Late to the Game(s) - Retro! Reissued! Remastered! Oh my!

Why don't narrative games get the respect they deserve? I'm a fan of games that tell a story. In fact, back when a certain famous film critic was claiming that games would never be, and could never be, art, I argued that some of the more compelling stories being told today were being told in video game form. I still stand behind that. Good games can get players invested in a story the same way that films and novels can. The original Red Dead Redemption , for instance, addressed its title theme of redemption, as well as forgiveness, mercy,selflessness and sacrifice in a way that would not have been as compelling from a film. The player makes those decisions that lead to a penultimate climax, one that – if they play like I did – they replayed over and over trying to change before accepting. How they played the game, and whether they stuck to the straight and narrow or bent the law to get there, might have influenced their feelings about whether main character John Marston deserve...

Exploring the myths and legends of India Some games are hard to put down. You know you have work to do. You know you have limited time to finish it. But you want to try just one more time to take down that boss before you take a break.  Raji: An Ancient Epic is one of those games. Available now on the Nintendo Switch , and launching later this year on other major platforms , Raji is one of the more compelling button smashers I've played in a while. It tells the story of our eponymous hero, the acrobat Raji, and her brother Golu, a puppeteer. The carnival performers are in the midst of celebrating the feast of Rakhsha Bandhan when the story Golu has been telling, about the rise and  fall of a race of demons, comes to life. Golu, wearing a demon mask to startle the other children watching his puppet show, finds himself swept up by actual demons who are stealing away the children for an as yet unnamed purpose. It's then that our heroine is chosen by the goddess Durga to fight ...

It's always dangerous to go alone. Always!   So, I'm well into my second week of furlough. I should be trying a little harder to look for other jobs. Or, I should be writing new content (like this post) for the blog. Since I noticed yesterday that the company not only took down the website for my old newspapers and redirected all links them to the closest daily paper they still operate, but also haven't (yet) migrated the content from that site, I should be posting all the relevant content here – things like my coverage of Bigfoot sightings and UFO reports, and video game reviews and esports stories. Instead, I've been playing a lot of NES and SNES era Legend of Zelda . See, a while back I got a year of free Nintendo online service for the Switch. I used it a little. I tried to get my stepson interested in playing the old school Super Mario Bros. titles with me, which resulted in much eye-rolling and pleas to play Super Mario Odyssey instead, "Alone, pleas...