I have never made a character build in a Soulsborne game and neither have you

Shadow of the Erdtree has been out for a week now, and the Elden Ring git-gudders are now review-bombing the game for being too hard. The root of the problem (tree pun for a tree game) seems to be that there is an entire subset of players who just want to rush some dang bosses, but the game expects them to engage with all these disgusting features that have no place in an open-world action RPG - things such as story, NPC questlines, exploration, discovery, reward, treasure, et cetera. Yuck!

Case in point: there is a new resource item in this expansion called Scadutree Fragments, which grant you a permanent stacking increase to your damage dealt and a decrease to damage received. This buff is intended as your primary means of increasing your power level while you are in the Realm of Shadow. There are 50 of these fragments in the expansion and the game essentially hands them out as a reward for reaching new areas and making progress in questlines.

You know, the normal stuff that you do in a Soulsborne game.

But as it turns out, a lot of players are unhappy with FromSoftware for having the audacity to spend two years working on this intricately crafted open-world expansion and then expect them to actually, like, look at stuff, pick stuff up, and interact with the world.

Ain't nobody got time for that!

Thankfully, the ever-helpful folks of the modding community have rushed to our aid with mods such as Normalized DLC Damage which negates your need to explore the DLC that you (or your mom) paid € 40 for, and makes the whole experience a breeze! The mod description reads:

"If you're tired of having your entire build thrown in the Trash just because you're not into collectibles, this mod is for you!"

Oh no, not your build, bruh.
You bloody loved that build.
You had so many great memories of running that build.

Well, let me actually talk at you about your stinkin' Elden Ring build, and why you never had one to begin with. Tenaciously clench your orifices, put on these swim goggles, and get your giant grains of salt ready.

This could get a little bit spicy.

Neglected monsters that I want to see return in Monster Hunter Wilds

In 2018, the Monster Hunter series finally entered the high-definition era with the release of Monster Hunter: World, and saw a lot of classic monsters get lovingly updated to modern standards. From Yian Garuga to Fatalis, from Ludroth to Espinas - there have been many incredible glow-ups. And yet, many more monsters remain whose majesty deserves to be admired in the warm, gentle, ray-traced glow of a 4K screen.

Also, fair warning:
This blog may periodically turn into a full-tilt Monster Hunter fan site as we slowly approach the release of Monster Hunter Wilds. I could try to write a very professional blog that keeps its topics nice and varied. But then I wouldn't be doing this for me.

I gotta listen to the brain-bees.

Now, allow me to present four monsters from the pre-Monster Hunter: World era who I would love to see make a big comeback in the series' upcoming 6th generation!

Wizards of the Coast agree with my D&D character creation process

I can't believe it.
Dungeons & Dragons just released video on their official YouTube channel describing how they've changed their character creation process in the upcoming revised Player's Handbook... and it is the exact same process I described in my article "Dungeon Master's advice for creating your next Baldur's Gate III character." 😚👌

You can watch the entire video here:

Not gonna lie, it feels pretty validating to know that the approach I've used for years is also how D&D will officially approach character creation going forward.

Excuse me, would you like to see a picture of my cat?

There's someone I want you to meet.

In one of my articles, I said that I have a cat for whom I would happily slay Satan.

This is her:

This photo was taken immediately after I had laughed at my cat for how funny her face looked as she was about to drift to sleep. This is the look she gave me. I'm so sorry, buddy - you looked like you were about to give up the ghost!

I named her Halloween, because I adopted her in late October 2019. (And no, I did not win the Nobel prize for cat naming that year.) At the time, her estimated age was 2 years old. She is a rescue cat, who had been adopted from the rescue organization once before, and then returned to the organization because her new owners found her to be... "too rowdy."

Dear Monster Hunter fans - OPEN YER BLOODY EYES!!

If you've been following Monster Hunter news recently, you've heard the story of how the fans fell so truly, madly, deeply in love with Gemma the smithy that they've added a "Dating Sim" tag on the game's official Steam page.

Meanwhile, I'm over here, like:
I'm sorry, Gemma, I couldn't hear you over the sound of how badly I want to compare monster notes with this nerd!

Before I can accept you as my handler, I have to know:

WHAT.
IS YOUR FAVORITE.
BIRD WYVERN?

Ooh! Malfestio?
Now that... is a good answer.

Dungeon Master's advice for creating your next Baldur's Gate III character

 As a Dungeon Master I have created hundreds of D&D characters. Some as villains for my players to fight, others as tentative allies whose co-operation with the players hangs by a thread, and others still who are true pals and would follow the players down the Infinite Layers of the Abyss, if asked.

I have a lot of experience with the D&D character creation process - is what I'm trying to say.

And I'm sure every DM out there can attest to this:
After turning hundreds of your character ideas into usable character sheets, you kind of stop having favorite character classes and species. You love all the options equally for what they allow you to do and the specific fantasy associated with them. And you start to see that what really makes a character good -whether it's a villain, or a begrudging co-operator, or an ally- is what kind of flavor you can give them.

So, let's put some of my sage wisdom to work towards creating your next Baldur's Gate III (or indeed D&D) character.

id Software has painted itself into a corner with this Doom Slayer lore

If you're 30-mumble-mumble years old like me, you'll know the player character of DOOM by the name "Doomguy." In the first game he's a marine stationed at the Union Aerospace Corporation base on Phobos, who gets caught in the middle of a demonic invasion. The stakes get much more personal in the second game, as he goes on a crusade to avenge his beloved pet rabbit Daisy, who had been killed in the invasion.

I kind of get where our guy is coming from. As a pet owner myself, I can sympathize with his motivations. If someone hurt my cat I, too, would probably turn into a belligerent chainsaw-swinging lunatic with little regard for my own safety.

Justice for Daisy!

In DOOM 3 we stepped into the boots of a completely different guy (I think), who ended up going through a pretty similar ordeal as the original Doomguy did in the first game. Except this time it was dark, scary and immersive. For some reason.

If it wasn't clear from the name "[Game]guy" - we were never meant to think of these characters as particularly special. They were just a pair of hands on your screen, holding a gun for you. You were the one bringing all of the special.

What's more, when the third game introduced a new player character, it was creating the precedent that any schmoe, if they have the right kind of fire in their belly, can rise to the occasion and be the hyperviolent hero who fights back the hordes of Hell. In that way, it almost felt like the classic tale of human perseverance in the face of oppression. And again, it was you bringing the fire and the perseverance.

Then came the 12-year silence.

Doomguy, can you hear me?
Doomguy, can you see me?
Doomguy, can you find me in the night?

Nothing.

Nothing until 2016 when id Software rebooted the DOOM franchise and---WHOA! Wait, what the Hell is this? They rebranded the original Doomguy as the "Doom Slayer" (Barf!) and deified him as some sort of legendary weapon of mass destruction that gets deployed whenever the armies of Hell need culling?

Chugga-chugga, chugga-chugga, RAIL GUNS

So, I just watched the second trailer for Monster Hunter Wilds...
Actually, why don't you watch it first, and we'll talk after.

Here it is:

While most of the trailer focused on these burrowing leviathans (actual monstrological taxon) called Balahara, we did get a glimpse at another monster at the tail end of the trailer. Now, long-time Monster Hunter fans will immediately have picked up on two important details here:

1. This is likely the flagship monster for Monster Hunter Wilds

Every Monster Hunter game has a flagship monster, which are kind of like the box legendaries in Pokémon. Basically, its the monster at the center of the game's story.

2. It's a flying wyvern

Flying wyverns are another taxon in the Monster Hunter series, which consists of large, typically bipedal monsters with one pair of wings. Although, some species of flying wyverns prefer a quadrupedal posture with the wing arms contacting the ground and contributing to locomotion.

But you saw the headline of this article. You know I'm not here to gush over this game, which I'm VERY excited about and can't wait to spend 2000 hours of my life on. This article is going to have something to do with... railguns?

Why is thriller not a genre in video games?

Recently, I was playing the 2023 remake of System Shock, by Nightdive Studios. This was my first time experiencing any of the System Shock games. I had gone in completely blind, not really sure what to expect. What I found was a really unique blend of game design ideas, many of which I had seen in other games before, but never all together in a package quite like this. And it kind of made me realize just how many of my favorite games had System Shock DNA in them.

At this point, I guess it should be said that the original game was developed by Looking Glass Technologies in 1994. System Shock has had a lot of time to inspire new generations of game developers.

Anyway, at one point in my playthrough I found myself having to pull up a walkthrough because I'd done some things out of the intended order and needed help figuring out how to proceed. And now that THE ALGORITHM™ had been made aware that System Shock was relevant to my interests, my YouTube recommendations exploded with video essays on the game. In a moment of weakness, I may have clicked on a few of them.

What surprised me was how many of these videos talked about System Shock as a horror game. My knee-jerk reaction was: "It's not a horror game! It's a survival thriller!"

System Shock is a survival thriller, right?

In search for validation, I looked up System Shock on Wikipedia to see what the free encyclopedia had to say about the game's genre. Much to my chagrin, it had System Shock listed as an action-adventure game. You know, like your Uncharted, or The Legend of stinkin' Zelda. This felt somehow even further from the truth than calling it a horror game!

There is such a thing in video games as a thriller, right?

Well, it turns out, there super isn't. In fact, I should probably get my gamer certificate confiscated for even having these silly thoughts. The main genres of video games are action, action-adventure, adventure, casual, puzzle, role-playing, simulation and strategy. All of these come with their own subgenres, none of which include thriller. And to my second use of the word "chagrin" in this article, I found out that survival horror is a subgenre of action-adventure. Which infuriatingly supports both the YouTubers calling it a horror game, and Wikipedia calling it an action-adventure game.

So, case closed, right?
System Shock is a survival horror game, which is a subgenre of action-adventure.

Objection, your honor! Case not closed! Filing motion to, uh... do the discovery thing!
(God, I hope no lawyer ever sees this.)

Please, follow me to this hill. This is the hill I've decided to die on. Stop looking over my shoulder at all the other hills I've previously died on. Breathe your lungs full of this wonderful hill air. This is the hill we are now focusing on.

And a-here we go: