Delirium Corp
A variety of ramblings on a variety of subjects

You know, gamers sometimes get the short end of the stick in the mainstream media. Since they’re not part of that mainstream for a variety of reasons, they generally can’t defend themselves properly when someone comes looking for a decent scapegoat. Thankfully, some gamers decided to take the matters into their own hands and do something good for the world.

Recently I went around to play and subsequently finish, since it’s very short, The Beginner’s Guide. For those who are unaware, it’s the latest title from Davey Wreden, the guy who made The Stanley Parable. I’m mostly writing this to offload my thoughts, as this made me think quite a bit, although it can probably be a review. Keep in mind, t’s incredibly difficult to explain what’s going on without spoiling it. That said, I have a bit of meta discussion beforehand, so I’ll warn you off before the spoilers begin.

Update 03/10/2015: A friend of mine remarked that I did not clearly state my reasons for disliking Konami. I have updated the article below.

This month saw the release of the highly anticipated Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, usually known as MGSV. The game received glowing reviews accross the boardw, ith a metascore of 93 at the time of writing, was somewhat divisive amongst the existing fan base, and overall looks like a somewhat pleasant if unpolished fuck fest.

Also in the news was the rather rocky end of the development cycle, which saw Kojima Productions, MGSV’s developer and series creator Hideo Kojima’s studio get closed by parent company Konami. Kojima himself got axed, and Konami wants to move away from AAA games in general, with the Pro Evolution Soccer series being the last property in that category of games. Kojima has joked several times that every MGS game in the series was the last, but now with those events, it really seems it’s gonna be the end of it, for real this time. And this is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but a whimper.

I didn’t play MGSV, and I don’t plan to play it. But my reasons for doing so might surprise you.

Sometimes, I encounter things that I want to talk about. Things that require more words that a tweet would allow, but not as much to warrant a full “On the subject of” article. And I feel that OTSO’s definition has been stretched enough already, since we’re at a point where even meta articles and game reviews bear the OTSO mark.

I’ve decided to clean things up. OTSO will remain as the somewhat longer, slightly in depth, released-on-the-last-monday article of this blogs, and for subjects that require more than 140 characters, I have decided to launch a new category: quick shots. No real schedule for those: they’ll come out when I need to talk about something. Hell, it might even be my only one, even though I doubt it. Just a note: here, “quick” doesn’t mean “quick read”, it means “quickly written”, so there might be a few more flaws than normal

For my first subject, let’s talk about something that’s floating around Twitter right now: some people are claiming that Samus Aran, of Metroid fame, is a trans woman.

So, a while back I decided to commit to a fixed release date: the last monday of every month. While it became official then, it was mostly a confirmation of a trend that started with this blog’s “revival” back in november 2014: to release one article near the end of each month. “The last monday” simply felt like an adequate point.

So far it has worked pretty well, except right now. Here I am, on the last monday of August, with nothing to write about. I was seriously thinking about skipping this one, but I like having an actual work ethic now, so that couldn’t do.

So I figured I could write about writing itself.