Vulpes Valentine's Video Game Valley

Tag: books

  • Can I Platinum 2026?

    Can I Platinum 2026?

    I have, let’s call it, a sickness.

    That sickness is that I will play most games until I hit end credits, regardless of when in the process of playing that the experience has become an insufferable nightmare. Worse still, is the hunger deep within me that yearns for the dopamine rush of a platinum trophy. I need them, I dream of them, I make obsessively detailed plans for how to acquire them. I stopped enjoying Ghost of Tsushima about four hours in, but when I peeked at the trophies (a blunder I repeat with every game I buy) I realized just how attainable that platinum trophy was.

    So I got it. Every step of the way I was battling with reason, with decency, with my knowledge that my time on Earth grows shorter with each enemy encampment cleared, with every haiku composed. Was it worth it? Probably not.

    Does my heart gleam with joy when I see that (at time of writing) I have 61 platinum trophies to my name? YES.

    Outside of gaming, I have become a goals oriented person in the last few years. I write to-do lists every day (a useful method of coping with my severe and unmedicated ADHD), that will remind me to do basic things like shower or write an email I’ve been meaning to send, or to spend a few minutes reading or outlining my next post. It’s remarkably effective, and is a practice which I’ve been thinking may lead to some big growth and possible successes in 2026.

    I turned 30 at the tail end of 2025 and with it came a lot of angst but also a sudden drive to get more of my big picture goals out of the way by the time I turn 31. I decided that the best way to achieve these goals would probably be to make a long-term to-do list and check them off one-by-one, breaking them down into a lot of attainable milestones rather than vague, nebulous idealized dreams of success.

    Like… a trophy list.

    <sicko mode engaged>

    So here we are. It’s 2026 and I have only one thing on my mind. Can I platinum the year?

    Below I have organized my goals for the year into the typical trophy categories. Bronze trophies are things that are most likely to just happen with little input or extra effort on my part. Silver trophies take a little more time and energy, and have the potential to be missable by certain deadlines if not adequately planned and prepared for. Gold trophies are the real difficult tasks, things that might not even be up to me and my efforts entirely and may rely partly on a bit of universe-scale RNG.

    Some of these are silly. Some of them are deeply personal. All of them will benefit me in some way.

    Here is how we get there.

    Bronze Trophies

    Wolfing it Down – Read Gene Wolfe’s “The Book of the Long Sun” and “The Book of the Short Sun”

    Simba, Remember – Finish all Elden Ring Nightreign Remembrance Quests

    Not A Waste of Money – Finish my backlog of unwatched DVDs

    Cyber New Type – Watch Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ and the film Char’s Counterattack

    Explorer – Visit 10 previously unvisited local bookstores

    Mysterious Benefactor – Back 5 TTRPG crowdfunding campaigns

    FINAL-LY – Finish and write about all remaining mainline Final Fantasy games

    Cleaning House – Clean out my closet and dressers of old clothes and donate them

    Silver Trophies

    Ooh Shiny – Acquire 15 more Platinum Trophies (how meta!)

    Bookbound – Finish 50 books

    Consistency – Publish a new episode of “Table for Two” every single week

    Number Go Up – Reach 1,000 downloads for “Table for Two”

    Do it For Them – Finish and publish my next game, “For the Flock”

    A Real Game Dev – Reach 50 downloads on itch.io

    Cooking Papa – Cook 20 new recipes from the various cookbooks I received for Christmas

    It’s An Investment – Purchase a Steam Deck

    Gold Trophies

    It’s For Your Own Good – Exercise Daily (at least 10 minutes, work counts)

    People Are Talking About This – Reach 20 patrons on the “Table for Two” Patreon (that’s patreon.com/tablefortwopod)

    Whisper – Publish a short story

    Speak – Publish a novella

    Shout – Complete a first draft of a novel

    Tables Squared – Launch a secondary series on the “Table for Two” feed

    Platinum Trophy

    2026 – The Year of the Celestial Fox – Acquire all other trophies

    So there it is: my trophy list for the year 2026, due no later than 11:59pm on December 31st.

    Wish me luck.

  • Recency Bias Volume 5

    Recency Bias Volume 5

    Greetings, boils and ghouls! Welcome to a spoooooooky installment of Recency Bias wherein are found the thrillingest, chillingest, most terrifying…

    OK, I enjoyed some spooky stuff these last few weeks and now I’m going to talk about them.

    <Lightning crashes, a raven cries, a banshee shrieks in the distance>

    Yeah.

    Crow Country

    As I stated in previous posts this month, I’m a relative newbie to survival horror, but it’s a genre I’ve already gained a lot of love and respect for. I spotted Crow Country on The Sphere Hunter’s Youtube channel, where she covers a lot of survival horror classics (I highly recommend her channel!). About a minute or so into the video I closed it and realized I needed to try the game for myself. I added it to my Steam Wishlist with the full intention of buying it when I got my next paycheck.

    Then, I forgot about it. ADHD is really cool like that!

    So imagine my surprise and excitement when I was browsing the Playstation Store the other day and came across Crow Country once again, this time for free to PS Plus members like myself. No brainer. I installed it, played it, and ended up marathoning the game all the way to the end in a single 5 hour session.

    And what an awesome Halloween treat this game is! With a visual style inspired by the blocky, dozen or so polygon based characters of yesteryear (think FFVII)the game perfectly rides the line between fun and spooky. The majority of monsters are genuinely creepy, but when downed by your expert marksmanship they fall flat with a heavy and, frankly, quite funny thud. The interfaces are very reminiscent of early Resident Evil titles as well, in what feels like a great homage rather than a punchline.

    The game is balanced really well, with some tougher and more stressful encounters that’ll test your reflexes, but lots of tricks and ways to get an edge such as the ability to use certain environmental hazards and traps against your enemies rather than stumbling blindly into the fifth trap you’ve been injured by in this one area alone. Hypothetically speaking, of course. There are also quite a few puzzles that are fairly simple and satisfying to solve as well as more challenging ones. This is a break out the notebook type game at times, and I love it for that.

    It also has the option to play on a much easier Exploration Mode if you’re looking for vibes but none of the survival horror stress, and plenty of secret unlockables to reward diligent exploration and repeat playthroughs, and the brief runtime means that you will likely want to go through Crow Country multiple times.

    This was a fantastic game for Halloween season, and I couldn’t recommend it more to casual and longtime fans of the genre alike.

    Until Dawn (Film)

    Sometimes a movie can creep under your skin, and settle in your bones like a bitter winter breeze. You leave the film haunted by its images, its implications; unsettled by the darkness you never imagined could be thought up by mortal beings.

    And sometimes you point at the screen and say, “Ha ha. Look at those hot twenty-somethings get murdered.”

    Until Dawn (which has so tenuous a connection to the video game its apparently licensed from that to call it an adaptation would be a pretty major stretch) is the latter. It is a mindless, empty calorie type of film wherein attractive young people get brutally slain often and repeatedly thanks to a time loop, the one interesting thing about the movie.

    Well, that and the tap water scene.

    While there are moments of genuine schlocky horror joy to be found, Until Dawn is also ruthlessly unimaginative, frighteningly dull, and horrifically under-baked, leaving the impression that this is what it might look like if you made gumbo out of every January release horror film of the last decade.

    Still, the “water wall” joke is an all-timer.

    Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica

    I tried to read this book several years ago. I failed to finish it, and not because it was poorly written (it’s not) or because it fails to tell an interesting story (it succeeds at telling a deeply fascinating one), but because it is the exact type of horror that scares me most: dehumanization.

    I love a good monster flick, and ghost stories are a delight (hell, I’ve read so much Stephen King that I have a whole three shelves devoted to him like a half-hearted shrine), but what truly gets my heart racing, my palms sweating and each breath labored is the repulsive ways in which real human beings are so easily and readily able to depersonalize one another.

    Bazterrica’s novel tells the story of a near future world in which a deadly virus has infected all of Earth’s animals making the slightest contact potentially lethal. To combat the virus, all animals are exterminated from the planet and in the wake of this event, what industry ends up with a pretty big crises on their hands?

    The meat production industry, of course.

    No longer able to breed, raise, slaughter, prepare, package, and sell meat products, the industrious leaders of many corporations begin to sell “special meat”, meat made from human beings bred and raised as cattle only to turned into food for a protein starved world.

    The book is deeply critical of the ways capitalism turns back on those who live beneath it, stripping them of identity, complexity, and individuality to become either machines of industry or another kind of commodity. It is most frightening not only because the premise is so sickening (and explored in such thorough detail that the memory of certain passages is enough to make my stomach churn) but because the metaphor is so thin that one cannot help but be forced to reckon with its implications, with its suggestions, and with its bared teeth accusations aimed directly at the reader.

    I finished “Tender is the Flesh” this time. And I don’t think it’ll ever truly leave me.

    And that is true horror.

  • Recency Bias Volume 3

    Recency Bias Volume 3

    Sinners

    I try to watch movies I’ve never seen before fairly often. At least once a week, if circumstances permit. These can be movies from any era, but when I’m watching something with my mother (as I was a few weeks ago) we like to try something more recent. So, having no context for the film other than my vague recollection that Patrick Klepek who writes for Crossplay and Remap said he really enjoyed it, we tried our luck with Ryan Coogler’s newest feature, Sinners.

    Holy shit. This movie rules.

    It’s hard to talk about the plot without spoiling it, but I will say that the movie had me growing more and more invested not only by the literal text of the film, but by the ideas that were being explored, ideas of ownership, the freedom of Black folks in America to own what’s rightfully theirs. I’ve not been a fan of much of Coogler’s body of work, caring very little for the Black Panther movies, and I can say without a doubt that not only is this his best film, but it’s one of the best films I’ve seen in a long while.

    And the performances from all involved are top-tier. Michael B. Jordan stuns as twin gangsters Smoke and Stack, separating the brothers with subtle physical characteristics that make it immediately clear which brother is on screen and how they differ as people.

    Also they wear red and blue respectively, in case subtlety is not your thing.

    Alan Wake 2

    I am a latecomer to Finnish developer Remedy’s games. My first foray into their weird sensibilities was 2019’s Control, a really fun action game that plays in the same sort of narrative flavor as The SCP Foundation, the Cthulu mythos, and shows like Fringe or the X-Files. Shadowy government agencies battling world-ending paranormal threats, you know the deal. At the time I remember hearing about the ways in which Control made reference to the events of another game, Alan Wake, but a cursory google search of the game did little to sell me on it and I disregarded the game.

    But with the recent remaster and the sequel out and having gotten a fair deal of praise, I decided to dip my toe in the water and try it out.

    I enjoyed the first game in the way that one does when the game is equal parts campy charm and serious jank. I chuckled at the various Stephen King references and the Twin Peaks elements sprinkled throughout, but nothing could’ve prepared me for what awaited in the sequel.

    This next bit I will address to Sam Lake directly.

    Dude. I also loved Twin Peaks: The Return.

    And that show is so tightly woven into the fabric of this game that one could argue it is perhaps its sole influence. There are repeated visual and thematic references to Twin Peaks’ incredible revival season that listing them all would be it’s own series of posts.

    And for the most part, I liked this aspect of the game. The visuals are gorgeous, the same campy voice acting and writing are back and bolder than before, and there are new game mechanics and optional objectives which are interesting if not rather repetitive. Actually, placing notes and photos on the case board in new protagonist Saga Anderson’s mind became actively annoying towards the end of the experience because there were times where the path forward was locked off simply because I didn’t bother to have her repeat to me plot points I’d already had explained to me.

    But one thing puts this game so far up in my esteem that it can never be diluted by any other aspect of the experience. If you’ve played the game, you know what it is.

    The thirteen minute long prog-rock musical number featuring live-action actors performing the dorkiest choreography you have EVER seen. I cackled the whole way through and will never forget it.

    The Witcher

    Many years ago, I was given a copy of The Witcher 3 for Christmas. I booted it up, played an hour of the game, and turned it off. I had no fucking clue what was happening.

    A month later, a friend of mine told me that while the first two games weren’t too critical to understanding the story of The Wild Hunt, they informed me that the books were really important context to have. As a bonus, the books were really good.

    I read them all.

    They are really good.

    So good, in fact, that after I read them all I jumped right back into the game and had an absolute blast. So when I found out recently that Andrzej Sapkowski was going to be releasing a new standalone Witcher novel (“Crossroads of Ravens”) I decided that now was a great time for a re-read of the series.

    It’s always a treat when something you loved before holds up upon revisiting, and I couldn’t be more pleased with these books. Sapkowski strikes the perfect balance between world building exposition and following the emotional and narrative journeys of his protagonists. Entire chapters will be devoted to characters you will never see again, or only hear very little from in the future, yet none of these feel like padding for length or overly expository or indulgent. Complex political mechanisms are depicted in such accessible detail which is honestly shocking to see in a fantasy novel.

    Furthermore, Geralt’s arc from being a stoic neutral actor to realizing how truly inescapable the gravity of world politics is and deciding to take a stance, to protect those he loves and those who otherwise cannot defend themselves is just as relevant today as it was when it was written. In America, it is perhaps more relevant.

    And that will close out this month! Lots of fun stuff coming next month, including our next entry in my First Time Final Fantasy series, out next Tuesday! See ya then!

  • Recency Bias Volume 2

    Recency Bias Volume 2

    Welcome, one and all to the celebration of our first full month of posting content! Woohoo! Mom, you said I couldn’t do it, called me a failure, lobbed several hundred dollars worth of rotten vegetables at me from your seat directly behind my office chair, but I sure showed you!

    For real though, it has been really gratifying to make these little posts and to work on these writing projects. Getting some of my thoughts on games on to the page is really fun in a “it’s work but it’s therapeutic” kind of way. And now we’ve come to that time again, that end of the month tradition (this is the second time, so it’s officially a tradition now) where we wrap up all of the little odds and ends of media I’ve been enjoying but didn’t feel the urge to write a specific feature about.

    Let’s cruise on down the list.

    Spy x Family

    You know that thing when you’re watching a show and you get so swept up that without realizing it you’ve stopped having thoughts like, “hmm what an interesting narrative choice” or “ah, this comments on the Japan’s anime industry because…” and you find yourself grinning, cheering, weeping, and feeling like you’re just having the best god damn time? Because that’s how this show makes me feel.

    I wouldn’t consider anime a huge part of the entertainment I enjoy, though I have had my fair share of it. I’d say I have a slightly above average American level of interest in it, but I’m not like IN IT. That said, if this had been the first series I’d watched when I was a teenager just getting interested in anime, my god, what a different life path that would’ve set me on.

    Spy x Family is one of those shows that just COOKS. Every choice made by the production team is the exact best decision, be it the way lines are delivered, the animation for a badass action sequence, or the clever ways the series plays with the dramatic irony of none of the characters fully realizing what’s actually happening in any given scene. It’s also a deeply heartwarming show, one that cares about its characters and has no trouble getting you to do the same. Adapted from the manga of the same name, Tatsuya Endo has mastered the comedy and romance of the romantic comedy, to the point that they should just retire the genre altogether.

    The premise is simple: a spy has to form a fake family as part of his mission, so he adopts a child (secretly one with telepathy) and finds a desperate young woman (secretly an assassin who is just as much using him for cover as he is her). With these pieces set in place, what follows is a show that will stop at nothing to fulfill every possibly delightful circumstance you could dream up, my favorite episode being one where one character has taken a non-lethal (but highly painful) injury from their secret career, and has to endure a romantic evening while trying to cover up the fact they’ve literally just hours ago been shot in the ass.

    Even if you have only a passing interest in anime, please check this show out. You won’t be disappointed.

    Baldur’s Gate 3

    So I’ve actually been playing this for over a year now and have completed two separate playthroughs already, but after a few months away from the game the siren call of the platinum trophy drifted from beyond the waves of the Sword Coast and pulled me back in for one, highly organized, efficiently designed, and carefully planned out final run through the game, on the highest difficulty no less!

    And I’ve learned that I am much too ADHD-brained to get really good at this game. Thank god for the gifts of RNG, save-scumming, and brute forcing!

    I’m a big opponent to the idea that these methods are somehow “less real” or “dishonorable” ways to beat a game. A game is, at its very base, a series of systems working in tandem to produce an experience, and if you can manipulate those systems to have a better time, you should do so! I summon for fights in Souls games. I also have the platinum trophy for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and earned it through sheer grit and skill. Play games the way you want.

    But what I mainly want to highlight in this section is just how truly dense this game is. You’d think after having beaten the game two times through and having gone out of my way to do nearly all of the side content I could find, there are still events and bends in certain scenarios that I have never come across before, and every time I find one I am left gobsmacked.

    Act One is by far the best portion of the game. It certainly feels the most fleshed-out. But this is one of those RPGs that truly allow you to play a role that feels personal to your specific experience. Which is kind of the whole point of an RPG and yet so many games miss this mark but so wide a margin you wonder how things got to this point.

    Look forward to my update next month where I complain about how brutal it was to keep all the tieflings alive through Act Two and rescue the prisoners of Moonrise Towers on Tactician Difficulty.

    Stephen King’s The Dark Tower Series

    I would say I am a fan, generally of Stephen King. Bold statement, I know, but I think he simply has the juice. Sure, his political ideology and mine are, let’s say, incompatible (by this I mean I am so far left that the center looks like the eastern horizon), and he has certain fixations that I find unpleasant to indulge in, but to purity test every writer is to find out that “good books” are virtually nonexistent. You truly can write anything (not that you should) and Stephen King must have heard that at some point in his early life because boy does he write ANYTHING.

    And of the several dozen King works I’ve read and to greater or lesser extents enjoyed, there is simply no greater embodiment of this method than the The Dark Tower books. As of the writing of this piece I have just finished Wizard and Glass (probably my least favorite of the series so far but still rather good) and the way that these books just… go places? Light spoilers but the way that elements and characters from other King stories get woven into the threads of this series are at times baffling and at other times immensely entertaining. Early on in this particular entry, I was the Leonardo DiCaprio pointing meme for a good long while when I recognized the term, “Captain Trips”.

    I’ve heard mixed things about the remaining books but I will likely be starting up Wolves of the Calla soon and intend to finish the series before the year is up.

    Side note: I also read Doctor Sleep recently and is it just me or is the movie actually better than the book?

    And that’s all for this month! I’m thrilled to be keeping up with this project. I’ve always said that even if no one sees it, I believe in the restorative effect this work has on my spirit and when even one person views something I’ve written it’s a bonus. And a genuine thrill! Look forward to more reviews, game design news, and other various pieces in the future!

  • First Time Final Fantasy – Our Story Begins

    First Time Final Fantasy – Our Story Begins

    The greatest stories ever told have but one thing in common, one shared pillar of their creation that elevates them beyond the reach of all other stories, towering above the petty works of lesser mortals.

    They were written by someone other than me.

    It can be strange to look at the totality of creative work that has survived to the present day and think, “Now what kind of a shot do I have of making something that lasts even a fraction of that lifespan in the social consciousness?” Well, statistically speaking, and with ever-shrinking attention spans being a major factor, your odds aren’t good. They’re abysmal actually. But take heart! For though it is a quieter, more solitary path, one crowded with undergrowth and shade-dappled by heavy trees overhead, there is still a way to achieve a kind of creative immortality.

    Influence.

    And it is hard to argue that there are many franchises in the video game space as influential on the medium and on video game storytelling writ large, as Final Fantasy.

    Or, so I’ve been told.

    Alright, grandiose language aside, all of this stuff about legacy and influence is more of a called shot, a belief formed by cultural osmosis. To really throw myself to the wolves of the gamer-verse, I must make an honest confession.

    I’ve never finished a mainline Final Fantasy. Well, there are two exceptions to that rule, but we’ll come back to that at a later date.

    Tactics Advance? Absolutely! One of my all-time favorites!

    Crystal Chronicles? You know I was there for that shit!

    Revenant Wings? Hey man, why you gotta bring that up, my mom got it for me, alright? She didn’t know any better.

    Crystal Bearers for the Nintendo Wii? Now you’re just being mean.

    But seriously, having spent basically my entire life immersed in gaming, Final Fantasy has somehow always been a weird blind spot for me. Until now.

    Because friends, we’re going back to the start.

    As a fun, monthly segment on this little archive of mine, I’m going to be playing the mainline Final Fantasy games in order from I to XVI, with the likely exclusion of XI because it sounds like a ginormous pain to setup and I’m already cashing in my one MMO token for XIV. Sound good?

    So come along with me, as we embark on an epic journey through one of gaming’s biggest franchises, Final Fantasy, starting (of course!) with Final Fantasy I.

  • Recency Bias Volume 1

    Recency Bias Volume 1

    In this, the very first of these updates, I want to talk about what you can expect going forward. Every couple of weeks I intend to write up and post a new volume in which I discuss the various media I have been enjoying or have at least experienced between the previous update and the current one. The primary focus will be on video games, but I will most likely always mention a movie or two, or a television series and occasionally some books since I tend to blast through at least one every week.


    And with that, let’s just launch right in.

    Alan Wake: Remastered

    As a child, horror was not a big part of my media consumption, nor was it really anyone in my household’s. The adult version of me mourns this loss, as the horror genre has become a staple of the things I enjoy, from film to literature (Shirley Jackson stan logging on) and, of course, video games.

    But for many reasons beyond my control or understanding, classic horror games can be notoriously hard to get a hold of in the modern era. I was very thankful for the remake of Silent Hill 2, which I thoroughly enjoyed in spite of a few criticisms, and not terribly long ago I had a great time playing through all of the Amnesia games.

    Seriously, The Bunker? So good.

    If there’s another go-to genre for me, it’s camp. My hunger for cheese is insatiable. I can always watch an episode of the original Star Trek. Twin Peaks is perhaps my favorite show of all time. I crave what is earnest and sincere, budgetary restrictions be damned! So after years of hearing how beloved Alan Wake was and how SUPREMELY dorky it was, I knew I had to try it.

    What I got was a fun romp filled with callbacks to Twin Peaks and Stephen King (like, so many King references), a game which employs live-action actors selected from the dev team to perform Twilight Zone parodies and make bizarre, Lynchian recordings of the protagonist struggling to understand the nature of creation and the twisted situation he’s found himself trapped within. It’s a game with a ton of heart; awkward and goofy, not all that scary, with a reasonably fun if at times frustrating combat system.

    And god damn, so many collectibles!

    William Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy / Cyberpunk 2077

    Imagine this: you’ve just read the extraordinary trilogy of books often cited as one of the foundational works of modern cyberpunk. Excellent characters, beautiful and tragic concepts of speculative fiction, and questions on the nature of intelligence, of existing in a world which actively wants to crush you under its heels or is otherwise indifferent to you and your suffering.

    You smile. “This is cyberpunk!” You cry to the heavens. “Down with corpo scum!” You dye your hair. You refer to checking social media as “jacking in”. You rewatch the Matrix movies.

    Then you play CD Projekt Red’s controversial Cyberpunk 2077 and are reminded that, oh, this is cyberpunk.

    The rampant Orientalism, the goofy slang, the casual violence done to women and often towards sex workers, the appropriation of West African religious practices; all of the most problematic elements that have rooted themselves at the heart of the genre.

    Here it is, in all its splendor with nothing at all to say except “corporations = bad probably but not in any specific way”.

    Bugs and jank aside, Cyberpunk 2077 is not an un-fun game to play. Combat is fast-paced, the world is full of detail. My favorite parts of the game were just walking around the city streets, seeing the sights and people-watching. I had a great time sneaking through dingy apartment buildings concealing drug laboratories and picking off enemies with precision and a little bit of hacking finesse.

    But that’s kind of where the fun stops. After the opening several hours are gone, the game really starts to show the limits of its imagination. The writing is at times, deeply and profoundly unthoughtful. Its ceiling of quality is “mildly entertaining”, dragged further down by a pathological need to reference other games (and, bewilderingly, “The Office”), not to mention the repeated references to Gibson’s work.

    Can we just agree that this should be the last game to make a “the cake is a lie” or “the cake is a lie” adjacent joke?

    Not even Keanu Reeves can save this.

    Star Wars: Andor Season 2

    As of writing this I have only seen the first few episodes but it is truly awe-inspiring how excellent every aspect of this show was in season one and continues to be in season two. I was one of the few survivors who sat through the entirety of “Rise of Skywalker” (easily my worst movie experience ever) and even though the early days of “The Mandalorian” were promising I was doubtful that Star Wars could ever grow out of its obsession with Jedi and bounty hunters to tell a story that was unique, one focused on the intimate details of living in the Star Wars universe. A story that was altogether more adult-oriented.

    Andor delivers, adding in some of the most gripping writing and performances I’ve ever seen on television. It’s easily my favorite Star Wars property and I can’t wait to finish it up and immediately rewatch the whole show.