Flattened Ears

I recently turned 23 and my younger sibling bought me a Nintendo Labo VR kit for my switch, so I spent most of today putting that together and messing around with it and figured I might as well make a post out of it. First of all, I was surprised by how intensive the building process really is. A lot of these builds are actually really complex, involving multiple folded parts that all nest into each other in particular ways, and the result is often a surprisingly weighty-feeling peripheral for being made out of literally folded cardboard. That's another thing, actually, there's a crazy amount of physical feedback here in comparison to more traditional VR which just uses rumble controllers or what have you. These peripherals feel solid in your hands and have moving buttons and parts that really sell the action being performed. The blaster is a particular standout, which uses loose internal parts and rubber bands to allow the player to actually cock it like a shotgun, placing o...

So yesterday I finished 3D Realms' recent Build Engine shooter Ion Fury (previously Ion Maiden, copyright law can eat my ass) and man is it fucking wild that this game exists. We've been living through a bit of a shooter renaissance lately, what with your DOOM and your DUSK and your AMID EVIL and various other games with all-caps titles, and between them we're kind of running the gamut of full 3D, from early low-poly stuff to modern AAA and everything in between. Ion Fury takes a slightly different approach seeing as it's, as mentioned before, built in the Build Engine, by absolute madmen. It's ridiculous, the size and scope of levels that are achieved in this over 20 year old engine, not to mention several standout gimmicks and setpieces that make it behave in ways it was absolutely never meant to. I can't overstate how much of a technical achievement it is to get the build engine to look and act like this, without utterly falling apart in the process. Mind y...

Despite the name there's not really a massive amount of nukage in this level, the wavy green texture only cropping up surrounding a switch that opens a secret, under a walkway in a room toward the end of the level, and in a small pool around another secret, which disappears when you hit a switch. What it does have, though, it two new weapons to be nabbed by eagle-eyed players; first, find a pretty well-telegraphed secret door (it's got a different texture than the surrounding wall) to open up a window and grab the chaingun from outside. Later in the level, shoot an unmarked section of wall in the dark computer maze to find the chainsaw. These weapons make a fun pair, both functioning as a wait to spit out a near-continuous stream of damage at far and close range, respectively. And you'll want to nab both of them, because this level really lays the low-tier enemies on thick. The shotgun is a great general workhouse for small group of low-to-mid-tier enemies, but when you...

One of these days I'll probably write up something taking a deeper look at Fenoxo's individual pornographic text adventures and possibly comparing them, but for the moment I'd like to spotlight his work in general, particularly Corruption of Champions 1 and Trials in Tainted Space, as the two that I'm most familiar with. These pieces are interesting not for their specific handling of any individual fetish, but rather the breadth of tastes they cater to, each featuring fairly hefty character customization systems (down to allowing the player to take perks in anal elasticity and semen production and such) and a wide array of horrifying and/or arousing situations for the player to land themselves in. Additionally they feature surprisingly in-depth system by which various aspects of the player's character can be changed over time; get fucked by something a bit bigger than you can easily accommodate, and you'll find your anus stretching over time. Eat certain types...