Burning the midnight oil at noon

Coffee Table Bloodbath

A few weeks ago, I watched a movie called The Coffee Table. It’s a 2022 Spanish-language film available on Shudder (and maybe elsewhere) that had randomly caught my attention and sat on my watch list for weeks before I finally pulled the trigger on it.

This movie is about a couple who have recently had their first child, and they buy this gaudy-looking coffee table. The first 20-ish minutes are all build-up, then there is an incident wherein the baby receives a rather severe head-related injury from the coffee table. From that point, the movie is basically 100% building tension until it all comes to a head in the last five minutes. I don’t think I would ever recommend this movie, mostly because I don’t think that anyone I know would enjoy it, but I liked it.

So I watched this movie, and the very next day, I kid you not, I get a text telling me that my one-year-old nephew bashed his head open on the edge of a coffee table. Tears and blood everywhere, an all-around horrifying situation. Though I make it sound worse than it was; the poor little guy had to get four (I think) stitches, and as I record this he’s still got a pretty wicked scar where an eyebrow used to be, but as far as I’m aware he’s doing just fine. Had a rough time in the moment, but was happy and smiling just a couple hours later.

And that’s my latest story of an absolutely wild coincidence. I watched a movie called The Demon Disorder the following weekend and wondered to myself if I ought to send out a warning to keep my nephew away from anything that might possess him, but figured “eh, what are the chances of that?”

Just for the record, he was not possessed by anything the next day.

A Box of Discs

I did a big clean of my condo this week, and part of that was sorting through a number of boxes that I haven’t opened in years. One of those boxes held all of my physical PC games. Behold!

The un-labeled cases contain, in no particular order: Day of the Tentacle, Doom II, Relentless: Twinsen’s Adventure, Hidden & Dangerous: Devil’s Bridge, and Command & Conquer: Red Alert.

Final Fantasy VIII and Command & Conquer were late for picture day.

I would normally do some reminiscing or analysis here, but I think I’d rather just present this without commentary. Draw your own conclusions. Judge me as you will.

Unholy Union

He (always comes) back

So the teaser trailer for Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 happened last week. Just thought you should know.

Am I excited? Absolutely! I liked the first movie a lot… the first time I watched it. Second time around the cracks were a little more obvious. But I’m still looking forward to the sequel! We’ve just gotta keep motoring along until we get a Sister Location movie. That’s what I’m really waiting for.

Oh what a Fool

Month End Video Game Wrap-Up: March 2025

~ Game Over ~

Monster Hunter Wilds (PS5) – Very good Monster Hunter game. Maybe a little too easy, and there’s a pretty slim selection of monsters to fight. Also the post-game story just kind of petered out… no big finale like we’re used to. Oh well! It was still a bunch of fun all the way through and I look forward to grinding hundreds more hours out of it.

Scary Shadow Spot: Bitter Glass (PC) – This is probably the most unique-feeling Doesn’t Matter game, but is in need of a lot of polish. I even encountered a game-breaking bug that forced me to restart the game halfway through. It took less than 20 minutes to recover my progress, but still. Big oof.

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest (SNES) – This would be a much more frustrating game without NSO’s rewind feature. That’s all I want to say.

TE Video: Coming Soon (April 2025)

If you weren’t already aware, I record most of my let’s plays pretty far in advance. Like, most videos that go up were recorded months before their air date. And so I’m really excited for April, because a couple of games that I really, really liked are finally getting their dues.

????? (PC) – April 1. I can’t spoil my April Fools video, now can I?

Ignited Entry (PC) – April 3. Another Jordan Lindgren game, and I believe the most recent of the bunch. It’s really quite good, with the exception of a frustrating chase sequence towards the end. Try to guess how many times I die before I make it!

Crystar (PC) – April 5/12/19/26. Had to follow up Mario & Luigi with another long RPG. This one’s a little more actiony, a lot more anime, and significantly more depressing. Like, we’re talking Nier levels of bleakness here. Big fan!

Newspaper Day (PC) – April 7. A bad indie horror game. So bad that I couldn’t be bothered to earn the good ending. At least I had fun making plenty of BJ jokes.

Dead or School (PC) – April 10/24. Parts 8 and 9 of a whopping 20. If you haven’t gotten into it by now, I don’t think it’s likely to ever happen.

Prison City (PC) – April 14/21/28. Side-scrolling action platformer that borrows a ton from classic NES games. I had a blast with it, and highly recommend watching it for the nostalgia along if you grew up in the NES era. Part 4 (the finale) airs in May.

The Final Pin (PC) – April 17. With this, I’ve played all of Jordan Lindgren’s games (to date). I really like this one, but it’s definitely more of a mystery/thriller than a horror game. Which isn’t a bad thing. I just want to set your expectations properly.

Nintendo Direct 3/27/2025

I would have liked to do a live reaction to this one, but I was conducting an interview when it aired, and that’s not just something one can put off for later. So here’s a recap of the things I found the most interesting. But only the things I find interesting! No “I don’t care about this” notes this time around.

Dragon Quest I & II HD Remake – Looks great! DQ1 is my very first RPG, so it has a soft spot in my heart. I’ll probably buy this out of nostalgia and forget to ever actually play it.

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond – I’m sure it’s “because Switch” but I like the more cartoony look! At least, slightly more cartoony than I’d expected. Gameplay looks bang-on with what I would expect from the series, so I’m obviously 100% on board. Very curious if it’s going to be a dual release on Switch and Switch 2.

Pokémon Legends Z-A – No joke, this is my most hype game of 2025, based mostly on the strength of Pokémon Legends Arceus (which is my fave Pokémon game). Last month’s overview trailer got me pretty pumped, and this one just added fuel to the fire. And there’s finally context for the weird subtitle now! Hooray!

Marvel Cosmic Invasion – Hmmmm… Looks like a 90’s arcade brawler… Made by the same team that did Shredder’s Revenge… Despite the fact that my interest in Marvel has atrophied greatly, I may have to play this.

Monster Hunter Wilds: Week One

There’s a new Monster Hunter game out now. You know what that means, right?

It means I probably won’t be playing much else this month.

Monster Hunter Wilds is the follow-up to 2018’s Monster Hunter World. It’s a slightly different experience than you’d get with the more Nintendo-y MH games; the MHW games are more focused on appealing to a wider audience to bring in new players and, being completely un-portable, only support online multiplayer. That’s already a knock in my book, because 50% of the fun of Monster Hunter is getting together with my brother to hunt locally.

That factor aside, I’ve had a lot of fun with Wilds over the first week. While not a single one of the pre-release trailers got me hyped in any way, I’m happy to report that the game is just as good as or better than any that came before it. Which is what you’d hope for from a sequel. It’s been a while since I’ve played either World or Rise, so I was a bit rusty at first, but I got back into the swing of things pretty quickly. At least as far as basic mechanics go.

Month End Video Game Wrap-Up: February 2025

~ Game Over ~

Wedding Witch (PC) – A horny Vampire Survivors clone that I bought and played for a joke, but then I ended up spending 10 hours 100%ing it. Whoops!

Silent Hill 2 (PC) – I’ve been itching to play the original since finishing the remake last year, and a co-worker recommended I try out the Enhanced Edition mod, so I did. It looks good for sure, and it was nice to revisit a classic. Really drove home how much bigger the remake is, too. Livestreamed the whole thing, too.

Mario & Luigi: Brothership (Switch) – Should have finished this months ago, but the whole let’s playing process really slowed me down. I liked the game a lot, but would have liked it even more if the dialog was cut down by 25-50% and it was like 10 hours shorter. That also describes how I feel about most M&L games that came after Superstar Saga.