At this point I feel like I’m gaslighting myself. I can’t top the intro to my 2023 Roundup:
Yep, it is time for me to wrap up another unproductive year of playing too much DotA and not enough of my backlog, which means my New Year’s resolution remains the same: play less DotA and write more.
My resolution for 2025 remains the same: play less DotA. But I mean it this time. FORREAL. Marvel Rivals launched in December 2024. I promised my boys that I would play but I have yet to do so. In the meantime, my oldest son has all but quit Overwatch 2 and is well on his ranked grind. I’m talking, he spends his weekdays from 4-7 PM and weekends from 1-7 PM playing Marvel Rivals. Every moment he can play, he does. But he’s 17. He can afford to invest that much time into a singular thing.
His routine reminds me of how I have treated DotA for half of my life. But I am no longer in my twenties when I started playing in 2003, I have missed out on too much while focused on a game that occupies an uninterrupted hour of my time per session. That “uninterrupted” part is important—when my wife or kids have needed me, I would be unavailable because my commitment to this game with no pause button demands all of my attention. My wife has had hundreds of conversations with me, or should I say, she has spoken to me hundreds of times while I am playing and while I could say if I won or lost the game based upon the hero I was playing, I could not remember what she said to me. My kids would just go to their mother for everything because “daddy is busy.” And so on.
What I have missed I will only live longer to regret. Yet I have recently rediscovered that I have more to gain through my retirement from DotA.
Wizard of Legend
I wrote a review for Wizard of Legend in 2018. Developer Dead Mage announced a sequel, which reminded me that I had yet to beat the game. Coincidentally, I tackle my backlog by selecting a game in alphabetical, reverse alphabetical, and one “cuz I feel like it” order, and Wizard of Legend fell in the reverse.
This time around, I committed to brute force, taking advantage of the fact that Wizard of Legend is a roguelite. I purchased the Avarice cloak to maximize gold and gem gains so that I could farm all of the spells and relics in town so that I would unlock all tiers of both. I tried many melee builds, but I noticed that rock spells mini-stun. So I exchanged my Bolt Rail + Fueled Berserk build for Stone Shot + Fueled Berserk. Everyone takes Wave Front for a dash. I also took the Claws of Tomo relic to enhance my Stone Shot basic arcana.
Sadly, one of my main critiques of Wizard of Legend from 2018 ramins in 2024, which is the inability to identify spells and relics without an eidetic memory. Sadly, I cannot identify any of the spells or relics in my winning screenshots without juxtaposing the images alongside a wiki, a labor-intensive endeavor. Suffice to say, beating Wizard of Legend for the first time is the most difficult the game will be. Afterward, players unlock Nox’s shop in town, and can purchase the Chaotic Comedy relic that makes enemies and players die to one hit. Combined with the Ella’s Glass Kite relic which blocks five attacks before shattering, the game becomes a speed run. I wish there was a “hack” like this for Xeno Crisis!
Xeno Crisis
I have spent the greater part of 2024 playing Xeno Crisis off and on. When people describe games as “Nintendo Hard,” Xeno Crisis is worse: it’s arcade hard. Inspired by Smash TV and borrowing from the Aliens franchises for its themes, Xeno Crisis is a great twin stick shooter. But by the third stage, enemies spam the screen with hostile bullets and hazards. The fourth stage is something like a reward, an opportunity to power up more before the fifth level where most of my runs end. Level five is level three on roids; there are no new enemies, but they are more aggressive. Even after putting down Wizard of Legend for years and picking it back up, I began to wonder if Xeno Crisis would just be a game I would never beat.
But then, I wondered, what if I invited my wife to play with me? Would a second player make this game more manageable?
Well, we still have yet to beat the game, but my—our runs in Xeno Crisis are infinitely more fun than when I was solo. By inviting her to play, I am also fulfilling her desire for quality time. This revelation, this rediscovery that I married a gamer reminds me of our dating days when we played games like The Sims (yes, the OG), and The Sims 2 together at the Ford Library on Tuskegee’s campus when we should have been studying.
I now recall when our kids were small enough to have 7 PM bedtimes, I had purchased several light gun games so that we could play together. During the Wii generation, we spent our evenings playing Link’s Crossbow Training, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles, and Ghost Squad. I had even purchased kits from Ebay to play games like Time Crisis II and Time Crisis III on the PS2. Yes, that meant at least two light guns!
These digressive anecdotes serve as a reminder that I could make better use of my time playing other games, especially cooperatively, with my family. Recently, I even played a four-player LAN session in L4D(2) with my kids! Playing a LAN with my kids is a LIFETIME ASPIRATION fulfilled! Even when my son wanted to focus on Marvel Rivals instead of playing L4D(2) as a family, my wife joined us. She had never played a FPS game before, and took offense when I asked if she was sure she wanted to play. I was concerned if she could adapt, but she did, even comically charging a tank to protect everyone else. I stand corrected.
Last L4D2 campaign we'll be able to play as a family before my daughter returns to Tuskegee tomorrow. We all made it! Great work, everyone! #blackskygamers#L4D2
— Blerd Beats (@blerdbeats.bsky.social) 2025-01-02T17:05:01.402Z
So yeah, I’m not playing ranked DotA 2 anymore unless I’m playing with friends. Unranked only when I get the itch to play. That’s why I’m retiring from DotA rather than quitting. After all, retired players in pro sports stop competing, but they don’t stop playing.
198X
It’s 1995. The Sega Saturn (and 32x, lol), Sony Playstation, Atari Jaguar, and Panasonic 3DO were all on the market, yet adults would say things like, “All y’all think about is playing Nintendo.” 198X pays homage to the first generation who fashioned themselves with the moniker, “gamer,” with all of that pop cultural resonance, including taking offense when the ignorant refer to a Sega platform as a Nintendo one. (As Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff once taught us, “Parents Just Don’t Understand.”)
We can remember the smell of an arcade, mainly from the scent of the metallic tokens that we used in the game cabinets, received in exchange for our paper cash; we remember returning to these arcades to play games like Double Dragon and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game even though we owned them at home, because consoles were incapable of consistent “arcade perfect” ports until the 32-bit era because CDs could store 700 megabytes of data compared to 40-48 megabits on cartridges (shout out games like Lords of Thunder, NBA Jam, and WWF WrestleMania: The Arcade Game on the Sega CD); we remember placing these tokens in the corner of a cabinet display to indicate “I got next” for games like Street Fighter 2 or Mortal Kombat; and the arcade cabinets that were designed like the interior of a sports car like Road Blasters or a jet cockpit like After Burner provided for us the immersive escapism that Back to the Future promised but reality failed to deliver.
198X brilliantly escorts players through not only the nostalgia, but also the angst of time through a series of metagames. Upon starting, 198X displays the image to an arcade entrance before fading into the introduction for “Beating Heart,” a Final Fight tribute so good that I actually get mad when it ends right before the stage boss appears. Only then does 198X return to its true introduction sequence, an androgenous teenager in full Marty McFly 1980s hipster aesthetic, lazily watching the city over the horizon at night. The cliché narrative detailing the melancholy accompanying suburban ennui disrupted by the breakdown of the idyllic nuclear family proceeds from there, punctuated via the meta games that comprise the 198X’s actual gameplay.
Fans of SHMPs like R-Type will enjoy “Out of the Void.” Outriders fans will like “The Runaway.” Shinobi fans will recognize the “Shadowplay” references. Might & Magic fans may recognize the dungeon crawling in “Kill Screen.” Chef’s kiss to the contemptuous SHODAN reference.
198X is surprisingly provocative; it is a gem that proves once again why indie games rule. This “freak, geek, rebel, and outcast” appreciates the love and recognition.
9
Yes, Your Grace
I almost did not play Yes, Your Grace because I had made a prior commitment to not buy or play fantasy or medieval-themed games that did not include Black people. Yes, Your Grace fell into that category. However, it showed up on a Humble Choice Bundle (in 2022!), which means I automatically paid for it. As with Wizard of Legend and “W,” Yes, Your Grace fell into the queue with “Y.”
I am glad that it did. While Yes, Your Grace fashions itself as a resource management game, it is really a game about family. Eryk is king, yet he has sired three daughters, Lorsulia, Asalia, and Cedani, all of whom he loves. But his wife, Queen Aurelea, laments failing to bear him a son, an heir. Because of the game’s big reveals, I will not delve too much. I will just say that I am grateful that I live in nation that frowns upon marrying off thirteen year-old girls like Lorsulia. If not for modern sensibilities on sexuality, a story like Asalia’s would have likely ended poorly. And Cedani’s chaotic innocence delights.
Given how great Yes, Your Grace is, would I reevaluate my stance on playing games based upon their inclusivity? No.
8.5
8 Doors: Arum’s Afterlife Adventures
I have stated before that I have never played a bad metroidvania. Well, 8 Doors: Arums’ Afterlife Adventures is certainly a mediocre one. What attracted me was the promise of “Korean folktale influence,” but the game needs a bestiary or a similar guide for those like myself who are unfamiliar with the lore. Compared to games like Hollow Knight or Dead Cells, or even a mid-level metroidvania like Sundered, the unimaginative melee combat in 8 Doors feels too much like a core rather than a fun thing to do. After the boss above, the game grants a bow and arrow as a third weapon, but it requires spirit power to use even though there’s nothing special about it.
5
Blerd Beats 