Hey friends,
So we wrote up a fun newsletter full of Silly Goofs early this week, then a fascist mob led a big attack on da capital in order to seize dictatorial forever-power for their slug king and the police were like, “hell yeah, right on time boys” and most of the slug king’s party were like “well, they’re not wrong” so we decided to wait a few days before sending this out.
Without further ado, jokes:
Tom Reverts to High School Mode (Tragic)
A while ago I saw this post from Sicko homie Alex Borkowski:
You may remember an earlier newsletter where Joe correctly identified that the only joke I have ever told in my life is to point to some shit that’s really crazy and go “that’s normal.” In that moment I was more Known than any human has ever been and we bridged the infinite gap between human minds for the first time in history. So anyway when I saw this album I was activated like someone said my codeword and I suddenly remembered all my karate training.
Folks, turns out this music’s really wacky—it’s pretty out there, I tell you what—and yet...wait til you hear this one, it’s wild...and YET: it’s called the NORMAL Album.
I want to reiterate in case you didn’t get it: the album is really crazy and weird, but it’s CALLED the NORMAL ALBUM!!!!
I bet that might be a little too twisted for some of you!!! But to me that’s just another Tuesday—catch me out here listening to some really warped stuff and going like “To me? Well, it’s normal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
This album makes me feel like I’m a tiresome 15-year-old who just discovered Mr. Bungle again. It’s getting me giddy and wide-eyed. It’s exactly the kind of obnoxious bullshit that is made exactly for me where I get to indulge the worst goblin core of me that loves to judge the quality of the music exclusively by the number of decisions it makes that are a little bit OUT THERE and a little MESSED UP in the HEAD (higher is better)!!
This mfer Will Wood has 50s-style sax n piano riffs but the music’s A LITTLE TWISTED—didn’t think THAT was gonna happen right?! That’s like if the guy playing the piano was the JOKER!!!! Pretty unusual, huh? Well not so fast—to us, it’s actually NORMAL!!!!!! I feel like I’m dangerously close to going “welcome to the dark side...we have cookies [devil emoji]”
I don’t really have any substantive critique here. Just wanted to let you know about an insufferably twee piece of music that was shot like an arrow from the sun that plunged directly into the core of my soul. If this piece hasn’t made you extremely irritated, maybe check it out!
Joe’s Gaming Year in Review
Homie of the show @Vizsla826 did a wonderful thread of 2020 capsule reviews. I started to do the same but when I looked back at my play history I just saw the words Depression Gaming in big neon lights. As not to just talk about roguelikes, I would like to present a more curated list: my top four games of 2020.
4. Katana Zero
Sidescrolling Hotline Miami where you slow time and deflect bullets with your katana. Slowing time doesn't make it easy to deflect shit—it just makes it possible. Anytime I deflected a bullet at normal speed I panicked at my success causing me to fall into a hole. Deaths are fast and you reset instantly. Dying feels like problem solving instead of Actual Failure—-if you liked getting into the flow playing Super Meat Boy despite rapidly dying 300 times, Katana Zero will scratch that same itch.
The in-game framing of this trial and error is neat: your character isn't actually dying each time: your failed attempts are Katana Guy thinking through his murder-spree and your deaths are him saying 'damn, that won't work.' When you complete a level, you get to see CCTV footage of your awesome feats without the time slowing effect and I'm not going to bullshit you: it makes you feel really cool.
In between missions you have to go to therapy in order to keep getting dosed with a serum that keeps you alive and gives you bullet time. This is also where it feeds you spoonfuls of story and world-building which, by the end, is pretty wild.
3. Monster Train
2. Yakuza: Like a Dragon
I've said as much on the show but they turned Yakuza into a JRPG and they crushed it. Not only does it work beautifully, but it's the best one. I didn't think anything would top playing Yakuza 0 almost completely blind but they went and did it!
The newest installment is centered around Ichiban who is notably not Kiryu. I love Kiryu because he's a tragic character who is always strolling into life-or-death situations and is like, "I heard there's some honor in here." Ichiban does the same but he yells about how having friends kicks ass. He also throws a bunch of a cum at Japanese Ted Cruz which Kiryu would never do because Kiryu doesn't know about cum.
If both were transformed into dogs but still could talk (an Up situation) Kiryu would be a scary half-wolf dog who silently does anything you tell him and Ichiban would be a shredded Pomeranian who humps your leg (and also does what you tell him).
As I write this, I am now realizing that the secret sauce in all the Yakuza games is that it's a Himbo simulator. You go around helping people and only throw down when people start shit as you try to help out. Also the antagonizing force behind every side quest is just The Economy.
1. Monolith
Joe, wait a minute - isn't this a roguelike? No, but I understand your confusion: it looks like a Gameboy shooter with randomized dungeons. If it was a roguelike you would play as some human who collects powerups. In Monolith, you are a little spaceship. Very different.
Here’s my pitch: you’ve played games where you fly a ship and shoot guys, right? Well this is the best one I’ve played in a fucking while. I also haven’t told anyone about this game except for an upcoming guesto. It was my little secret and now I’m prepared to set this knowledge free.
This shit looks like something you'd play on your Super Gameboy so you could fuck with the colors. The music is amazing. As you can tell by looking at a screenshot, it's chiptune bullshit that really goes hard. Not only is it catchy and fun, it also causes you to enter The Zone.
As we established in the Gaming Criticism ep, the hallmark of a good video game is making your brain stop thinking those awful thoughts and I gotta tell you: Monolith does this even better than Monster Train. For MT, yes, you can zone out and get lost in the world of scaling attack power. But card games and their horrible rules require you to interact with human language and think your bad thoughts in that same human language. You don't have to do that with Monolith! You can completely reduce your internal monologue to a white noise impulse that exists only to make your hands zig-zag your little ship (not a guy) around hundreds of bullets.
Anime Fashion Corner
The beloved segment Anime Fashion Corner returns! Historically this has been a place for me to post a crazy outfit from anime and point at various details and go “lol”. Not this time. Lately I have been reading a manga so overflowing with sumptuous fits that this has become an undercover Sickos Picko. I am of course talking about Kaoru Mori’s A Bride’s Story.
A Bride’s Story is a slice of life manga about people living in Central Asia in the 19th century. There are main characters we keep coming back to, but generally the focus will wander between characters and locations seemingly on a whim, with all stories sharing the thematic anchor of being focused in some way on women who are married, are about to get married, or are trying to get married.
Mori is notable for being a truly massive nerd for history and research and puts mondo effort into obsessively researching the time periods she depicts in her manga. Turns out at that time in Central Asia, it was a huge part of the culture for women to become absolute masters of sewing and embroidery, and a crucial part of marriage in the culture was for the bride-to-be to make a massive offering of intricately embroidered fabrics she made herself. Mori, being an insane person, will not allow herself to not draw all this shit in the most detail possible. This leads us to the *real* star of the manga, and the reason this is in Anime Fashion Corner: the fucking CLOTHES dude!!
Case in point, behold Chapter One, Page One, Panel One:
Now I don’t know if you’ve heard about this, but drawing is hard. This next part is something only the pros understand but I’ll try to make it easy to grasp: drawing very complicated things is very hard. Now here’s the real inside-baseball insight: drawing extremely intricate patterns on cloth that is realistically draped over a human body is fucking impossible. But guh!!! LOOK!! It’s right there!!
Folks this is not a scenario where chapter one hits you with da big splash panels to make you go “ooh ahh” and then the art gets simpler. It’s just like this the whole time
There’s one chapter where the entire plot is a group of women making the aforementioned huge offering of embroidered cloth before a wedding and Mori fucking draws it all
What’s there to say? Just look at this shit. Even when there are action scenes (rare) the clothing is still so goddamn on point that you just gotta let your tongue wag outta your head.
Look at the guy leading this charge. Look at him. Holy shit!
WARNING: This manga is insanely horny. Not in the leering way so common in shonen manga. Kaoru Mori draws women in a way that is like cosmically horny. There’s an entire volume where a sheltered rich man’s wife goes to the public baths for the first time and she meets a woman with absolutely boffo bazongas and you can see her third eye opening. The huge-titted woman is drawn with religious devotion. You can almost see Mori hovering in midair with glowing white eyes as she draws these panels. I have never been horny but I think I get what erotica is going for now.