Loudermilk – Season 2 Review

Loudermilk reminds me a lot of Jim Jefferies’s short-lived series called Legit. It’s a show that tries to balance foul-mouthed comedy with heart while having a refreshingly inclusive cast. When your setting is an alcoholics support group, though, it’s easy to get away with all those things. But that doesn’t mean the show is perfect, and Season 2 improves as much as it stumbles compared to Season 1. The jokes are funnier now, and Loudermilk feels more three-dimensional instead of being a Larry David-esque asshole to everyone. The storylines just aren’t as interesting, with episodes that border on sitcom ridiculousness. The episode about the fighting match at the church is particularly egregious.

It’s also really weird that the show just completely dropped Tom and Cutter. Like, they were a huge part of Season 1 (almost to a fault) and then outright disappeared. Claire, too, isn’t given much to do for most of the season, save for one episode that revisits her family issues. Outside of that, Claire is basically the Smurfette of the group. Okay, what’s really weird is the sudden introduction of the massage therapist who appears for one episode to fix Loudermilk’s back and give him a flirtatious look. I’m worried this is going to turn into a convoluted love triangle when Memphis inevitably comes back in Season 3, and a love triangle is the last thing this show needs.

Speaking of love triangles, I’m disappointed that Ben not only returned but that his relationship with Loudermilk quickly resolved to status quo again. I don’t know what it is about this character or actor, but his lines and/or delivery never feel genuine. I love all of the other characters, though. Loudermilk is a great protagonist, and the rest of the support group members get ample screen time in this season. The episode where Loudermilk discovers he has a baby brother, New Guy hits it off with Louise, and Cloud gives a speech on accepting who you are was just the perfect blend of sweet and funny. I really hope we get more of that in Season 3, and I really hope I’m wrong about the love triangle.

Immortals Fenyx Rising Review

It’s no secret that Immortals Fenyx Rising got its inspiration from Breath of the Wild. And that’s not a bad thing. Breath of the Wild was a great game, an experience I’ve wanted to have again without actually going back and re-playing the exact same thing. Immortals is different enough to warrant a play through and actually does some things better… but also some things worse. In all fairness, a lot of my issues with the game stem from playing it on Switch. The graphics really limit your field of view, and the over-reliance on the Joy-Con’s mushy shoulder buttons makes combat less enjoyable.

I think I’m having more fun exploring the world of Immortals over Zelda, though. Zelda felt very real in the sense that large stretches of the map were empty, whereas Immortals litters each area with a huge variety of temples, statues, and other monuments that usually act as cover for some sort of mini challenge. It really works for this game’s Greek mythology aesthetic. Plus, the treasures and secrets you find actually make you feel like you’re getting stronger as opposed to finding a new weapon that’s just going to break in the next fight.

I don’t want to rag on Zelda too much, though, because it’s still the superior game. While Immortals throws a lot at you, the majority of its puzzles and challenges are actually kind of annoying, when they’re not outright derivative. Note to all game developers: stop using slider puzzles! And even after totally re-mapping my button layout, it still took a long time to get into the combat. That only happened after significantly leveling up my skills. But the fact that you can level up in meaningful ways makes the world more fun and rewarding to explore, and that’s exactly what I was hoping to get out of this game.

Snail’s House – Imaginarium Review

The best way to describe Snail’s House is “whimsical electronica,” the kind of stuff you sit down to write anime fanfic to. His discography is pretty hit and miss with me, though, but when there are hits, they hit hard. Nowhere is that more true than the album, Imaginarium. The back-to-back songs of “Imaginary Express” and “butterfly” are absolutely beautiful. They ride this perfect line of being cute and catchy yet melancholy and reflective. Both songs have a really unique sound; I’m not sure what I could possibly compare them to. Hell, I can’t even trace how Snail’s House ended up in my Spotify recommendations. But I’m glad it did for these two songs alone.

Unfortunately, the rest of the album just doesn’t resonate with me. The song that immediately follows “butterfly,” for instance, sounds like someone noodling on a bunch of different instruments. The next song, “summerscape,” is… okay. It at least feels like it can get away with being on the same album as “Imaginary Express” and “butterfly.” Everything onward, however, is either too video game-y or too laid-back. As I skim through other Snail’s House albums, I find that to be a recurring theme. So it seems that his preferred style isn’t my style, but in those moments when he tries something new, he knocks it out of the park and into the stars.

Strawberry Station – Smoothie Sounds Review

Groupees, which was once just another indie game bundle website, has since become my go-to for discovering new music. But no discovery has been as mesmerizing as their Strawberry Station bundle. This was my first introduction to future funk, and I gotta say, I’m about as swept away as I was when I first heard electro swing. Unfortunately, after skimming through the discography of several other future funk artists, I might have already maxed out what I’m gonna get from this genre. Strawberry Station is pretty much the best of the lot.

I’m really impressed by Strawberry Station, though. Of course, maybe that would change if I was more familiar with the original source material. Future funk is all about cutting up and remixing older music, so it’s entirely possible I’m giving too much credit. But after hearing similar remixes from other future funk artists, Strawberry Station is definitely doing enough to stand out. He seems to have the right knack for what to loop and what to distort, and I enjoy the little video game sound effects that are sprinkled throughout like Easter eggs.

Speaking more to his latest album, Smoothie Sounds, it’s… not bad, but far from my favorite. I absolutely love the song “Always Be Together.” Others like “Turn Of Fraise” and “Everybody Gets One” are pretty good, too. The rest are passable except for maybe the last two that slow things down a little too much. I think the problem is just that the loops being used here can become more grating if you’re not in the mood. To be completely fair, though, if I wasn’t already spoiled by Strawberry’s other albums like 128 State, I’d be singing higher praises. ‘Cause at the end of the day, it’s still good stuff.

Forager Review

After almost 20 hours with this game, I’m still having a hard time quantifying how much I actually liked it. This is a very mindless but surprisingly addictive crafting/collecting sim. The hook is that you can buy pieces of land to expand the game world, and you never know what you’re going to get. Will the new land have a dungeon, an NPC, a puzzle, a new biome? The world expansion is mostly what kept me interested even as the rest of the game started to get on my nerves. Forager places a lot of emphasis on resource collecting. Objects spawn on every tile and max out your backpack every 30 seconds. If you leave a section of land unattended for too long, it will become so densely populated with trees and rocks and monsters that you can’t walk through it.

The resource spawning almost drove me to quit halfway into the game. That is, until I found the lightning rod. This weapon is a blast, because it’ll zap everything within range, making it easy and fun to clear out those cluttered landfills. With lightning rod in hand, I found a great rhythm with the game that pushed me to finish buying all of the remaining land. Forager doesn’t have a true end goal, though. You basically set your own goals. Buying all of the land and completing the four mini dungeons were my goals, but they left me feeling unsatisfied afterwards. There’s no big celebration for anything. You get an achievement, a treasure chest, and then it’s back to the grind.

The Spiral Scouts Review

Spiral Scouts

I like to think I’m no prude. I’ve played games like Conker’s Bad Fur Day and The Stick of Truth and found them to be amusing. But the humor in Spiral Scouts was really off-putting. There’s one joke in particular about a guy who literally humps his wife to death after drinking a Viagra-like elixir. After that scene, I just couldn’t find anything about the game funny. Fortunately, scenes like this only play out as dialogue. But the dialogue in Spiral Scouts is so juvenile. Like, this is the kind of dialogue you would expect from a preteen who just discovered how to swear. It tries way too hard to be edgy.

Honestly, I would have liked the game a lot more (and I think it would have been more successful) if it had gone for a more Paper Mario-like sense of humor. I mean, they already nailed the art style. This game looks fantastic. But unless you’re going to go uber violent with it a la Happy Tree Friends, trying to adult-ify something like Paper Mario just doesn’t work. The sex and drug jokes fall flat every time, and none of the characters are likable since they only act as a conduit for the humor. The main character’s personality constantly changes depending on who she’s talking to and which jokes she needs to say next.

I still powered through the entire game, though, because I enjoyed the puzzles for the most part. Deceptively, this is not an adventure game but rather a series of unrelated puzzles. You can tackle these puzzles in any order, abandon one halfway through if you get stuck, and go find another puzzle to muse over. While many of the puzzles are pretty fun to figure out, just as many require note-taking and memorization. Yep, I had to have a pen and paper nearby, which is never my preference for video games. So that part of Spiral Scouts isn’t perfect, either. It’s a very hit-and-miss kind of experience that seems to actively try to get you to dislike it.