#dappergamelord

I've gone back to read some strange academy. The cast is a little oversized but it's still pretty good. What I like about a magic school in the marvel universe is that, thanks to decades of continuity, there's so many sources of magic to draw from. The main cast has a zombie, fairy, a dark dimensionite, a frost giant, a nexus of all realities denizen, asgardians, and more. It's fun to see how all these different magics interact with each other.

so the thing is, they lost 6 in a row right before they started this current 7 game winstreak. they've been bouncing up and down across .500 all season long. i've been alternating the we're so backs with it's so overs with great frequency.

i really look foremost at the gameplay. music, graphics, story, other features can definitely influence a game, but to me a game is primarily something you play, so how you play it has to be most important.

i think some people don't understand that it's the gameplay that drives how you feel about a game. a game like doom 2016 can have all the heavy metal and glory kill animations in the world, but if it wasn't backed up by gameplay that made you powerful and skilled, it wouldn't have the impact it's trying to have.

2 examples from recent games i've played. new super mario bros wii has nothing all that special from a story, music, or visual perspective. it's "just another mario game" in that way. but the gameplay was so tight and the stage design so varied i just couldn't put it down. even when i was dying to a hard stage over and over, i knew it was just a matter of me mastering the movement to break through. meanwhile majora's mask, a game widely renowned for its story and surreal art direction, has been frustrating me with its terrible controls to the point it's absolutely detracting my opinion of the game. i can't really appreciate the boss fight with the freaky fish monster if i keep dying because the game won't let me get out of the water

anybody will tell you that the original 3 genesis games are non-negotiable. Sonic the hedgehog, sonic the hedgehog 2, and sonic 3 and knuckles are the foundation of the franchise. sonic 1 is slightly clunky, they hadn't ironed out everything yet, but 2 and 3 are widely considered to be some of the best platformers ever made. There's a reason these games set the industry on fire. i'd easily put sonic 3 and knuckles on my all time fave list. if nothing else, play those.

sonic adventure and sonic adventure 2 are, in my opinion, the best 3d games in the franchise. not every playable character is gonna be as fun, but for my money they're the only 3d games that have truly managed to capture the feeling of speed and momentum as the original games. they're games where you can replay the sonic and shadow stages over and over and not get tired of them because the rush is so addictive. adventure 2 also has one of the best soundtracks to any game ever, and is also my personal favorite sonic game

those 5 are the only games i'd consider "must plays" for a newcomer (and are the most easily accessible of sonic's old games). There are a few other honorable mentions though. Sonic CD i'm not very fond of but a lot of people are, and comes from the same era as the first 3 games. Sonic rush and its sequel are fun ds games that take advantage of the dual screens, although they're pretty easy. sonic mania is a modern game in the style of the classics that some would say is even better than them, although it won't mean much to you if you play it first. sonic unleashed does have some fun speed stages if you can stomach the werehog. Sonic generations is probably the best non-adventure 3d game, although again it doesn't mean as much without that franchise history.

You know as I was listening to the game last night it struck me that while the Red Sox and the Blue Jays are both bad, the Blue Jays are bad in that sort of cuspy, almost-there way. You get the feeling that if a few things rolled a few different ways, they'd be in contention, and maybe they still will be

The red sox, meanwhile, are just dogshit ass. There's no fixing this, not this year. There's no one piece you can add to turn this around. If they're smart, they're selling.

The problem is selling what. For all the problems this year, the rotation has been pretty good. I don't really want them to deal any of the starters (except bello, but who would take him at this point. I was right that he was not going to stay good) because that's a core you can build on. Strong pitching wins you divisions, and it definitely wins you playoff series. This young starting core could be really good for years to come, and even though this season is probably lost, I don't want to break that up if we can. Nothing the Red Sox love more than not signing homegrown talent though so who can say

The only good bats we have are Contreras, Rafaela, and abreu, all of which would break my heart to lose but Rafaela and abreu are up for free agency after 2027 so they might get a solid haul for them. Doing that means giving up even more homegrown guys though which I've seen enough of

The only real standout on the Sox roster is chapman but I don't know what they would realistically get for him. Yeah he's been lights-out but who would give up something big for 2 months of a closer? I guess it's better to get something for nothing though, a good closer is not going to help a team that barely has cause to use him

I think they have two weeks to make some kind of change before we go from "bad start" to "just straight up bad". The hitting I knew was not going to be great but it's straight up anemic out there. They're letting fastballs right down the middle go by without even a check swing, what the hell is going on behind the scenes. And the pitching just can't carry an offense this bad, especially when it's not what it's cracked up to be. They can't keep leaning on rookies and hope it works out

I've never seen a pitcher so consistently have meltdowns the way bello does. If he allows one run he can't find the plate anymore, it's crazy. I do feel slightly vindicated because I thought his underlying stats last year were very worrying and I kind of saw this coming, but that doesn't exactly make me feel better.