I Am A Fan of KPop Now

 Having kids is, as anyone with kids knows by now, a pretty life-altering experience. In some tiring ways, in some difficult ways, mostly in some awesome ways. What I didn't expect however was that my kids would bring me into whole new hobbies.

Usually it is the other way around, or so I thought. As an adult you already have your hobbies, and you will do your darndest to make sure your kids love your things too. I am no different, I have tried to get my kids to love things like Pokémon (that wasn't so difficult), board games (that hasn't really worked so far) and hiking (they are converts). But it turns out my kids are their own people, with their own interests.

So it is that when my son turned out to be interested in birds, I started to get interested in them too. Now we regularly go on bird-watching events together, and I might even be more into birds than he is. 

My daughter has turned out to be into singing and dancing, which I don't mind doing every now and then either. But then we ended up watching a movie called KPop Demon Hunters (KDH), I am sure you have heard about it by now. It seems impossible to have missed it, it has been a complete (K)pop culture phenomenon and a huge success for Netflix and the Kpop community.

Prior to KDH I had heard of Kpop, of course. I had even listened (a lot) to Psy, and of course the awesome Bar Bar Bar by Crayon Pop, so I wasn't completely unknowing about what it was about. I knew there was a band called... BTS? I had never heard any of their songs, knowingly, and overall I didn't think most Kpop was my thing.

But the songs in KDH got me bopping my head. And normally I would've probably just seen the movie, thought it was better than I had expected and moved on. But my kid didn't allow me to let it leave my headspace, constantly singing and listening to the songs from the movie.

Eventually my brain gave in and I thought to myself - ok, let's find out a little bit more about this Kpop stuff, there must be something out there worth listening to, something similar to KDH.

So I looked up videos on Youtube listing "best Kpop songs of year so-and-so" or "top 100 Kpop songs".

Almost none of them appealed to me. Out of all the songs I listened to I ended up adding only two to my regular playlist - Very Nice by Seventeen and Mirotic by TVXQ. They are... ok. Slightly above the rest, but nothing special.

Then a new song with a new band popped up in my feed. Ready 2 Rumble with All (H)ours. I clicked it, as one does and... I liked it. I liked pretty much everything about it. The song was good, the energy from the group was great, the dance routine was awesome. This group had piqued my interest. Next time they showed up in my feed, with another song, I decided I wanted to listen to that too, Gimme Gimme Gimme. And that was even better, in almost every way. Ok, they were 2 for 2. Then I found another song, Shock, better again.

My daughter loved them too, so it became a thing we could listen to together. We love pretty much every song they've released in their short 2 year existence. And maybe I get it now. I never used to be a fan about much when I was a kid or a teenager. I had Legolas as my desktop picture and I used to swoon over Vincent Valentine in FFVII, but I had no idols or stars on posters on my walls. I sort of skipped that phase, and definitely didn't think I would find a new thing to fan about at the age of 40. But now I can see it through the eyes of my kid and it is quite enjoyable. 

Long story short, you should go out and watch birds and definitely listen to All (H)ours while doing it.

Other must listens by All (H)ours;

Livin La Vida Loca
Good Job
Graffiti
Psycho Mantra
Bout That Issue
Blah Blah
Wao Wao
Racer

Top 4 Roblox Games (As Judged By An Adult)

If you have someone in your vicinity under the age of 15, you've probably not been able to avoid the phenomena that is Roblox, one of those rare things that manages to unify and engage children of all ages and all backgrounds, just like Pokémon did back in my day.

As someone living with a 12 and 7 year old, I am of course deeply steeped in Roblox-ness, having had to not only watch and listen to my kids play, but having had to play a fair share of Roblox myself. It's just one of those sacrifices one does for the little ones, like singing Baby Shark for the hundredth time.

But just like I found that building Lego's, playing TMNT's vs Dinosaurs and some children's board games can actually be quite fun, I've found that Roblox too can be fairly entertaining. And because we're all into gaming in this family, we often end up spending our allotted screen time playing games together. This has included more or less Roblox for years now. But, let's start by clearing up what Roblox is and what it isn't.

Roblox, from what I've understood, is not ONE game - but rather a platform for anyone to create games. Because of this, saying you're playing Roblox is nowadays pretty much the same as saying you're going to listen to music or watch a movie. It tells nothing of what exactly it is you're going to enjoy or indeed the quality of what you're about to enjoy (or not enjoy so much). As a parent it helps to know that a Roblox game can range from utter garbage, both content and gameplay-wise, to some that are very well done. It's wise to invest at least some time in knowing what it is your kid likes to play - and it also helps to try to not be too judgmental. My 7 yo especially enjoys playing simple, cookie-clicker type games that I barely deem worthy of being called games nor worthy of spending anyone's time on. But I also understand that people can be different kinds of gamers, and as long as it isn't offensive or inappropriate I try to nod and smile when she tells me about how high her Labubu can jump in Bubu Jump Clicker.

A vast amount of Roblox games are these kind of simple, power-level-stacking style games where little skill or brain power is required. Another big chunk of games are something called "Obbies", short for Obstacle Courses. Think of them as ugly versions of Mario Games, but usually with a lot less quality. I am not a fan of the Obbies, mainly because I am often stuck playing the Ipad when we play together, and the precision just isn't great. We often end up playing different kind of SIM-lights (simulators), like handling a garden, a zoo, an aquarium or a gazillion capybaras. There are more antagonistic games as well, like Rivals which is a PvP shooter, but we often stay clear of them because we are all very bad losers in this family.

Overall though there is just such a massive amount of games to sift through that it can feel impossible to know which are good and which are bad without having to trial and error your way through them. To counteract part of this, Roblox has a voting system in which people can score games which allows you to at least get a general idea of the quality of a game. As I suspect that the voting system is easily fooled by bots and algorithms, I find that the best way to find good games is simple word of mouth or asking other Robloxers what games they like to play.

So here is my public service, a list of some good Roblox games worth checking out. I want to start out by saying that there are plenty of OK Roblox games, that I don't mind spending half an hour playing here and there. With this list I have tried to find games that I think are a step above the rest in terms of quality and fun. One criteria has been the amount of Robux-in-your-face they've got, and all on this list keep it at a level that gets thumbs up from me. Finding five out of the thousands of games out there wasn't easy though, which either says a lot about the general quality of Roblox games or perhaps more about my age... And you know what, I didn't succeed in finding five Roblox games worth recommending so I guess this isn't exactly my regular top 5 list. Sorry. But I blame Roblox.

4. Work At A Pizza Place
This is the first game I remember playing on Roblox, with my son. He must've been 7 or 8 at the time so this is years ago now and full disclosure, I haven't played it recently. But I remember quite liking this one. In it, you get to choose one of several different roles to take in a pizza place - you can either be the cashier, make the pizzas, deliver them and so on. Team work is the key, which in all fairness I should add is something that is encouraged in a lot of Roblox games, or at least the ones I end up playing.

The title really says it all on this one, you work at a pizza place and try to do your best job to make sure  the place succeeds. It's a bit like Overcooked if you've played that, but without the added mayhem. There are no wrenches in the works here or rats stealing your food. The only thing that can go wrong is people intentionally misbehaving, and that is likely to happen if you play with certain people of certain ages. Because it's a joint effort, you mileage will wary with this game and that is pretty much true for all the games on this list. If you play with a good, fun group or even better, friends, you are going to have a good time.

3. 99 Nights in the Forest
You and a group of people need to survive 99 nights in the woods (but you can go on after that). It starts out fairly easy - you need to gather materials like wood for a fire and iron for crafting more useful things to help you survive. Scouring the woods around you, you will also find helpful tools like weapons and axes and you can craft yourself armor by killing animals and getting their fur. You'll have to kill animals for food as well, or forage for carrots and berries. You also have a task to rescue some kidnapped children that are stuck out in the woods. 

It gets increasingly more difficult as the nights pass however, as you very soon realize you are not alone. Most animals will fight back, but they are the nice enemies, The forest is also inhabited by "cultists" who attack your camp every now and then and worst of all, various kinds of supernatural beings that hunt you in the darkness. You want to make sure to be close to your fire when night falls, and to keep the fire alive at all times...

This is another fun co-operative game - everyone pitches in by gathering all the things that are needed and saving each other from trouble. It's game over when everyone in the group has died, and each run is somewhat randomized, keeping it fresh for "just another go". When I played this with my kids we ended up distributing tasks, based on skill level, so that everyone felt like they were contributing. I think my record is somewhere around 70 nights, but only because we ran out of (screen)time.

2. Feather Family
This has been the long-runner in this family, me and my son keep coming back to it and have been playing it for years on and off. It's a role-playing game with birds, and that is pretty much it. It has a large and faithfully crafted selection of different birds to choose from, from the very basic like pigeons to the more obscure like the ʻōʻō. 

Not only can you learn a bit about birds, you can play around with them too and give them new colours if you like. Then you run, or mostly fly depending on bird, around in the world together with other players who feel like being a swan for an hour. How much you want to roleplay is up to you, but since it's an open world you are free to just use it as a playground for other things too. Me and the son play things like hide-and-seek for instance. Or family, since you can choose to play as a chick, and the other one can play as the adult collecting food, building a nest and so on. To get new birds you mainly only need to spend time in the game, with some requiring a very long time indeed... but there is plenty to do while you are waiting for that.

It's a very nice and pleasant game that even the most obnoxious video game hater would smile at.

1. Rainbow Friends
This is probably the game I've personally had the most fun with in Roblox and it switches the stress factor from the previous game in this list up by 110%. Don't let the title fool you, there is nothing friendly about the Rainbow monsters in this game. 

Rainbow Friends is a game of hide-and-seek, in which the players all hide from the monsters of the game. Together the players need to complete certain tasks to make it through the stages, without being caught by Blue, Green, Orange and so on. The game starts with just Blue chasing you, but each task you complete also introduces you to another monster. The monsters all have different M.O's and tells so as long as you keep vigilant you are mostly ok. It's when you start takings risks you get caught. 

There are two games so far that each play a bit differently. The first one is more enclosed and the second one has open areas that allows you to get a better overview of where the monsters are, but they are both fun to play. Matches are quick and usually smooth, they've got functions to prevent players from "ruining" runs - it's a fun, quick thrill that I recommend for slightly older players.

Alpha Protocol (2010) - Review

Some times games don't manage to make you feel as much as you or the developers hoped for. Alpha Protocol has a lot going for it, but falls a bit short of being a good game. As it is now, it's ok. Good enough to waste some time on, if all you were going to do was scroll through Youtube Reels anyway. But probably not something you're going to think too much about once you've turned it off.

Which is unfortunate because on paper Alpha Protocol has a lot going for it. Developed by Obsidian ( Knight of the Old Republic, Fallout: New Vegas, Outer Wilds) and published by SEGA (needs no introduction) in 2010, it presents itself as an action role-playing shooter and could fool anyone that it was picking up the baton from Deus Ex after Deus Ex sort of fumbled and lost it.

It's clear that is what it is trying to do, with the main character introduction and gameplay being very similar. You play as Mike Thorton, and at the beginning of the game it's not entirely clear why you are where you are. But you are quickly thrust into the action as you run, stealth and shoot your way through different set pieces. After only a handful of missions you end up embroiled in a plot twist, Bourne-style, and need to keep working to figure things out. It's a story about corporate greed, shifting alliances and plenty of backstabbing, if you choose to. The pacing is high and the story cuts back and forth between the present and the future. 

The game allows you to tackle missions in a variety of ways - when you start the game you can choose what kind of agent you want to be, and it affects how your agent will be able to solve different problems and presumably more or less how you are going to play through the game. Each time you level up you can choose to improve different weapon skills, stealthing, technical aptitude and more typical RPG stuff. You also unlock skills on cooldowns which you can trigger to improve your situation in different ways. I found some of those skills absolutely mandatory, like the skill that allows you to track enemies even when you can't visibly see them. That skill starts out on a cooldown but if you invest enough points into it, it becomes permanent and made the levels way easier to get through.

A big reason for this is because the stealth sections aren't very well realized, but that could also be because I didn't put many points into this. I found it hard to judge how visible Thorton was in any given moment, and often found myself confused when I was spotted by someone. After having played games like Thief and aforementioned Deus Ex, I just know there are much better ways to inform your player of these things, but on the other hand games like Assassins Creed struggle with this also.

Running and gunning works fine however. Your weapons have different recoil, different bullets and different addons you can attach to improve their stats. You can take cover behind things and throughout the levels there are a lot of computers to hack and locks to pick if you want to. All of these things usually give you some sort of small upper edge, like disabling cameras or extra loot.

The game has a neat, optional, tutorial in the beginning - which I completely butchered. The people assisting me were delicate about my lack of skill however. The game never felt hard though, and even though I often messed up because the controls aren't always precise enough, it was usually not difficult to get myself out of the situations I had put myself into. Enemies are often contained in segments, even within a level, meaning that once you've shot off a certain few in an area, the rest will be just as unaware as ever. 

In fact, let's talk a bit more about this part. I played this on PC with keyboard, but it really felt like the game was made for a control pad, the way you're supposed to interact with the environment and even with menus just was a bit unintuitive and clunky. For instance, to select between different cooldowns or gadgets (grenades, first aids) you press Z or C and choose from a radial menu as default, rather than them being bound to different keys. And the interface doesn't always react to where the mouse cursor is, in that weird way that you only understand if you've experienced it.

The AI is not the best, actually among the most stupid I have seen in a game of this time. Several bosses I managed to unintentionally cheese simply because their heads were poking out behind some cover and they wouldn't react when I laid in to them. I guess the AI thought they were behind cover and just couldn't figure why they were still taking damage. And when I shot someone, it didn't matter where it happened, everyone in the vicinity knows my exact location immediately and run through corridors and up and down stairs to find me without trouble. What is up with the homing tracking? Then they run towards me like lambs to slaughter, so some times it will work in my favor. And this is not the kind of game where you have to worry about leaving bodies visibly anywhere, AI does not react to this at all.

Obsidian has put a lot of effort into making a slick feeling game in other areas though. The game tracks your reputation with most of the characters you meet, which in turn affects how they react to different situations and conversations. It's explained early on that a good reputation isn't always beneficial, because a bad reputation can make someone annoyed with you which in the world of covert operation can be used to your advantage. When they explained this I was intrigued by how this was going to showcase itself in the game. Often during conversation a wheel of reactions will pop-up. You have a few seconds to choose how Thorton is going to react to what is being talked about. The options are often only described with an adjective, "angry", "flirty", "professional", and it's some times difficult to predict exactly what each option means. It happened fairly often that I chose something only to feel like that wasn't what I was going for at all.

Between missions you spend time in a base of operations which allows you to tinker with your gear and otherwise prepare for your mission. One interesting feature is the option to buy "intel", that will give you different benefits in your upcoming missions. This can be everything from a map of the area you're going to, information on the characters you're meeting or even giving you optional ways to go around the place. You can choose in which order you play through missions which in turn affect how some people around you react. There are a lot of variables to play around with and they feel like they matter. Your choices are some times very weighty and not always easy to make.

I've only played through the game once, but it definitely gives you the impression that the choices you make and the way you handle situations impact how you move forward, meaning you can have a wholly different experience on a second playthrough. I can't say how well this is realized, but it felt impressive and enticing. After a few hours with the game I couldn't help but see the layered onion that it was trying to be, and I liked it.

It's really too bad the main character is such an uninteresting sausage of a person. The poor guy doing the voice acting sounds bored half the time and confused the other half, like he doesn't really understand what he is saying. And unfortunately this goes for most of the characters of the game, where pretty much all of them sound like they are phoning it it. The only guy who sounds like he is having fun is Steven Heck, but then Heck is a special kind of psycho. I rarely even react to voice acting performances, even less complain about them, but in this game it is so bad it actually detracts from the overall experience.

Overall, and to reiterate, Alpha Protocol has some interesting highs and lows. It's almost like two different teams worked on it, or they ended putting so much effort into the writing that they didn't have any money left for the gameplay. It's far from a bad game, and easy enough to rarely annoy you. In the end it's just kind of... forgettable.

El Stompo (2014) - The Spectrum Game Review

In my quest to review the games on my The Spectrum in fairly random order, I have gotten to El Stompo. El Stompo was released in 2014 and as such is a another "modern" game for the ZX Spectrum, just like my previous review game TCQ. In El Stompo you play as a frog-like creature who works as a TV repair...frog. The only way it knows to repair things is by stomping on them. Of course!

What follows is 35 screens of puzzle solving, in which you need to avoid enemies, obstacles and traverse tricky levels to get to stomping all those TV's.

El Stompo is a pretty game. It's colorful, has some really cute sprites and as soon as you figure out what the different blocks and items do, everything is easy to understand and play. The puzzle solving really ranges from fairly simple to fiendish but El Stompo nails the "just one more try"-feedback loop and I never felt frustrated when things didn't go my way. Some variables can feel like they are on the edge of too random and some times you are required to do some good old waiting just for circumstances to be fruitful, but never to the point where it would detract from the fun. My only gripe with the game is that the jump button (A) and restart level button (B) are right next to each other on the controller and I miss clicked this way more than I would've liked.

The controls take a little bit of getting used to, it's easy to overshoot a step which often means death, especially on later levels. But once you know, you know.

El Stompo doesn't have any music, which I actually didn't mind as much as I thought I would. I realized while playing that not having any background music could actually be quite nice. I guess as a creator you'd reason that silence is better than something that would annoy, though I have no idea if this is the reason game creator Dave Hughes omitted a soundtrack. The game does have a few sound effects though, and they are suitably scrappy and bloppy.

El Stompo is really fun and a great addition to the Spectrum game library. If you have the opportunity to try it out I recommend it. I've only gotten to level 20 so far, but I am definitely not giving up.

TCQ (2022) - The Spectrum Game Review

 Where is a good place to start when setting out on the endeavor to review all the games on my new The Spectrum? Alphabetically? Chronologically? All orders have their benefits, but me and my kid (Ed, 12 yo) decided to just go with whatever game we felt like playing.

So first out is TCQ (Triangle, Circle, Square), released in 2022 by Portuguese developer Amaweks. But hang on a minute, 2022? Isn't this supposed to be a ZX Spectrum game? Yeah, apparently a lot of older systems still have thriving indie-developer scenes, where modern games are still being released for systems that are several decades old. And I love that. While I am definitely not in the know of these indie-scenes, I think the idea of these systems still being kept alive through sheer passion (since I really doubt there is any big money in it), is human creativity and love for a craft at its best.

So TCQ is maybe an odd game to start out on when reviewing games for a system that is older than myself (ZX Spectrum was originally released in 1982). But maybe all those decades have allowed game developers to really see new and interesting ways of utilizing what makes the Spectrum so unique. I think TCQ definitely proves this to be true - the creative mind behind the game, Paulo A.M Villalva, didn't actually know about the ZX Spectrum until quite recently. Learning more about it he came to embrace one of the quirks that makes the Spectrum memorable - the color clash. Back in the day this was considered a big short coming of the computer, and something developers tried to hide as much as possible, hence the rather unique graphical style of the ZX Spectrum.

I don't really understand the technical aspect of color clashing (you can read more about it here) but I realize that just like Amaweks it's something I never considered to be a bad thing, but rather something that appealed to my eye. Paulo took it one step further and realized he could utilize this quirk and incorporate it so that it became the focal point of a game, and TCQ was born.

TCQ was inspired by paintings from artists like Piet Mondrian, Wassily Kandinsky and maybe Joan Miró, artists whom I myself happen to quite enjoy the works of.

The game itself is simple enough, you control one of three shapes through different stages and need to solve some simple platforming to make it to the end. You can only be one shape at the time, but different shapes can get you through different obstacles. The shapes can be acquired in different areas, meaning you have to backtrack certain parts to be able to reach new parts, in what could be called a very simple form of Metroidvania. The circle allows you to jump, the triangle can shoot through objects and the square allows you to remove certain blocks. The stages are varied and fun, the music is absolutely great (unfortunately I couldn't find a single good video of it on Youtube). The controls are simple since all you need to do is move left-right and jump/shoot occasionally. I tried this both with the keyboard and the gamepad and both worked fine.

The game is very short though, and after five stages that you can clear quite easily once you know what you're doing, you're done. The big star of the game is without a doubt the graphics, which you might have to see in action to truly appreciate. Images might make you think it is headache inducing, hard to navigate or just aesthetically horrible. But seeing the little shapes move around in this world, and see how they visually interact with the shapes around them is just... interesting. It is like a living work of art.

It's definitely a game worth checking out and fun to play while it lasts. I would've loved to see more from this! 

Ed's commentary: 

I think the music was great but found the graphics a bit difficult to navigate. It can be hard to see what makes out the background and foreground when you are going to make a jump or moving around, so there is some trial and error involved in that. The gameplay is fun and easy to learn though. I enjoyed it and have already replayed it a few times.