i’m not sure, maybe it’s just habit?

I give this game a ‘shiver my timbers’ out a ‘leave her johnny leave her’

Dead games and pop classics: the struggle for life in the face of modernity.

I just deleted the first paragraph of this review.

Life for rent, released in 2003, was the second album by singer songwriter and mythical queen of Carthage: Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong; performs under the stage name Dido, thank goodness. Unlike fable 3 the album can still be bought by in digital format and is still a classic of the 2000’s. With songs like ‘thank you’ and ‘white flag’ becoming the soundtrack for wine drunk mothers everywhere, and as a result to their children as well.

When i downloaded life for rent i was pleased to see i was not required to connect to an online store that no longer existed as a poorly thought out form of DRM. nor did i have to seek out a website, through the forums, to get a patch that essentially cracked the album by dido: life for rent, that i bought years ago and legally own, (well not really the digital media provider owns it but whatever.)

I recently decided, after years of objecting to it, that i sort of liked Life for rent and that it’s peak tracks do have a certain resonance, especially when wine drunk. The same cannot be said for fable 3, a dead game that killed it's studio and had it’s support collapse years ago and really wasn’t that good to begin with but that at the time i thought was fun.

In fable the third, you start a revolution to take the throne from your brother. Only a revolution implies a change in the state of governance. This, strictly speaking, is a military backed coup by a series counter-industrialist aristocrats, justified by the supposition of the protagonists status as an ubermensch. In life for rent the primary change of power is the codification of one’s inner vulnerability into a thing of artistic beauty by the singer. Not only i am allowed to feel my vulnerabilities but knowing that the shared experience can be a source of strength.

The simplistic gameplay nonetheless feels clumsy and unpolished with connectivity between the elements mismatched at least. Basic at best. Enemies often stand next to explosive barrels, positioned to make the encounter as trivial as possible highlighting their status as things to be crushed under the ubermensch boot and undermining my ability to empathise. Far from trivial life for rent feels like a sense of craft, care and pathos was put into each track, well produced with excellent interplay of vocal and instrumental performances the album maintains a tonal consistency without becoming samey.

The Hobbes, no silly not Thomas Hobbes, although i am here to talk about the monopolisation of force; namely by the protagonist. A short ways into the game you encounter a group of cave dwelling sentients called the hobbes: essentially fat goblins, the character accompanying you levels repeated foul racist accusations deriding their intellect, despite their having a full established civilisation with social stratification, tactics and the integrated use of magic. This reads as some genuinely shocking colonialist bollocks, or it would that was the intent; instead the subjugation and marginalisation of sapient species is played for jokes. Fantasy has stumbled into racially charged elements in the past, like the orcs in middle earth being described as similar the the Mongolian peoples but the ability to overlook it again with the hind sights takes a certain kind of contextual blindness.

If you want clarity of vision and a realisation of its subject matter, look no further than 'Life for rent' by dido. Topics around the everyday struggle for life and love make each track as relatable as it is breathtaking. The struggle to get by is highlighted by the exemplar of the insecurity renting property brings to the tenants life and the extension of that that relationship to other facets. A social commentary that is meaningful and subtle that would undermine in elegance many current pop tracks aiming to do likewise.

On the subject of rent, fable 3 tasks one, once on the throne with ruling and making decisions to decide between arbitrary good and evils to raise the funds to fight and external evil. The solution however is to buy all the property in the country and collect the rents to pay for the coming war. The image of the all powerful external enemy has often been used to justify fascist doctrine in the past, so it’s no surprise to see it here. But seeing the supposed heroic thing is the economic subjection by a seizure of others own security, makes me wonder if perhaps the developers would have been better of listening to life for rent by dido during the design stage.

In the song ‘here with me’ dido puts forward an understanding of the personal costs of love and the reconciliation of self with one's desired partner. ‘Life for rent’ muses on the transitory ephemeral elements of life in modernity. Fable three tries to justify that seizure and subjection of foreign peoples in its second act, in a section that comes close, well more like closer, to understanding the troubles of colonialism but then just defaults to praising you for #bigdecisions. The near-parody epitome of moral decision making.

A degree of self awareness would have gone so far to improving this work especially with it’s comedic edge. A total contrast the the pleasant, but not over overbearing thoughtfulness we see in the must listen hit album: life for rent by Dido. both deal in the life in the industrialised world, guess which i prefer?

The game doesn’t have horses even, wtf is with that? The DLC on G2a costs more than the game did when it was on sale, that’s limited availability for you.

Skyrim: Down and destitute from riften to solitude - the tale of poverty in a fantasy world.

He sleeps soundly; snoring, farting and occasionally murmuring. I tip toe past, my sight set on his wardrobe, yes finally it will all be mine. Charcoal, a cooking pot, also some fresh leeks. I leave with my disappointment, and fresh leeks out into the night, i am the theft of Morthal. More like undeveloped peasant town, hahaha, i can’t even afford to rent here.

I’ve served four stints at the Jarls pleasure, and i’m not talking about his short sword. I have no items, because each and every one of them was stolen, by me. I have no children because i have no home, and i have no home because i am pretty poor at my profession… i am the worst theft in all of skyrim. In a land of endless captive cold, where dragons rule the skies and great civil wars rage, i the main character missed the memo. After the requisite carriage ride and tutorial, which i decided my character was drunk for and so largely believes was a illusion made by Sanguine, the daedric prince of debauchery, during my stupor the quest began.

From there he decided it was too dangerous for him to bare arms and drink ever again. He must give one up. So now he’s a pacifist in a land of sword crazy burly men, and women. Untalent at magecraft the most he can muster is a bright light that gives him away in the dead of night during his lurking. Though he is admittedly otherwise a very talented lurker. His herblore too is rather lacking, gone are the days of cheese sandwich alchemy. This leaves him with one avenue for work. Breaking into people's home and scrounging their shit.

He is very cunning often waiting until people are sound asleep before barging in like a bull in a china shop, and pretending he got lost on his way home. Once he stumbled upon a plot by a powerful vampire to take over the town, only to be chased away by her love crazed thrall as my inebriated thief couldn’t bring himself to fight back, in case the magic sky dragon ever comes back.

His life here was going nowhere, so i got bored and decided that he had decided to go off on a adventure, lacking the fiscal and social commitments to do otherwise. He was not missed… by a stray arrow, which stuck him in the… thigh (close one)
After passing by a guard swimming through the air i decided it was time for a drink. So stopped by the local tavern, a quick conversation with the barkeep later i learn i still had no money and that i wasn’t supposed to just start necking whatever wasn’t nailed down. This earned my first stay in the Whiterun dungeon which unlike the Morthal jail, wasn’t too cold for rats… yay?

I was out in no time, if by no time you mean 4-5 months with good behaviour. Pretty ingenious way to avoid the guards on the front gate if you asked him. Looking for work the local companions guild told be i could join if i could hold a sword. After explaining my misgivings in a calm and careful manner they told me quite precisely to get bent. Taking their advice to heart i hit up the cloud district, which people assured me i’d not get to very often, and managed to find a neat set of fine clothes along with my second stint in dungeon, this time i’d snuck in my copy of the lusty argonian maid; however my character was illiterate, at least it saved using the rats as toilet paper.
Deciding to move on i first sold my only possession, or tried to, turns out my shit smeared copy of a book describing the sexual escapades of a lizard were not in high demand in the ultra conservative, fundamentalist talos loving north men.

Onwards to winterhold, here i was with my own folk, or as the locals had taken to calling them, the dam grey skins. That’s right i’m a dark elf, what of it? I mean really, how can you be so bigoted as to get hung up my race, it’s not like i’m a orc or something. Onwards to the nearest tavern. There i met a orc wanting to punch my lights out, for some reason he didn’t understand i was calling him a pig faced mountain fucker ironically. What is it with north folk and having no sense of humour. So between my pugilistic hesitations and his berserk rage my nose was beaten to resemble my groin which itself was beaten into a bloody pulpy mess… not even the boredom of prison had done so much damage to my genitals. Jokes on him i stole his sweetroll, which is how i earned my first fine in winterhold, which upon being unable to pay became my first stint in the winterhold jail which was both cold and had rats.

After the stumps healed i didn’t stick around, the weather in winterhold was far too racist so i headed south towards the rift and it’s town… riften, home of the thieves guild. I see what they did there. Here i found my calling, the one place i could truly belong: An orphanage! a young boy in winterhold had told me to go there and murder the lady who owned the place and to be fair to the boy he was very polite when asking, so i felt obligated to foster good behaviour, through not foster him specially on the count of being a vagrant vagabond drunkard who was one step away from become a full flown skooma addict.

I had cross by moral code and could never again claim to be a pacifist, which was perfect timing because i was soon recruited by the dark brotherhood, they were so impressed with my kill stealing that i was press ganged into service, their hidden layer was a marvel of treasures and trained killers. Naturally i was caught with sticky fingers and was promptly kicked out until i could pay a fine, which for me meant forever. Skooma is not cheap!

What was cheap were the cloths i was able to strip from a murdered woman on my way into markarth, a town so retro-steampunk-dwarven i was forced to leave, or i nearly did, it turns out there had been a spate of murders and secrets conspiracies going around, a concerned party needed a talented lurker to break into hold and retrieve clues. Honestly i was the best work i’d had in years and nothing quite compares to #monetised-lurking. Unfortunately, my contact was found out an i was thrown into a prison, and not the fun kind, but one where you have to do real work, a mine!

I’ve long since been a hand a breaking out of almost any prison but seeing as the guard just drag one back and i get fed i’ve never really felt the need to spurn my penal sentences, unless it involved the jarls short sword. It was about 20 minutes and a brief montage before i was ready for my great escape. Unfortunately i was shived while wiping my ass on a rat and so ended the ballad of skyrim's worst thief.

Game has horses but i could never afford one and stealing one earned me a stint in prison. 

The PUBG: The ultimatum

From here until the new year it’s all a down hill slide. Nothing good was ever achieved on the cusp of winter. Today is no exception! Splat splat splosh goes the third shower of the morning as i sit in an unlit hovel overlooking the spectacle through a thin veil. One last surge and then it finally lets up. for a moment, thoughts clear i take my mark.

Pace, action, tension and excitement. No room for holding back i need to capture the zeitgeist of human experience and to do so now i must ride at the very forefront of games journalism. To pause on a beat, reflect on circumstance or offer insight would be an insult to just how very hip and happening this post will be. There is no context when you're riding the crest of a wave, there is only you the board and shore line racing towards you. Before we beach ourselves on the metaphor i think it wise to now state, that i, like so many other people with misleading T-shirts, do not surf.

Pugb, pubg, pgbu: player unknown’s battlegrounds. So just battlegrounds then, i guess we say dante’s inferno. Well i do, you say not that pretentious trash literary allusion again bvgroti to which i swiftly and reproachfully announce: i can’t. For this text, has no text, no context and no explicit imperative. What's an explicit imperative? GO FUCK YOURSELF! Although the games been hinting i should do that for a while.

Simply the game does all and tells all through it’s mechanics. Is this a good thing? Well it was certainly interesting the first time i saw a red splodge appear on the map and i decided to go check it out only to find myself promptly saturated in mortar fire. That is to say, i doubt they could have got much more in before it wouldn’t be a cadava anymore, maybe some kind of new experimental smoothie. This would be amusing if true, heck it might be anyway but it’s not my place to judge (but just so we’re clear it ought to have garnered at least a wry smile)

I learn the game the same way most did, through a sequential percolation of information as the pubg wave broke up on shore of the gaming masses. From Twitch, the Youtubes, and other platforms that exist did the videos come. All things to all men. A call to do the thing. We lobbied up and got to it, not as pioneers but as colonists and like colonists, boy did we starve… and leave behind a problematic legacy which mires foreign policy even today. (such a brave thing for me to say)

The soft touch i use for my PC gaming, that is to say all my gaming. Isn’t exactly at the cutting edge. I don’t want to be too mean to the poor dear because she has been a sturdy and reliable thing for many years and i’m fairly convinced she can tell when i’m talking shit about her and will punish me accordingly. My point here, if there is one, is it takes me an awful long time to load into the game.

In earlier builds this meant laying in a ditch for five minutes while the game world loads out an ethereal playdough, but since then with a constant barrage of updates making the game more or less optimised the effects have varied. Ranging from everything working just fine, to the repeatedly crashing upon launch. My favourite of these effects is the ability to phase through solid walls in game. Client side collision detection and the games tendency to take a while fully rendering an asset from the playdough realm allows me to pass through the blobs of shapelessness that will resolve into the building proper a few seconds later. It acts of a counterbalance of the initial frame rates being in the region of somewhere between 5 and -5. This more often than not, gets me killed, as uncle Ben says: Delicious rice ready in 10 minutes, also if you’ve got power you’ll prolly f’ it up so just say home and watch netflix or sumin. One such instance was me ploughing a car half way into a house, only for the house to then render around the vehicle causing it, and me to become a new flavour of smoothie.

Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It has enabled us to evolve from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, and normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, some programmer fucks up and we leap forward. What could be more cutting edge than the ability to pass through physical objects. Imagine if you didn’t notice the door in front of you as you walked, so you simply passed through it. What possibilities would that create, a cornucopia of experience at the fingertips being snuffed out by a click of a shotgun as the mic spamming child in the next room spots my reality bending glitch and tastes the coming of his chicken dinner.

Maybe the reason we don’t have super powered people today is because humans show an instinctive desire to snuff out anything they can’t understand. This is doubtful speculation and probably a waste of time to spend much thought considering, but what can i say. While waiting for the game to load i’ve had time to reflect on inane musings that mean little and just fill the gaps. Speaking of gaps, this brings up a fairly unique question, as i report my experience of the game, i figure due to my hardware it’s fairly unrelatable to the average player, so then what purpose does a review serve if i talk about aspects they’ll never engage with and events that were entirely fictitious… again probably best i don’t spend too long on this one in case the answer undermines my authority.

Though at the core, my experience is much the same. Waiting in a broom closet with three teammates waiting for some poor unfortunate to walk in and discover our smoothie selection via shotgun to the mouth. Only to then walk outside to get picked off by a sniper, blown up by grenades, drowned in a river and get caught trying to revive your good for nothing friends while the ever shrinking blue ring bares down squeezing mic spamming gun toting psychopaths into a tight enclosed space and offering them virtual points to slay one another.
It’s like a prisoner's dilemma where the prisoners are all utterly ape shit.


Why do they bother to add vehicles and not bother with horse? 5/10
OH SHIT! I forgot to mention the miniskirts, actually the less said the better.