Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare - Review
In some ways, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare is the most interesting Call of Duty game to release since Modern Warfare. For once, they have finally nailed down the shooter campaign story in a way that no other game quite has this year. It goes to places that are legitimately surprising to see as a player, and they actually try to say something with the story. But at the same time, the multiplayer experience is subpar. Which is so out of left field for a game like Call of Duty. It is the exact opposite of what you would expect when you pick up one of these games each fall.
Small Radios Big Televisions - Review
Small Radios Big Televisions is the latest title to be released by Adult Swim. Developed by Fire Face, the stylistic puzzler dips you into a series of themed “factories” as you try to figure out the mystery behind the world that you have found yourself in. Essentially it is a point-and-click puzzle game with a heavy emphasis on style over difficulty. The world is colorful and broken, as nature slowly tries to reclaim the crumbling buildings from civilization. To get through each one of the shaped factories, you must collect cassette tapes that you use with your character’s VR headset to transport you from your industrial tower back to a piece of nature from before whatever has happened to the world.
Collage EP - Review
Think for a moment about bologna sandwiches. I love a good bologna sandwich every now and then. Some Wonder Bread, a slice of Kraft American cheese, and some crappy bologna. They are cheap, technically tasty, and just generic enough to be good sometimes. You hand me a bologna sandwich and I’m generally a happy guy. You give me two of them, and I’ll probably be okay for a while. Give me five of them, and I’ll be like “Please stop with the bologna sandwiches, you’re ruining my life.”
The Chainsmokers like bologna sandwiches, which is appropriate because they are the Wonder Bread of EDM. They are pretty good at making them, and they want to make sure that everyone is eating them. And if they were a little more conscious of this fact, it would be fine. Instead they think that every sandwich they make is gilded, when in reality, they’re just shitty bologna sandwiches. Or in this case, some of the most formulaic EDM-lite that I’ve heard in a while.
Battlefield 1 - Review
Battlefield 1 is an odd beast. It’s probably the best the series has been, but it’s also incredibly fickle.
I’ve played every Battlefield game since Battlefield 2, and never have the largest problems I’ve had with the series ever been addressed. The multiplayer has always been long treks to the spot of your inevitable death. Snipers have always been annoying. The campaigns have always been lackluster, though this last point was alleviated in the Bad Company games.
To my immense surprise Battlefield 1 has fixed every one of these issues, but from the ashes of these decade-old problems rise a whole new set of issues ranging from rage-inducing to a kind that simply make you shake your head and carry on.
Dishonored 2 - Review
There is a lot of stuff that I really love about the Dishonored series. They nailed down stealth gameplay in a way that few other games have ever managed, allowing you to be either brutally efficient killing machine or stealthy, nonviolent avenger. There are so many great things that start to add up to make Dishonored 2 a great game. In many ways it’s better than the first, giving you options that you never knew you wanted until they were presented to you. But in two crucial ways it falls short for me. I like the way that this game plays but the story itself does nothing to pull me through the worlds. It feels like a flimsy excuse to put your characters back into the same situation as they were in during the first game.
HERE - Review
Positivity can be easily forgotten. When things are looking down, we need a different message. And the last few months have been very negative. Hate is always just round the corner for all of us. And it is here where HERE shines. It is, essentially, a conversation about identity and self in the new America. About figuring out who you are, your anger, your insecurities, your hopes, and your fears, and thinking about how you are now. How you are stronger and more beautiful for the presence of all of your flaws. “Stretch marks are your beauty scars.” It is a different kind of positive message than the sickly sweet bubblegum pop that we have too much of. “When a girl can’t be herself no more / I just wanna cry, cry for the world.”
Bucket List Project - Review
Saba is an interesting artist. Mired in the thick of Chicago rap, yet relatively unknown for his solo efforts. His 2014 debut mixtape ComfortZone was a quiet and meandering exploration of what life is like for a young black person. And since I reviewed it back in April, it has grown on me a lot. A fantastic way to wind down after a long day of something harder. So I knew I had to listen to Bucket List Project.
DC4 - Review
It has been a long year for Meek Mill since he dropped his last project, Dreams Worth More Than Money. He became the whipping boy of the entire rap world after his beef with Drake, and he’s picked more than a few fights since then. He took shots at The Game, 50 Cent, and Joe Budden and came out the other side looking more than a little worse for wear. So with DC4, the fourth in his Dreamcatchers series, fans were eager to see what would happen next. And I was pleasantly surprised to see him dropping the beefs and focusing more on his music, delivering a solid mixtape/EP/album chock full of his trademark intensity and showing off some of his lyrical talent that people forget about when they think of Meek Mill.
Super Dungeon Bros - Review
It is that time of the month again where we get a new free game from Xbox Live. This month we get the newly released Super Dungeon Bros, which tries to be part Castle Crashers, part Brutal Legend, and part Diablo all rolled up into a single hack-and-slash dungeon crawler. A supposedly rock and roll themed co-op quest where you fight your standard array of skeletons, floating eyes, and mages in progressively more difficult levels of the dungeon. You take control of one of four rock legends with Axl, Freddie, Lars, and Ozzie rounding out the core cast of characters. With them you challenge the dark land of Rokheim, and unfortunately the place isn’t looking so great. Traps, monsters, and crumbling architecture stand between you and the next level of the dungeon. You and your three color coded friends must push on to try to reach further depths in a quest to see how far you can get.
Lady Wood - Review
Sex and drugs are a fact of life for Tove Lo. Ones that she won’t lie about. You can fault her for many things, but her honesty is not one of them. And in Lady wood, she carries this candor over a haze of smooth pop beats. She owns everything about herself, every flaw and imperfection, which brings an interesting side to pop that we don’t normally get to see. Her imperfections are real and she is very imperfect, as compared to a lot of the more plastic imperfections of many pop stars. She’s messed up, but stronger for it. Lady Wood is about owning the sex and drugs lifestyle that she has found herself living, with a candor that would make the vanilla pop of Taylor Swift blush.
Two Vines - Review
With the release of their third studio album, outside of the box electro music duo Empire of the Sun, sought to capture the beauty and tranquility of nature with a breath of Hawaii infused into their synths. They make an admirable effort at making a summer’s afternoon condensed into an album. Warm and soft in its electro/EDM beats, the music sounds almost breathy over the lyrics of Luke and Nate. Ephemeral and floaty, it carries along softly even when it picks up the pace in some tracks.
Hibachi for Lunch - Review
The artist formerly known as Titi Boo works pretty damn hard. Hibachi for Lunch comes off of a long year of releases and features, from this spring’s Collegrove in March, to Felt Like Cappin’ and Daniel Son, Necklace Don in January and August, with dozens of features sprinkled in between. It is not a stretch to call himont of the hardest working artists in rap. Hibachi for Lunch is the latest in his long line of mixtapes, and brings a rough but laid back set of tracks to your ears that is gone almost as soon as it starts. Clocking in at only 22 minutes long, this bite-sized EP is shorter than an episode of The Simpson and a hell of a lot more fun. It uses every minute wisely, with no space for filler, and just focusing on the music.