Dom Reviews: Cuphead

Just as the internet commotion covering Cuphead‘s huge success, intense fan community, and difficulty has finally seemed to die down, I’ve had a chance to complete it. Long story short, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it checks many of the boxes that make it a great experience both in style and mechanical substance.

(all photos courtesy the author)

The game’s complete name, Cuphead: Don’t Deal With the Devil, handily explains what you’re getting into. Cuphead and his pal Mugman stumble upon a casino where they make a lot of money. However, they (more specifically Cuphead) fall into the trap of gambling against the Devil. Losing their bet, they beg for an alternative. In order to save their own souls, they must hunt down other debtor’s soul contracts, which comes down to getting in lots of fights.

Overwatch: Where Gameplay Enthusiasts and Fandom Participants Meet

Overwatch has been out for over a year now. We’ve seen lots of updates and gameplay patches, tons of cosplays, and an approximately infinite amount of fanart and articles on the game’s social issues and impacts. Suffice to say, the game has been a worldwide phenomenon among many audiences. In this regard, Overwatch has executed the seemingly difficult task of being a hit with both experienced players and casual players, as well as with both gameplay enthusiasts and fandom participants (and of course, these two can overlap). It’s one of the best examples of a game that has accomplished garnering such an audience, and I’d like to explore how they’ve done this.

Pharmercy in action (via Medium)

Sonic Mania: A Nostalgic Return to Form

(screencapped from Sonic Mania)

2017 has been a hell of a year for video games. One could argue it has been the best year in quite a while! We’ve seemingly had at least one Game of the Year contender every month, with no sign of that stopping as we approach the end of the year. We’ve had new franchises crop up such as Horizon: Zero Dawn, older franchises getting rejuvenated such as Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and the continuous drip of indie games such as Night in the Woods and the upcoming Cuphead. Quite honestly, many avid game players are overwhelmed with options in a good way. Nostalgia trips haven’t been left out either. As I said, Zelda has come back into play and pixel based indie games are as popular as ever. The perfect crossover here, for me, was the release of Sonic Mania.

Dom Reads: The Rest of Hyper Force Neo

(Note: a free review copy of the Hyper Force Neo graphic novel was provided by the distributor)

Around a year or so ago, I picked up the first issue of Hyper Force Neo by Jarrett Williams at a convention. Its striking art style and premise caught my eye, and as predicted, it was right up my alley. I more or less enjoyed it with a few minor gripes here and there, but overall had a good time with it. Since then, the series run was cancelled in favor of a single graphic novel release. Luckily for me, this is my preferred method for reading comics! So now that the full narrative is out there, what did I think? Well, arguably, both its positives and negatives from the first issue have remained the same! So I definitely still liked it, but I’d argue that it is more polarizing.

(taken from the review copy)

Spoilers after the jump!

The Continuing Growth of EVO

Dear readers, I love video games and the hype around them more than I care to admit. While hype surrounding games in the form of previews and preorders has become a bit of a dark cloud of a conversation, hype surrounding eSports is thriving. This past weekend was the Evolution fighting game tournament, and it scratched an itch for hype that I’ve been having for a while. I watched a good portion of the finals this past Sunday, and I had some observations on what made the event so exciting and fun to watch.

(via Gamecity Brasil)

Sexualized Saturdays: Matriarchy Shouldn’t Just Be Patriarchy-But-With-Women

Our society has a poor relationship with gender, which is bad for reality, but gets interesting in fiction. This dynamic is pushed to some possible conclusion in works such as The Handmaid’s Tale, Bitch Planet, or Stepford Wives. In these stories, the degrading treatment of women in the present day becomes far more explicit and sinister. We aren’t just looking at microaggressions and lower pay, but being forced into servitude or stripped of all agency. Stories like these are both good cautionary tales and thought experiments, and they can more easily highlight some of the harder-to-see marginalizations women face. But sometimes, an author wants to shock the audience by flipping the gendered treatment of the characters. In some stories, we get to see matriarchal societies and how they tend to operate, which is useful for examining our own biases. But whenever I see these, I wonder if this is how things would actually go.

(via Comicbook.com)

A month or so ago, we saw some of the drafts for a Wonder Woman movie penned by Joss Whedon. To put it lightly, it caught some flak. Within the droves of criticism, some commenters pointed out that Diana would most likely not resort to insulting someone by telling them to “be man enough.” First off, she was previously unfamiliar with the concept of men in general. Second, as an Amazon her frame of what is strong would include only women. So if anything, she would say to “woman up,” but again, the gender thing wouldn’t come up the same way, because she doesn’t even know men existed. Third, would a society completely comprised of women still value strength as one of its key tenets and judge someone’s value on their bravery and toughness? For a warrior society, maybe, but not necessarily. Would their values be roughly the same as our more patriarchal society, just with a gender flip? I started thinking about it, and then I got to thinking about other times this theme caught my attention.

Content warning for sexism and assault below.

Looking Back at the Game Devs of Color Expo 2017

A couple weeks ago, I got to go to the Game Devs of Color Expo in New York City, and I have to say it was quite the experience. While I’m not a developer myself, gaming is my preferred sector of nerd culture. And for the unaware, I’m a person of color. Add these factors up and this was an event I needed to attend.

Luckily, and full disclosure, I was provided a press badge for entry.

(via gamedevsofcolorexpo)

Trailer Tuesdays: Black Panther

The new Black Panther trailer has been released and I’m beyond hyped. February can’t get here soon enough! Coming off the heels of Wonder Woman’s success and a wave of support for inclusion of marginalized voices, Marvel finally released a trailer with a non-white male lead. I got to see the intersection of Black Twitter and Nerd Twitter come out in full force, so with all this excitement, I should probably explain why it looks so great. 

Trailer Tuesdays: Splatoon 2

Despite this year being packed full of great games already (just look at games like NieR: Automata and Breath of the Wild!), the Spring/Summer season never fails to hype even more games coming in. No doubt E3 has an impact on this, but even before games are shown there, companies are making announcements and releasing information on their upcoming projects. Being the maverick that they are, Nintendo has already teased many of their big upcoming projects. The title that caught my attention the most was the follow up to 2015’s Splatoon, a game I had an immense fondness for.

The Short Memory of Video Games

Video games are often compared to other art forms, typically movies. One question reflective of this comparison is the question “What is the Citizen Kane of video games?” In other words, what is a video game that some consider to be the best of all time, or one that was an innovative game changer? While I look forward to experiencing a game with that level of praise, I think it is going to be difficult for the medium to come to a consensus on what that game is, due to the short memory video game culture has.