Author Archives: Saf

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Teacups & 1UPs: Night In The Woods

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Imagine being an early-twenties college drop-out. Imagine moving back to your small, dying home town, a place that hasn’t really changed, but has also changed enough to be strange. Imagine struggling to understand the futility of life.

Now imagine you are also a cat.

This is Night In The Woods, an adventure game/kind-of-Western-visual-novel that stars a humanoid(ish) cat named Mae Borowski. It’s a game I fell in love with the moment I first saw a trailer, and continue to love now that it’s over. As per usual with Teacups, this is less a review and more a discussion. Therefore, expect some spoilers; maybe save reading this until you’ve played through the game.

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Rebels Review: Secret Cargo

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rebels logoMon Mothma seems to be everywhere these days: Empire’s End, Rogue One, and now an episode of Rebels. She is the heart of the Rebellion, and her appearance in “Secret Cargo” marks a huge step forward for the burgeoning Rebellion we’ve watched flourish these past seasons.

Rebels seems to finally be getting serious about bringing the story together since Sabine gained the darksaber, and “Secret Cargo” doesn’t stray from the trend. Not only does this episode advance the story of the Rebellion, it also displays the strong bonds between Ezra and Hera, and how much Hera has taught Ezra over the course of the show.

Thrawn, as always, makes a daunting villain. His theme is one of the strongest parts of the score, and it builds an entirely ominous atmosphere around the Admiral as he goes head-to-head with Hera’s smarts. Without such a strong character in Thrawn’s place, this episode—and others—wouldn’t have half as much of the good tension they have. He is almost always one step ahead of the Ghost crew. Even when they win, it never really feels like Thrawn has lost.

Mon Mothma is very Mon Mothma, as she always is. It’s easy to see the woman in this episode become the woman in Rogue One in the not-too-distant future. Her interactions with Hera are an interesting look into both their characters as they’re contrasted against each other. The pilot and the politician, both with the same ideals, but having taken very different paths in life. It’s nice to see two woman have a conversation which says so much about each of them, and about the Rebellion they’ve  both had a hand in creating.

There are some gorgeous shot compositions in this episode, and it’s refreshing to be reminded that the art direction in Rebels can end up with such nice looking episodes. I feel that lately there’s been a lack of good looking scenes in Rebels, but “Secret Cargo” more than makes up for it. This episode is good a reminder that Star Wars can be beautiful, since so many of the other episodes seem to be obsessed with showing us how grey and dull the universe is.

All up, “Secret Cargo” is a good, solid episode that tells the story it wants to tell. It’s quick, filled with spaceship-on-spaceship action and broken up with brief moments of strong characterization. I just wish the side pilots didn’t always feel so disposable.

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Teacups & 1UPs: Symphony of the Machine

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Welcome once more to Teacups & 1UPs, a fortnightly-ish column in which I talk about games and pair them with tea. This post should be one about multiplayer games, but because I’m an idiot and managed to miss a game from my VR multipack last time, we’re getting a short mini special this week: Symphony of the Machine, developed by Stirfire Studios. Call this the PAX Aus multipack 2.5.

Yet another virtual reality game I picked up at PAX Australia, Symphony is a puzzle game about reviving a dead world. You find yourself before a tower in a lifeless desert, and upon entering the tower you discover that it has the power to control the weather. With only a little robot as a companion and guide, it’s up to you to restore balance to the world through weather manipulation.

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Teacups & 1UPs PAX Aus Multipack: Virtual Reality

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Welcome once more to Teacups & 1UPs, a fortnightly-ish column in which I talk about games and pair them with tea. Last intallment was the first of my three-part special, where I talked about single player games at PAX Australia, and now it’s time for part two, which is all about games in a medium I’m particularly excited about: virtual reality.

I first tried VR last year at PAX Aus with the breathtaking Earthlight (which I returned to this year) and it was love at first sight. There’s something so special about stepping into another world and experiencing a narrative that encompasses your environment. So, of course, I jumped at every opportunity I was given to try out the VR games being shown at PAX this year.

a-township-taleA Township Tale
Alta

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Rebels Review: An Inside Man

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rebels logoThis week it’s a return to Lothal, and yet another return to Ezra, kiddo, why are you like this?  All up, An Inside Man is a pretty classic undercover episode with Kanan and Ezra infiltrating an imperial factory on Ezra’s home world with the assistance of Ryder Azadi. Fulcrum has told the Ghost crew there’s a new weapon being developed and it’s up to them to find out more. Unfortunately for Ezra and Kanan, the malfunctions caused by rebel sympathizers at the factory haven’t gone unnoticed, and Thrawn has come to find out why.

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Teacups & 1UPs PAX Aus multipack: Single Player Indies

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Welcome back to Teacups & 1UPs, a somewhat-regular column in which I talk about games and pair them with tea. Today is going to be a little bit different from usual, as it’s going to be the first of a three-part PAX Aus special, all about the indie games I picked up and tried out while in Melbourne. Each part will briefly look at a bunch of games I tried and liked, rather than examining one in-depth.

First up: single player games, followed by virtual reality and finally, local multiplayer—because there’s not much I love more than kicking my friends’ asses in ridiculous indie games. Of course, there will also be tea.

So, single player. Leave your friends at home, because it’s time for an adventure.

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Rebels Review: 3.05 – The Last Battle

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star-wars-rebels-the-clone-warsFeaturing Captain Rex and a bunch of battle droids, The Last Battle is an episode for fans of The Clone Wars and the prequels more than a standalone Rebels episode. As a huge fan of The Clone Wars, it’s hard for me to disengage myself from that love to look at this episode from a Rebels point of view—as it is, it’s already very interwoven with The Clone Wars and other stories from within the GFFA. Forgive me for my implicit bias in the review beyond this one sentence: The Last Battle is a average-to-good episode that not only shows Rex, Ezra, and Kanan’s growth as characters, but also explores the ideas of the clones and droids as programmed “tools” during the Clone Wars.

In The Last Battle, Captain Rex and some of the Ghost crew head to Agamar to collect weapons. Instead, they find themselves sucked into a war game as they encounter remainders of the Clone Wars—droids for whom the war never ended. They consider this their chance to really end the war, finally solving the question of just who won the Clone Wars. It is exactly what the episode title says: the last battle.

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Teacups & 1UPs: Oxenfree

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Welcome back to Teacups & 1UPs, a column in which I lovingly pick apart games and pair them with tea. I hope you’re ready for some more Opinions About Games, because I’ve sure got some, and this time I’m talking Oxenfree.

“But Saf,” you groan, “are you ever not talking about Oxenfree?”

Probably not, but now I have a whole however-many-word-I-want to talk about it even more. Buckle up, kids, we’re going ghost hunting. Warnings for very light potential spoilers.

oxenfree-beach

It’s time to make some bad teenage decisions.

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Teacups & 1UPs: The Banner Saga

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Welcome to the first installment of Teacups & 1UPs, a (hopefully) fortnightly column in which I will talk about games both indie, AAA, and in-between! These may not entirely be reviews, and they won’t always be the same format, but one thing’s for sure: I’m going to pair a tea with each and every game.

Why tea? Because I love tea. Next question.

The first game I’m going to be tackling is The Banner Saga, which a Steam review accurately renamed “Tactical Starvation: The Game“. It’s not a new game, so warning for potential minor spoilers as I pick apart the good, the bad, and the fantasy misogyny. Buckle up, I definitely have Some Thoughts about this game.

the-banner-saga-day-22

You wouldn’t think such a pretty game could be so cruel.

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Finding (Virtual) Love: Queerly Represent Me

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The world is filled with amazing and diverse people and relationships. Why should video games, a medium that often reflects the real world, be any different?

Short answer: they shouldn’t be, and as time goes on they’re increasingly not. With the Sims 4’s recent update removing gender restrictions from sim creation, and companies like Bioware making it a standard across their games to include same-sex romance options, it’s clear that considerations of gender and sexuality have moved very much into the mainstream.

Still, a gamer searching for queer representation in the games they play might often find themselves disappointed by what can seem to be a barren wasteland. How amazing would it be to have a database of games including diverse sexualities and genders? A place to find games that represent who you are?

That’s where Queerly Represent Me comes in.

Founded by Alayna M Cole primarily as a place where the work of academics researching queer representation could be collected and shared, Queerly is described as a “database for games that represent sexuality, gender, and relationships.” Queerly Represent Me contains not only an exhaustive and ever-expanding list of games that explore these areas, but also resources for those interested in these topics, including the results of the Queer Representation (2016) survey.

This ain’t no top-ten list, this is some serious business. Looking for games with romanceable non-binary characters? Queerly’s got you covered. What about games that explore the formulae of typical dating sims with regards to relationships? Yup. What about a dating sim based off of that one time-travel game that you wish was gayer? Absolutely.

Basically, there are a lot of games there, from big AAAs to tiny little indies. This site is a valuable resource not just for research, but also for gamers looking for representation and game developers who have worked to put that representation into their games in some way.

a-normal-lost-phone

A Normal Lost Phone, a point-and-click game jam game exploring gender.

There are pages of examples within Queerly’s categories (sexuality, gender, and relationships) showing that diversity exists within games, which is perhaps encouraging to those looking to find themselves in what they play, or include queer characters and relationships in their own games.

Whether a researcher, a gamer, or a developer, Queerly Represent Me is a valuable resource for anyone even slightly interested in representation within video games. Why not check it out today?