The last great exclusive release of the PS4 era, the moniker being given to Ghost of Tsushima. Does it deserve that title, though? Let's be honest, this has been a banner year for the Playstation, made even more important with the imminent rise of the next generation. Microsoft was scoring a lot of points to the build up of the next gen with backwards compatibility, connectivity, and cross-play features that were backing Sony into a tight corner. Lo and behold, though, Sony's proving that the most important factor is, after all, games.

With currently exclusive releases like Final Fantasy VII remake, Nioh 2, Last of Us Part 2, and now Ghost of Tsushima, the PS4 is really flexing its muscles one last time this generation. Honestly this is a good thing for gamers.

On to the game itself, though, as GoT (Really does anybody want to try and defend that acronym belonging to show or book series anymore? If Martin releases the next book in the series I'll rescind my comment, but until then I've officially moved on from anything to do with games and thrones) is the thing we really want to look at here.

The story follows Jin Sakai, nephew to Lord Shimura head of Tsushima island, and his exploits following the sudden mongol invasion lead by Khotun Khan,  voiced and performance captured by the wonderful Patrick Gallagher. For the first, but decidedly not the last, time I'm going to draw parrallels to the Assassin's Creed series, as like Odyssey the game thrusts you into the game world in the midst of a major conflict where victory is impossible.

After giving you some basic controls through this first conflict, you are finally given a glimpse of the meat of this game through a series of stealth tutorials that guide you through escaping a mongol controlled village. As you progress through the game planning out your path through any mongol controlled territory feels very much like planning through a take down in the last few Assassin's Creed games. Careful planning is by no means required, but boy does it make the game easier, and it's really satisfying when something you planned works really well.

That said, the progress of the game is a lot loss Assassin's Creed, and a lot more God of War. Getting weapons and armor in Tsushima are typically linked to epic quests, themselves hidden behind other precursor side quests. They're not very easy to aquire, and upgrading them is even more time consuming (though it is of course worth every effort). Instead, the majority of your progress is done through unlocking skills and abilities.

Your gameplay style will very much dictate what you want to unlock first to help you get through the first part of the island. Do you want to expand your assassination skills with wind chime decoys and the ability to kill more than one enemy through assassination? Perhaps, like me, you're more of a run in ask questions later sort of fighter, being able to kill more than one enemy through a duel is probably your route, as well as more blade skills.

You'll also be given options for sword fighting styles that are strong against specific opponent types, and a brilliantly simple quick style switch to combat multiple enemy types in succession. There are also abilities and charms you can unlock and acquire that give you bonuses based on play style, healing for killing enemies certain ways, or....well here's the thing, there's a lot of depth to explore. I feel the best part of all this is that despite the depth of options available to you to grow your Jin, the system stays out of your way for the most part during actual combat. Yes you can spend ten minutes tracking enemies, planning smoke bombs, assassinations, bow kills, and hostage rescuse. Once you start enacting your plan, though, the game really stays out of your way with smooth combat (which is very much unlike my experience with Assassin's Creed).

Exploration is fun in this game, combat is a blast, the story is a little...well derivative but that was literally their goal in making a Kurosawa like game, and all of it is beautiful.

And I do mean spectacularly beautiful. I don't even understand how they pulled it off. Some of the textures are lacking (the horses can sometimes look pretty ugly, strange considering how big a part your horse plays in the game), and you will see about 8,000 (slight exageration) of the same home as you venture through the first parts of Tsushima, but every single thing in this game is beautiful.

The lighting is bar none the best I've seen using the PS4 Pro. When you travel to some of the souther portions of the Tsushima, and the lightning booms and flashes in the distance, rain coming down in torrents, your horses' every footfall squealching loudly through the mud as deer howl and birds cry at your passing, you really feal fully drawn into this game. The only thing that's really removed me from the full imersion has been the assassination deaths. They always feel so loud and gurgly (done on purpose I assume), that I can't imagine the entire village hasn't heard me just brutally murder one of their comrades.

Very much like my early time with Red Dead Redemption 2, before you hit Saint Denis, I really got lost in my exploration of the island of Tsushima. Each area on the island is distinct and beautiful. The iconic Golden Forest is only one of many areas that will take your breath away. The first time I light a brazer in a lighthouse, looked east, and saw Castle Kaneda, where my uncle was being held prisoner, off in the distance, with mongol ships dotting the sea all around, I was floored.

Most impressive of all, though, has been the load times. From game start-up from the PS4 main menu, to being in game and running around clocked in at about 4 minutes. There's a wonderful quick travel system that allows you to travel back to unlocked areas, and areas that you've liberated from the mongols. Selecting an area across the island from where you just were takes you to your destination in seconds. I don't know why they even bothered with load screen tips, I've yet to see one long enough to read much less cycle through any additional hints.

Not just the game world is beautiful, it looks to me that the team even took care in designing the menu elements. It has this strange mixture of old DVD menus, searching through select special features, and ancient maps and scrolls. It all works well together to keep you in the world. Though I did use the map frequently, particularly when trying to quick travel, I found myself surprised at how well the ghost wind tracking worked.

Generally I've found any usage of the PS4 controller's speaker or touch pad to be annoying at best, and intrusive in most situations. Here swiping on the pad gives a feel of gently requesting assisstance. Swipe up to have the winds blow and guide me, left to pull out my flute and play, right to sheath my sword. It all feels gentle, and almost gentlemanly. Very on point with the Japanese Samurai theme. I did turn off the controller's speaker, as all it did was emit a blowing wind midi (I'm sorry that speaker just sounds like a crackly old midi player), but I was pleased to find the option to turn it off was given.

In terms of getting more play out of what could be a very short game, the collectables deliver in spades, at least they did for me. Composing haikus to receive bandanas with those compositions on them. Completing specific side quests to unlock hats, weapons, armor, and more. Following insanely adorable foxes to unlock charm slots. Traversing up, down, and around complex jumping puzzles to acquire powerful charms to slot in to. Timed button pressing memory games to display your sword cutting skills.

These side quests feel a part of the world, a very real part of your Jin's journey. They're each distinct enough to not feel too repetative, and for the most part unlock some truly useful things for your journey. For instance contemplations in a hot springs are fun interludes to a bloody crusade, but they also increase your maximum health. Other unlocks are just cosmetic, but still joyful, like the Pathwork Straw Hat here.

In all, I think Ghost of Tsushima caps off one of the best swansongs for a generation we've seen ever. It delivers on so many levels; epic gameplay with fun simple controls and mechanics that grow in complexity as you play. A wonderfully lush and vivid world, lovingly designed by people who clearly cared about the source material. A masterfully scored soundtrack, and oodles of extras to give the game so much extra value. It's also done this while having the quickest to load times I have ever experience, through what I can only imagine is some sort of demonic witchcraft (though I'm hoping this is a preview of what we can expect on the PS5).

In short, if you have the time and the money you should get this game. If you have a great 4k TV, booming sound system, and the PS4 Pro, prepare yourself for a spectacular treat.

These past few weeks the measurable, and palpable, growth of anxiety in myself, and all those around me, has been almost equal to the sharp increase in COVID-19 cases all across our increasingly isolated (and stressed) little planet.

For gamers struggling just as much as anyone else right now, Animal Crossing: New Horizons couldn't have come at a more opportune time. Every single cute little detail serves to distract you from the tragic, and sometimes scary, realities we're all living in. Quite frankly I'm embracing the island life with open arms.

From the moment you start the game up, with the twin Nooks Tommy and Timmy greeting you, and prepping you for your flight to your very own deserted island, AC:NH smacks you across the face with its incomprehensible cuteness. Everything is there, from adorable language quirks like finishing sentences with "stubble," to ridiculous personalities that somehow mix debasement with delight.

The "tutorial" stage of AC:NH is as lengthy as any of the previous entries, allowing you to play the entire game at your own pace, possibly never even advancing past your first humble staked tent. It's this laid back attitude that is so appealing to players, though. You could easily get lost in comparing your progress to your friends online, but the second you get that rock climbing wall set up in your room, you just don't care anymore.

Everything about the game is as joyful and frustrating as it has always been. Catching fish, snagging bugs, shooting down presents from the sky. You just feel a sense of calm doing it all (mostly). The game never rushes you, so after some initial flurries to get your first home set up, you just sort of settle into a calm routine of living on your island.

There is also the fact that what is in the game works almost spectacularly well. There are still the frustrating moments like casting a line at a fish that has just turned away from you, or smacking a net just to the right of that incredibly rare bug you were hunting for hours, but generally it's a skills based blunder, not a mechanical one.

Quite a few of the new features in the game really reel players back in with more frequency (fishing pun, deal with it). The Nook Miles system is quite genuis. Previously you cycled through getting a new home, incurring debt, and then running around doing things in your town to earn bells to pay back Tom...who somehow never felt like a Boston area landlord, instead gently coaxing you for payments.

With miles, achievements have ostensibly been parsed out to tasks that guide you around the island, allowing you to earn miles for completing simpe tasks. This is further enhanced with Miles+ tasks that cycle on a constant basis. While you can unlock quite a few neat quality of life features with your miles, the real golden ticket is just that, a ticket to a randomized island getaway.

This island has everything, new fruits, flowers, and occasionally a friend to join you on your island. You sit there with your single inventory, and you just stock up on everything you can find, basically stripping the island of all of its natural resources before leaving it in a desolate state as you fly off with your bounty of coconuts and tulips.

Surprisingly, the best feature was one that sounded the least appealing, local co-op. When it was revealed that the only way you could play with live players on your island was through a local co-op feature, that further limited you to a leader and follower(s) system, there was great concern.

Switching the leader is as easy shaking your controller to pass leadership, and then shaking the control (or pressing the A button) on the new leader's controller.

My wife created an account on my switch, we loaded up the game, and had her join me on my island. After she got her tent set up, we started messing with the playstyle possibilities. Switching the leader is as easy shaking your controller to pass leadership, and then shaking the control (or pressing the A button) on the new leader's controller.

There are definitely ways you can troll all the followers. The leader doesn't need to wait for anyone for any reason. If the leader wanders off, all followers are forced to the leader in a puff of smoke. If they open their Nook Phone, or their pockets, whatever the followers were doing is interrupted (yeah that big catch you had on your line gets away instantly when the leader does this).

Lucilky my wife and I do not hate each other, so this hasn't really been a problem except when done by accident. The brighter side of this is how well this works when you're cooperating. The follower can shake trees, or chop them, while the leader wanders around picking everything up. This really did increase our efficiency in getting my wife caught up to me in game, and was a lot of fun to be able to experience the island together.

The only other downside to the local co-op is the decisions on inventory management. It is understandable that some concessions had to be made, like having all items followers collect go to the recycle bin (which I hope is upgradeable). The fact that the animation for items to poof from your hands to that bin takes a noticeably longer amount of time than normal item pickups is really annoying, though. You're also unable to access your tool wheel as a follower. For those who have filled their entire favorite's wheel this can lead to some frustrating panic moments of trying to cycle all the from your fishing rod to your bug net when you see a spider on the ground.

In all though, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been pure and unadultered joy. From the moment it loaded up, my mood has brightened significantly. There are no longer hours where I'm checking stats, or reading increasingly distressing articles. I'm simply enjoying my island life, and sharing my exploits across the internet with a suprising cadre of friends who have also picked up this game. If you have a Switch, there really isn't a reason to skip AC:NH, particularly with the world as it is around us. Enjoy your day with the Nooks and company on an island of your very own.

Lately I've been reading a lot of books, articles, and journals dealing with spirituality. Authors like Brené Brown, topics like aggression, and occasionally I hit a spark like I did reading parts of a classic that I've always found difficult to finish.

I've picked up Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance probably a dozen times since it came into my possession. It's been so long since I first got it that I can't remember which of my two brothers gave it to me. Some of the abstract, and circular logic confuses me, most of it exhausts me. Yes I get it, if you think about it hard enough existence is nothing more than perception. Does acknowledging that serve any purpose?

The title of this post refers to a moment reading where I was lost, and searching for meaning. For some reason something about quality hit home in me. In the book, the narrator asks a class, but really he's asking us; what is quality? I foolishly continued on without stopping, but take a moment and think about that question. Try to succinctly define quality, you can even google the word if you like. We can even stick with the adjective form of the word to make things less complex (relatively):

of or having superior quality: quality paper
producing or providing products or services of high quality or merit: a quality publisher.

Not exactly starting in a good place when the definition includes the word that it's trying to define. This doesn't even do a good job of that as it focuses on aspects of good quality. It is such a strange thing that something we know so intimately, and base a lot of important decisions in our life on, is something that we have almost no ability to define.

You know good quality when you see it. You've either been taught the scale of quality for individual things (that's a really good quality television), or inferred it based on accumulated knowledge (a good quality tree is one that exemplifies traits that make a tree useful).

The author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig, presents to us our own thinking. We believe that the quality inhabits the object, but simultaneously we're painfully aware that what we find to be of good quality may not be universally seen as such. So you flip the owner to try and make sense of things, the quality inhabits the observer, our mind. This also doesn't work as each individual doesn't have their own catalog of quality, it is influenced by other observers, by other objects even.

So Pirsig, through the fictional Phaedrus, tries to define quality by separating it entirely from mind or matter. Instead he tries to define quality as an event. Our mind perceives matter in our world, and instantaneously, after perceiving it, the "quality event" occurs. It's this instantaneous scoring of every perceived object on a scale of quality.

So I've taken this postulation and sort of....worried it over a lot. I began to ask myself a lot of uncomfortable questions. How much of my life is based solely on this instantaneous metaphysical scoring system? Am I trapping people, objects, experiences simply based on a gut check categorization of good or bad? How much have I missed out on doing this?

I don't believe wholly in the idea that there's this event outside of reality that is the sole source of quality's definition, but it is hard to ignore the idea that our brain makes choices in perception of our reality for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's safety, or sometimes it's aesthetics, but for the sake of brevity our brain quite often just guesses.

We're very often taught in higher education to question things, but very rarely are we instructed to question ourselves. That could prove dangerous. Trust your instincts, we're told, it is better to be alive than to be loved. This task of defining quality presupposes the goodness or badness of that quality.

I had a conversation recently with someone about making tacit and complete judgments about one's own opinions. That we're apt to frame things definitely, a show is bad, a joke is not funny. These are qualities we're talking about, but through language, cognition, and our mind's constant act of tricking itself, we lead ourselves to believe these statements of quality.

It might be simpler to think of it in terms of art. We have the cognizant recognition that what is or isn't good art is in the eye of the beholder. Why is any other quality different? I did not find the joke funny, but that does not mean that it isn't funny. The simple telling of a joke implies that the person telling it found it funny enough to relay.

Deeper and deeper I dove, until I was basically pissed off with quality. I had personified it, and I hated it. Who was quality to tell me what my reality definitely was? Why do we let quality dictate...the quality of conversation we have with others?

So I've challenged myself to recognize quality more. When I'm applying quality in my life to my own detriment, and how I can listen more to other's quality to learn experiences outside of my own. Humanity can be seen as levels of interconnectedness. We have a sentience that allows us to think about the fact that we're thinking, but our brain is combating us at every turn in an effort to be succinct, to survive by acting quickly. I'd like to think past that.

So eons ago I promised a second round of my SASS introduction, and as I recall ever so faintly I wanted to touch on multi-select...although I really misspoke when I called it that, let's just call it advanced selection.

All of this goes into inheritance, which is a common construct in object oriented languages, but was not really a thing in CSS. If you wanted to have specific elements of an unordered list share a style, but have some minor differences based on the context of the list, you really had to either use IDs or replicate a lot of code.

Let's take a look at a nested selection in CSS:

#header{
    div.menu-mobile{ display: none; }
    div.menu-wrapper{ 
        padding: 50px 0px 0;
        border-radius: 15px;
    }
    .logo {
        text-align: center;
        margin: 5px auto;
        float: left;
        a {
            display: block;
            color: #fff;
            i.fa{
                margin-right: 10px;
                vertical-align: middle;
                position: relative;
                top: -3px;
            }
            img {
                display: block;
                max-width: 100%;
                height: auto;
                margin: 0 auto;
            }
        }
        &.text-logo{
            margin-top: 12px;
        }
    }

So there's a lot going on here, but I included it all for a bit of context. So first we have the ID selector #header that is encasing all this CSS logic. No matter what selector we use in here, if it's not in an element with an id="header" it's all ignored.

Let's take a closer look at the .logo class though. In this we're saying that anchor elements in anything with a class logo should have this definition. More specifically image elements within that anchor element should also have a specific style. but what's that &.text-logo call for? Ampersands in SASS are really neat.

Typically you can designate that multiple classes are required for an element to be styled, but they have to be nested in order. Ampersands let you define that order. An IDE like Visual Studio Code allows us to trace this out visually:

So I can have text throughout an element with a class logo, but if I define an element of text-logo within that logo class element (and only within), add a bit of a margin if you please. So why the ampersand? Well in this case the default behavior of a nested class says to do exactly this. All classes and selectors nested within a defined element will be children of that element...but the ampersand let's us redefine that later without having to necessarily rethink our nesting (that wasn't a fun sentence to write).

Take this as a crazy and useless example:

.logo {
  #header.text-logo & { }
}

This is now telling the compiler to create the following selector:

#header.text-logo .logo {}

Oddly enough this is saying that we should select the .logo class only if the element with an ID of #header also has the .text-logo class.

The second, and far cooler, use for the ampersand is in modifying classes. It wasn't until much later (now really) that I was even aware of the &'s ability to do this, but it's now my favorite.

.class {
  &-first {}
  &-second {}
}

Say I have a class of items defined as above. They share a lot of styling, but the first and second really need some stylistic differentiators on the page. I could easily accomplish this by nesting classes normally. I would then be able to select them by just using both classes. This combines all that and actually creates the classes. The compiled CSS looks like this:

.class-first {}
.class-second {}

The .class-first has all of the styling from .class, and from .-first, and likewise for .-second. See? Really cool right? There is so much more you can do with the & in SASS/SCSS by comining it with psuedo classes, or combinator operations, and more. Next time I'll be comparing mixins and placeholders, and when it is best to use either. Hopefully that'll be up within the next year or so based on my schedule. Till then!

Maybe?

I've spent about 30 hours with this game, and sometimes I was loving it. There would be moments I opened a door and saw a sprawling panoply of lights, activity, and things to explore.

This feeling of awe quickly dissipates though as you realize what looked like a large vibrant living district, is in fact very shallow, and not just physically.

I think the most frustrating thing about Outer Worlds was that the clear and ready ambition makes every letdown feel that much worse. There would be moments where I was genuinely invested in the impact my decisions would have on the game world.

After spending so much time with Parvati early on my journey through Emerald Vale, I legitimately had to pause and think deeply about the first big decision I had to make.

There were more quests for the main town than there were for the outcasts, so I knew them better, perhaps I hated them more for that, but clearly there was a right and wrong choice here right?

The problem is even though my gut was personally tied in knots about this decision, once I'd made it...nobody seemed to care. There were some set piece scenes in various places, but nobody was accusing me, the only stranger in their midst, of any nefarious deeds. My own companion, Parvati, who had strong opinions of her own, quickly forgot her misgivings upon seeing my badass ship.

It made the world feel dead to me, and I couldn't completely escape that feeling for the remainder of my time in this universe. Even things like design decisions struck a wrong chord with me. We have plenty of modern day corollaries to what is happening in game, but they chose the 1950s ad man bubble building aesthetic. Look, I understand this team wanted to say, "Hey remember that Fallout you really liked? We're the team who made it!" But did they really need to make this game feel like a more colorful version of that world?

This wasn't a post cold-war apocalyptic earth. It was a brand new universe, and the blind adherence to jingle laden advertising fell incredibly flat for me. We have modern issues with what capitalism can do to a society, and I felt that the choices in aesthetic made were cowardice. It was a sense of trying to avoid the direct comparison to the problems corporations pose for society right now.

The whole game suffered from this. It felt like that friend who giggles and tells an awkward joke when they feel that the situation is too tense.

The story, though was really good. Don't get me wrong, the payoff at the end of the game was definitely worth the ride. And even completing all of the companion quests, which genuinely felt like tacked on side stories that didn't affect their behavior towards me and others during main missions, even those had a nice epilogue scene you earn by completing them.

But there's more to a game than story, and here Outer Worlds ambition also seems to get in its own way. There is a disgusting amount of variety in consumable items, and I genuinely feel bad for whoever had to design them and write up little blurbs on them, because you probably won't use any of them in a play-through.

I found out there were beds about ten hours into my play. There's literally an entire game mode that requires you to eat, drink, and sleep, and it's not a default game mode. There are hundreds of items, an entire mechanic, that you likely won't even see on a normal play through.

The variety of weapons feels good at first, and on more difficult modes some of the different types/weaknesses actually matter, but for the most part you'll be playing with the weapons that fit your play style. I will say that the variety of weapons including plasma launchers, shotguns, snipers, assault rifles, and more are actually distinct enough that this works.

Armor similarly plays a key roll in the game. Some times you do want to have some protection, but more often than not I found myself collecting top hats, and goggles, and more for perks to my dialogue options. I found myself changing clothes regularly to complete different tasks, which did feel silly (wearing stealthy glasses and jumper to complete a hack, and switching to something a little more intimidating to threaten the person whose terminal I just hacked).

All that said, I finished The Outer Worlds. A strange statement, but for me a significant one. I haven't really beaten a game all the way through in almost a decade. Despite the flaws the game kept calling me back. There was something about the world that made me want to take the next step in the journey, and I do wish there were some changes that could have made it even more engaging, but it's a fun game...maybe just not $60.00 fun.

On June 24th GoG, which is owned by CD Projeckt, released the first closed beta version of their Galaxy 2.0 client. Top on the list of features announced was the promise of a single unified library. A client that would allow you to launch any game you owned, from any number of proprietary clients including from a Steam library.

It turns out that some of the library filter features that were just included as quality of life options ended up being something that was so popular that eventually even Valve had to take note. They opened up a beta for their Steam client featuring the most significant changes in what feels like a decade on September 17th.

While Steam has the benefit of ecosystem, they by far have the largest share of the digital games marketplace, GoG would seem to have the more interesting offering. Their new platform allows you to integrate and launch games from any other platform. It does this by actually starting the services, so you will still see Steam load in the background. You can also manage installations of these games, customize box art, and of course filter your games based on criteria and save those results as "bookmarks."

The other factor playing in here is how willing companies will be to either reign in games to their own platforms, or utilize Epic's fledgling platform to pull people away from steam. This has worked wonders (or horrors depending on your perspective) in the digital media space with every single company starting up their own proprietary streaming platform. The question is, will gamers be as will to adopt that many platforms, or is GoG ahead of the game in recognizing their desire to have one platform to rule them all?

I am so sorry about that title, but I'm a little late to the SASS/SCSS game, and I felt the need to join in on something here. I'm probably rehashing what's been said thousands of times over the last 11 years, and I'd be aghast myself, but frankly I typically avoid front-end coding like the plague (which I've avoided many times in my day). Let's get into this though, because I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed working with SASS the past few months.

I've worked with CSS pretty extensively in the past, but always found it to be massively cumbersome, hard to maintain and keep track of, and incredibly difficult to get it to do what you wanted with targeting. CSS has been fracturing quite a bit the last 10 years as quick advances in web design have left standards lagging far behind. I have had every intention of looking into SASS for years now, but was finally forced to dive deep into it recently when I was customizing the template for this very site.

Variables

I'm starting here with the pièce de résistance, variables. Being able to assign what amounts to default values for various selectors really speeds up your workflow. Many editors of course now let you find all instances of a matched string in a document and change them, but having variables allows you to separate logical areas of your CSS into separate files. For example you can have a file dedicated solely to the styling of all buttons on your page.

If you do this, though, you lose the ability to quickly change, say, the primary color used throughout your page. SASS has you covered there.

$red: #8a89c0; //Primary Color
$yellow: #00ffc6; // Secondary Color
$black1: #111; // Header, subscribe, back to top button, etc
$black2: #222; // Main titles

Now all you have to do is edit the hex in this one location, and let SASS do the rest for you as you reference that variable throughout any of your SCSS files. How does SASS reference this variable across multiple files, one might ask? As a default, SCSS variables can be placed in a settings.scss. This sits all by its lonesome at the top of your SCSS assets file structure.

By convention you will also have a main.scss file. In here the simple magic happens. Using the @import directive you can structure all of the SCSS files you want to be included when the compiler builds out your single CSS file.

@import "settings";
@import "base/buttons";
@import "base/forms";
@import "base/style";
@import "base/editor";

All of this builds to being able to define simple CSS constructs that you would probably need for any and every page you might make, but make it general enough that editing a few variables can completely change the look of your page.

body{
    font: $font-size $font-family;
    line-height: $line-height;
    font-weight: $font-weight;
    color: $text-color;
    background: #1D202F;
    opacity: .99;
    -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch;
}

There, that's it, now I have a baseline set of CSS for the body element that can easily be updated just by changing the values of the variables in the settings file. This can easily be spread throughout a default set of code blocks to help you keep the look and feel of your site consistent. For instance using a primary and secondary color base that are both used throughout your site in different elements, without the need to worry about updating the color for each (green and purple anyone?).

Next time I'm going to get into multi selection so you can target very specific elements, without the need for IDs, and without losing your way in all the CSS.

Disclaimer: I haven't played either of these games, I'm simply looking at stats that show their similar popularity trajectory, and the fact that they were both genre defining.

So I feel I'm already in trouble by saying that both DOTA and PUBG are genre defining, but I'm going to stand by that statement pretty solidly. DOTA created the MOBA archetype as a MOD for Warcraft III, and while PUBG didn't create the idea of a Battle Royale (I believe that title goes to the eponymous Battle Royale), it too modded an existing game (Arma) in a way that created an entirely new genre.

They both enjoyed explosive growth, popularity, and, since they'd created their respective genres, little to no competition. Then challengers came on in the form of League of Legends and Fortnite. Both of these titles introduced a much simpler and youthful look.

A lot of people will say the biggest factor of Fortnite's growth is that it was free. I think this would have helped its initial growth, since the fact of the matter is the battle royale mode wasn't even supposed to be the full game for Fortnite, but it now looks that the main game will never be finished. That said I truly believe that the biggest aspect of its growth was it's kid friendly look and feel.

Parents let their kids spend ridiculous amounts of money on mobile games, that's why that market exploded.

Free or not, Fortnite would have presented to a parent a less realistic, and therefore less violent, alternative to the game that was at the time far more popular (PUBG).

For League of Legends, it's look helped it break in to the Asian market, particularly Korea. It's sometimes hard to remember that Riot Games is actually based in the United States. This really was all started by World of Warcraft. Giving your game a more approachable look, that's fun and detailed, but friendly to the general masses (and in particular to younger crowds), really opens up your game to whole new audiences. WoW was able to take what was a popular, but niche market that was at the time cornered by Everquest and Asheron's Call, and give it universal appeal.

Now, DOTA was able to pull together a sequel, that doubled down on it's "hardcore" motif. DOTA 2 is in almost all ways more difficult than LoL by adding additional mechanics to track that aren't present in League. In this it has actually been quite successful.

Valve has been able to take this game and carve out a new market by pitting themselves directly against League of Legends. The battle cry now sung from DOTA fans is that their game is more serious, and LoL players are just too casual to play their game. Similar cries have come up from PUBG camps, but with rampant cheating issues, and their struggle to turn the game into an eSport, these cries have really been more sad wimpers than rallying call.

PUBG needs to figure out a way to tune itself in to that hardcore crowd again, make it the more serious alternative to Fortnite to pull it's fans back in. They shouldn't have to strive to mimic the aesthetic games like Fortnite thrive on.

Valve has proved that the best way to combat this is to embrace the hardcore nature of a game. Play it up, and create a sense of competition between the camps. They gave their fans a game that legitimately is more difficult than League, and whether or not that's your thing, it helped create a strong fan base that has kept DOTA 2 popular for a good long while now.

Just about ten years ago I moved to Boston, and joined the Northeastern University Anime Club. I had a general interest in anime, but really there just wasn't any other club at the school that was even remotely tied to my interests. After several years with the club, though, I was a certified addict.

We watched things like Genshiken, a sort of meta experience of watching an anime about an anime club, and Durarara a blend of mind bending dialogue, and hyper violence. I went to Anime Boston for a few years during this time, bought a ton of anime, and when it was being piloted got a CrunchyRoll subscription.

In the last 5 years or so, I've stopped watching anime almost completely. I spent some time thinking about that change in my life. I'm married now, I live in Ohio (I know, it's only temporary), I have two dogs, a well paying job. Maybe I'd just "matured" past anime. Maybe it was just content you can only be interested in during your slightly younger years.

The more I thought about it, the more I began to realize that wasn't really the case. I miss anime, a lot. I miss the romantic comedies, and the absolute mind-fucks. There are anime about farming that I watched in a single night, and for some reason I loved every minute of them. So why I had stopped watching?

Time. Not in the sense that I'm much busier now with the life I live now, but in a much more general sense that my mind has conditioned itself (think about that for a moment) to believe I don't have the time to dedicate myself to certain things because there is so much to do.

I could be spending time with my wife, reading a book, watching a Netflix show, browsing the web, getting work done, taking my dogs out for a hike, going kayaking, watching a World Cup match, catching up with the various Yogscast YouTube series or podcasts, playing a game, building a web page, or....the list is infinite. The idea of just doing one thing is almost daunting.

I can watch Netflix because I can also check Instagram on my phone, pop my laptop open to browse Reddit, and catch up on Orange is the New Black ALL AT THE SAME TIME!

I don't read as much because my full attention has to be on the book. I can watch Netflix because I can also check Instagram on my phone, pop my laptop open to browse Reddit, and catch up on Orange is the New Black ALL AT THE SAME TIME!

Anime falls into the reading category for me though. I don't really like the work being done for dubbing or localization. So I have to watch anime subtitled, but that means I can't split my attention to anything else. To keep up with the subtle visual queues on screen, as well as the dialogue, my eyes and mind have to be plastered onto the screen.

So I've chosen to just stop watching anime, or more accurantly my mind has (maybe less accurately depending on your viewpoint). The reason isn't what I'd expected, and it's almost sadder than just simply outgrowing something.

In what has thus far been an E3 filled with trailers heavy on pre-rendered scenes, and speculative gaming (Bethesda, if you release TES VI before 2022 I'm out 5 bucks), Sony decided to focus on game play...oddly enough.

Yes it was painfully slow, and at times confusing, but the meat of Sony's conference did seem to be focused on giving us reasons to buy these games. It looks like the focus for Sony is going to be on cinematic tales well told.

The Last of Us Part 2

The conference started out in a church, with a Kingsman reference, as well as some truly cringe worthy divine phrases. Composer Gustavo Santaolalla broke the silence with very emotional, and very slow well, banjo playing. In what felt like an age he played through an entire piece without a single second of game play being shown.

The trailer Sony gave us, though, was entirely worth the wait. We get almost twelve full minutes (I checked the video length on YouTube for this one guys) of game play and cinematic scenes. The trailer starts in a church, finally tying the whole experience together.

We start in on a much older Sarah, partaking in some revelry. Everything from the details of the fluid in the glass, to the more noticeable things like the incredibly fluid facial animations (looking at you Assassin's Creed), even in a scene as mild as a church fete, were jaw dropping. Naughty Dog had it's engine on full display from the moment the scene opens.

We get some very interesting character, and relationship development, before cutting to an extremely length, and satisfying, cut of actual game play.

The Last of Us 2 is a beautiful, ofttimes extremely brutal, game, but it decidedly plays like a Naughty Dog game. The fighting definitely had a greater weight to it than anything we'd seen previously, particularly games like Tomb Raider, and Assassin's Creed, where the combat definitely felt much more "arcade," than "simulator."

This is where I think the content of Sony's conference stands out, both in a good and bad way. There was a clear theme on the night, incredible cinematic experiences, and showing actual game play in an extensive enough manner that we gamers can feel like we're making an informed decision when we decide whether or not we want to play these games. What was lacking in the revelations tonight was game mechanic innovations.

Ghost of Tsushima

Wind and leaf physics people, this game has what are probably the most incredible wind and leaf physics ever seen before (at least on a console). To say that Ghost of Tsushima is gorgeous would be a bit of an understatement. This truly continued the theme of the night of highly cinematic single player experiences.

While the visuals shown truly blew me out of the water, and the theme was definitely unique, that is an authentic feeling feudal Japan, the combat did have a very clunky look to it. The developers have been quoted as saying they were so worried that before they could release a feudal Japan Assassin's Creed game would be released, and they seem to have unfortunately brought in a similar "sticky" battle system.

After seeing the fluidity of the combat shown in the Last of Us 2 trailer, there was definitely some noticeable robotic sticky movements to the stance switching seen in the duel between Jin and Masako. The movement of the crimson leaves, both from their steps, and the wind, with the backdrop of a setting sun really brought me into the moment, and the jilted movement of the stances was so jarring.

This is still definitely a game I want to play, but I'm a little underwhelmed with some of the animation transitions considering what I'd been seeing throughout the rest of E3. I know one thing for sure, I will be playing this game with the Japanese audio.

Death Stranding

What can I say about this? The game still looks weird as hell. We have new hints about the underlying plot. There's definitely something about babies, rebirth, life/time suckers that force you to cover your mouth, and stuff that needs to get delivered. Oh, and you can also gross my wife out easily with toenails.

Somehow still interested in this game, if for no other reason then to figure out what is going on.

Spider-Man

This was definitely the biggest surprise, for me at least, at Sony's E3. I still have a strong hesitation when it comes to superhero console games. The Arkham series has been the only true success in a long line of terrible, or terrible but funny games about comic book characters. Parodies of the genre have typically done better than the actual games themselves.

It'd be easy to compare this to the Arkham series, but what truly stood out to me about what I saw in this game was how well the fighting mechanics fit Spider-Man the character. I think Arkham did a great job of creating a consistent fighting style for the Batman character. In the comics he generally has a "catch-all" fighting style, and that would have been nearly impossible to reproduce in a game without the button configuration being a nightmare.

The approach to the Spider-Man combat centers around his Spidey-senses, and this is brought to life in the game in what appears to be a very natural, and easy to grasp manner. It definitely appears to be a perfect blend of easy to play, tough to master. Everything is flying around so quickly, and Spidey is constantly forced to make split second decisions. There's just enough of a slow-down that you're given a chance to do something super-human, but not so much that it breaks the flow of action on screen.

I personally hadn't heard much about this game prior to E3, so I had very minimal expectations going in, but after less than 10 minutes of gameplay/cinematics I was sold.

It was only a kiss...

These are just there big four announcements Sony had announced prior to their show, and they more than delivered a large enough punch to keep Sony on top of this current generation of consoles. A lot of the heavy hitters do seem to be coming out Q1 2019, so it'll be interesting to see if Nintendo sneaks in a few big first party titles to win out during holiday. This would definitely be the year to do it.