Nuclear Monster

  • Originally a game for the PICO-8 fantasy computer (that I wrote about here), Celeste is a hardcore platformer from the developers of TowerFall that has now become a complete thing and is universally loved for its beautiful aesthetic and challenge.

    Polygon’s Russ Frustick reviewed it:

    Celeste feels like a very capably made platformer, easily on par with other masocore greats. But where it really sets itself apart is in its incredible presentation values. The game is home to some of the best 2D pixel art I’ve seen. Inspired by the SNES era, the characters and environments in Celeste are vibrant and memorable, adding way more visual charm than the genre usually provides. The aforementioned resort level is filled with peeling wallpaper, rusted elevator cages and moonlit mountain views, while a later level set in a temple features spooky totems and spinning torches. These visuals are backed by a stellar score from Lena Raine, whose synthy chiptune beats harken back to the days of Donkey Kong Country. And the adventure is held together by a gorgeous low-poly 3D model of Celeste Mountain that helps to convey the scale and trajectory of the climb.

    Celeste is on so many platforms, and it’s $20. Steam for Windows, macOS, Linux. itch for Windows, macOS, Linux. The Nintendo Switch eShop. The PlayStation 4’s store. The Xbox One’s garbage web store that made me log-in just to browse to this game.

  • Fullbright’s Tacoma is a very thoughtful narrative-focused sci-fi adventure that I enjoyed and would like to share with you. You can enter to win a copy of the game on Steam for Windows, macOS, Linux here:

    Tacoma Giveaway

    The last day to enter this giveaway is on February 9th.

    This giveaway is not in collaboration with Fullbright at all, this is just an extra Steam code I already had. Here is a trailer for the game:

  • Shadow of the Colossus is one of my favorite games. It is from a unique moment in time before independent developers had found the ability to publish their novel ideas widely. Instead, we had this deep series of boss fights from Team Ico that turns out to work just as well today as it did in 2005. At least, once Bluepoint did some serious technical work to make the game presentable to a new and returning audience.

    Eurogamer’s Oli Welsh reviewing the new Shadow of the Colossus remake for the PlayStation 4 that comes out on February 6:

    So this PlayStation 4 remake is a risky undertaking. The developer, Bluepoint Games of Austin, Texas, is the undisputed master of remasters and has even been here before, having made the Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection for PlayStation 3 in 2011. But this isn’t a remaster. This is a remake, rebuilding the game from scratch using new technology and all-new, much more detailed art. Ueda wasn’t involved and everything he and his team made for the original game has been redrawn and embellished to satisfy our hunger for fidelity. In a literal sense, this is an artist’s game remade without the original artist and containing none of the original art. Could its spirit survive such a process?

    Yes. And how. Bluepoint has achieved an unprecedented feat in game preservation that creates the definitive version of Shadow of the Colossus and makes a generations-old game feel excitingly modern.

  • A MacRumors forum member, project_2501, has posted this extensive log (via Nick Heer) of his attempt to work with Apple’s support to get a refund for one of the latest MacBook Pro’s after his couldn’t play video at 4K without overheating. Of course that overheating also caused other issues, like the glue holding the glass onto the screen peeling off. It’s an eye-watering account, I really recommend reading the whole post.

    One of the reasons I’ve chosen, and recommended, Apple hardware in the past has been the often incredible customer support.

    When the hardware fails, rarely, they’ve stood by it and repaired it or replaced it with the latest version in case it was a design flaw.

    Their latest laptops seem to be incredibly poorly designed. So many people have written about the keyboards failing due to (what should be) insignificant specks of dust permanently interrupting keys.

    Casey Johnston wrote this article for The Outline last year. Headline: The New MacBook Keyboard is Ruining My Life.

    Perhaps it’s true that less dirt gets under butterfly switched-keys. But therein lies the problem — when dirt does get in, it cannot get out. A piece of dust is capable of rendering a butterfly switch nonfunctional. The key won’t click, and it won’t register whatever command it’s supposed to be typing. It’s effectively dead until someone can either shake loose the debris trapped under it or blow at the upside-down keyboard Nintendo-cartridge style. Meanwhile, Apple quietly put up a page with instructions expressly to try and help people with dead butterfly switch keys.

    Having worked in a computer repair center in the past five years, I’m not likely to recommend Windows laptops, they’re cheap (or sometimes expensive) shit.

    My current laptop is a late-2013 MacBook Pro that was Apple Support’s replacement for a 2011 model that had repeated issues with the GPU. This 2013 model has had issues, the rubber grommet around the screen has been slowly falling apart while the screen flickers at the login screen and takes forever to wake up with the machine after it’s been sleeping. This all started happening after their last repair on it, and their support surprised me by refusing to fix the issues caused by their repair. Instead offering a $700+ repair option. I’m holding onto it until it falls apart.

    I hope that Apple can get their shit together. project_2501 ended up buying one of the 2015 models that Apple still sells for some odd reason, perhaps because the current models aren’t working out so well.

  • One of the few possibly good things to come out of the financial crisis in 2007 and 2008 was a government entity that existed solely to protect people from predatory businesses. It’s the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and it’s new Trump-appointed leader, Mick Mulvaney is unsurprisingly, a real piece of shit.

    ProPublica’s Paul Kiel:

    Last week, it dropped a lawsuit against a group of payday lenders that charged interest rates that touched 950 percent. The companies were associated with a Native American tribe, a common dodge the industry has used because it allows lenders to evade state interest-rate caps.

    […]

    But in an email to CFPB staff today, Mulvaney laid out what the bureau’s new approach should be. He had “no intent in shutting down the Bureau,” he wrote, but said that his leadership would contrast sharply with Cordray’s approach of aggressive enforcement. The CFPB worked for all taxpayers, he wrote, and that includes “those who take loans, and those who make them” and “bringing the full weight of the federal government down on the necks of the people we serve should be something that we do only reluctantly.” Going forward, he wrote, there would be “more formal rulemaking on which financial institutions can rely, and less regulation by enforcement.”

    Mulvaney also received big campaign contributions from the predatory lending industry. Of course.

    If this pisses you off, too, you might consider joining a local DSA chapter.