I used to be very patientgamer, but my patience model changed after finding again and again that buying late meant devs had wholly moved on from a game by the time I got it, and would hardly ever do basic needed fixes, things that needed to have been talked about earlier in the project. I also noticed how some early access sales would take years for the price to go up and then back down again for what amounted to only a few dollars of savings. Savings that, as I watch games I’m interested in fail in obscurity over and over, I don’t feel quite right about strictly withholding from the few devs taking chances on such projects for me, on top of not being around to try and help the project deliver a better game to players.

So, now I do buy some games in early access or even newly released, where I can poke the dev while they are still around, and my patience includes waiting for games to get through those after-buying growing pains instead of just waiting for them to drop into the discount bins, mostly forgotten by their devs and players both.

I’m still generally more strictly price-patient on most anything larger scale, both by devs and by audience.

Week 1

• You’ll Never Find Me 2023
• I am Not a Serial Killer 2016
• Ghost Mansion 2021 KOR (rewatch)
• Bad CGI Gator 2023
• Strange Darling 2024
• Terrifier 2017
• Hostile Dimensions 2024
• V/H/S/Beyond 2024
• It’s What’s Inside 2024
• The Corpse Washer 2024 IND
• Jakob’s Wife 2021
• Beezel 2024
• Things Will be Different 2024
• Killer Condom 1996 GER

Week 2

• A Wounded Fawn 2022
• Qorin 2022 IND
• Indigo 2023 IND
• Blink Twice 2024
• Delirium: Photo of Gioia 1987 ITA
• Luz 2018 GER
• Girl on the Third Floor 2019
• Clawfoot 2023
• Post Mortem 2020 HUN
• Terrifier 2 2022
• Phantoms 1998
• It Lives Inside 2023
• Green Room 2015
• The Radleys 2024
• Temurun 2024 IND
• The Sacrifice Game 2023
• Open 24 Hours 2018
• Lavalantula 2015

Thoughts

You’ll Never Find Me, A Wounded Fawn, Post Mortem, and Beezel were unexpected finds. It’s What’s Inside was expected to be good, and was still quite fun. Luz… was notably weird but probably workable. We’ll keep that around.

Strange Darling was awful. Big disappointment there, based on talk. We didn’t expect much from VHS Beyond, especially with the alien theme, but one always hopes for anthologies to pull some surprises. Like most of VHS 2 and on, at least it wasn’t worse.

My partner and I found Beezel better than we were expecting based on reviews, so that was nice.

It’s What’s Inside was a lot of fun.

Aberrance says 2022 or 2024, so maybe it’s new somewhere. It was a decent twisty horror attempt from Mongolia, so if you like the off the beaten path, check it out.

but it is never too early to get on the radar

Eh… We have tons of movies we can actually see, and heaps of movies we can see very soon (especially as we enter October). Movies we cannot see for a long and indeterminate time don’t do any good. When hype pushes too far ahead, it’s just waiting and distraction from things that actually are relevant. It’s just more noise we need to filter through, and there’s so much noise.

The Demon Disorder has some fun bits, though it requires When Evil Lurks levels of tolerance for nonsensical authorial hand puppeteering. Once you get past that characters just can’t do anything that makes sense, it’s a trip.

Too early for news about this, unless you’re going to theaters in Taiwan.

It was enjoyable, but that review is waaaaay overselling it. Especially as comedy.

If you want a Korean horror comedy, try Night of the Undead (2020), but don’t go in expecting zombies ;) Horror Stories 2 (2013) also had a pretty fun hor-com for one of its segments.

Yeah, but I mean, we’re over 40 now, plus some shows. Such a long and random list is not really useful to anyone. Here’s some season-so-far notables instead:

• Cuckoo 2024
• The Retreat 2020
• Subject 2022
• All My Friends Are Dead 2021 POL
• The Vourdalak 2023 FRE
• The Closet 2020 KOR
• Deleter 2023 PHI
• Home for Rent 2023 THA
• Contorted (The Contorted House) 2022 KOR
• Oddity 2024
• Heilstatten: Haunted Hospital 2018
• Velvet Buzzsaw 2019
• Exhuma 2024 KOR
• Satanic Hispanics 2022 MEX
• Dream Scenario 2023
• Horror Stories 2 2013 KOR
• #ChadGetstheAxe 2023

In a world where no one speaks

Another one? Eesh, these are always such painfully contrived and badly done conceits.

We start our horrorfest movie plowing in mid August, so the September list is quite long already. Way too many for a post per movie :(

Probably Ouija: Origin of Evil. Others we’d note in particular:

• Oculus 2014
• Dark Skies 2013
• The Veil 2016
• The Lords of Salem 2013
• The Hunt 2020
• M3GAN 2023
• Jessabelle 2014
• Dashcam 2022

Probably Ouija: Origin of Evil. Others we’d note in particular:

• Oculus 2014
• Dark Skies 2013
• The Veil 2016
• The Lords of Salem 2013
• The Hunt 2020
• M3GAN 2023
• Jessabelle 2014
• Dashcam 2022

Here’s a couple of lists for people to use:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Blumhouse_Productions_projects
• https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/all-blumhouse-horror-movies-ranked/

We paid attention to films that paved the way for the genre and for filmmaking as a whole, as well as to modern classics that bring something new and brilliant to the canon today.

Right there is the end of my interest. As soon as it starts being about what someone considers important rather than actually great, it’s a list for history and not for utility or sharing what’s good in the present. I really wish people looking for quality and greatness weren’t always getting directed to historical footnotes, and nostalgia.

Get a controller with underside buttons. I also consider stick-clicks an abomination, but it’s great now that there are under-buttons we can hard-remap to L3 and R3.

8BitDo Ultimate Bluetooth controller has some awful ergonomics on several things, but the underbuttons are excellent examples.

The slightly more bulbous wings on the 360 controller actually do a lot for ergonomics, but it’s very hand-sized based. For me, the 360 is almost perfect in how the wings tuck into my palms. With the controller about 6 or so inches in front of me, my arms are at a natural angle with wrists straight and the controller is securely held without even a finger on it, and I can press any button without even having to brace it. Take even a little of those wings away, and that gets lost, and edges instead of the smooth roundness get annoying. My partner on the other hand, would need a smaller controller to get that same feel or to cross-thumb the dpad as easily as I do. As much as I originally preferred the symmetry of the playstation layout, I have to give the nod to the xbox layout for being able to dpad with the right thumb.

We desperately need controller makers to stop acting like controllers are one size fits all, when that’s not even close to true.

Jeez, the laziness of reviewing it based just on the store page. It’s been in early access for like five years, getting better every update, and not one person there can even bother to actually play the game they recommend to others?

Cactus is probably the single best mastery/arcade style twin-stick shooter out there. Don’t let the cute looks fool you, while this game is solid to just enjoy, the chaining and level design offer great challenge if you want it, and the way each character changes both the basic play and the way you chain a level show a just fantastic design level.

It usually goes $5 in sales, but it’s still crazy we can get games that good for so little.