Dark Souls: Not As Hard As You Think

Pfft. Eaaaaaasy.

So, you've heard about Dark Souls I assume? The spiritual successor to the PS3 sleeper-hit Demon's Souls (a game I've started twice and never finished, for shame), Dark Souls is most well known for being a brutal gauntlet that redefines the human perception of suffering. Your own knowledge of it may start and end at "You die. Lots." and, to a degree, that is pretty accurate. Death is everywhere in this game and if you fuck up, which you will, it will greet you more enthusiastically than a Labrador on ecstasy.

"Sir, is that your dog frantically trying to have sex with a pond?"
"Yes. Yes it is."

As such, when I leapt into the grimy, utterly depressing world of these now 3 games, I was expecting the worst. Demon's Souls took me by the throat and made me eat it. Have you ever seen a video game force a man to eat his own throat?! No, I thought not. That was the level of awful fuckery I was expecting. And granted, the first half of Dark Souls is pretty darn hard, but frankly, by the time the credits rolled, I was underwhelmed by the overall difficulty of the whole affair compared to how it sounds coming from the mouths of those who champion it as an interactive trial by fire. It's tough, yes, but with perseverance and a little time anyone can crack it. The greatest number of times I had to repeat any boss was around 10, which is hardly repeating yourself ad nauseum.

Since I spent the best part of a year playing this game (and thoroughly enjoying it) I thought it best to write at least something about the experience on here. This won't be a complete review or an in depth explanation of the game, there's enough of those already, but just a few observations I've made that stick out to me as often being forgotten when this series comes up in conversation. Here we go.

Stupidity, and Only Stupidity, Begets Punishment

The most common one-word description of Dark Souls, and a description I myself have used, is "sadistic". Why do we say this about it? Is the game revelling in your misery? Does it try to make you fail as often as it can, just to watch the little helpless mouse that is your character scuttle through the maze of spears, ooze and traps again and again? 

"Hi there, I'm here for my 5 o'clock immolation...?"

All in all, "sadistic" could really be a synonym for "unfair". It makes you think that this game is setting everything up into a little domino set of moments designed to fuck you over, like the immensely popular I Wanna Be the Guy, a game specifically designed to screw with you to make you die. It's a complete and utter load of crap, though. Dark Souls does a spectacularly good job of laying everything out in front of you fair and square to then allow you to make your own mistakes. The tutorial level of the game has bad guys hiding behind doorways, so if you forgot to check your corners later on, that's all on you. Didn't think there was going to be a giant boulder rolling at you? Then how do you explain the mangled corpse and crushed tiles lying there in the light of day for anyone to see? Dark Souls is never unfair because it gives you everything you need, either by experience or environmental clues, to manoeuvre the situation correctly; like a puzzle whose solution results in you not getting your ass handed to you.

"We hope you like swinging axe blades and giants hurling boulders, cause we got you a whole castle full of 'em!
Now, question one: Why is a raven like a writing desk?"

 The two most recent occasions I can think of when I died the most suddenly and unceremoniously, together causing me a net loss in the tens of thousands of souls and a half dozen humanity (if you've no idea what I'm going on about, just roll with me here), came in two late-game areas. In one, I had just been killed by a giant flaming tree with a bug-heart and lava wings (again, just let the words wash over you like a wave) and was eager to get myself back to the fight. I sprinted out into a pool of lava, completely forgetting that I had unequipped the ring that was meant to stop me from getting burnt to a crisp by said lava so I could wear something more appropriate for the fire-bug-tree fight. Fwoosh, I died.

In the other, I'd just cleared out a cave of giant skeletons and was feeling pretty good about myself. I found a crypt that was likely full of loot and thought I could take on the three skeletons I'd spotted wandering around down there, so dropped down. Four or five more immediately sprung from the shadows and I was made into yummy adventurer sashimi before I could scream peanuts. Both of those times I was foolish and brazen, forgetting about simple aspects of the game that I'd seen a hundred times before. 

For the rest of my life I'll even kick Tupperware before opening it.

There is then, however, the few occasions when Dark Souls is most definitely unfair, which mainly comes in the form of gammy combat or slightly too tight environments. I'm calling shenanigans right now on those two god-forsaken Anor Londo archers who just...fucking sniping...nnnggghh! Them and the bloody Capra demon are single-handedly preventing me from wanting to play New Game+ right here and now.

Well, that and the entirety of New Londo, but I kind of take that as a given.

The Combat is Great and Awful in Equal Measure

I've been in a total of one fight in my life (I put the guy down in a single hit, like One Punch Pan before her was cool; true story), and so I feel like I'm well versed enough in the martial arts to comment on the quality of video game combat. The Arkham series? Spot on.

This move was actually modelled off of my own fighting style.

After the Arkham games, I would not hesitate in suggesting that Dark Souls take the silver medal when it comes to satisfying, meaty fighting. Which is very fortunate, as it is literally the only thing you do in the game: fight increasingly larger enemies, fight an even larger boss, fight other players invading your game, fight the seductive draw of the fathomless despair that engulfs your world. Initially, it looks like you've really just got the standard light/heavy-attack dealio, but then there's jump attacks, parry/riposte, running attacks, back-stabs, drop attacks, two-handing weapons; and that's without even going into the sundry weapon types which each act and react differently.

The depth to the combat system is splendidly deceptive, particularly as the game never properly introduces it to you, leaving you to find it all out for yourself. There's something very rewarding about discovering that your spear, when held in two hands, inflicts two hit-boxes of damage, or becoming particularly adept with a certain combination of stabby things all on your own. And with the subtle ways in which different equipment react with each other, you're always changing up the way you play; well to a certain extent...

Here we see the famous "Run around naked with a halberd and hope for the best" method.

You see, even with all this delicately-balanced guff going on, fights all usually end up going the same way: block, wait for opening, attack, retreat, repeat. When applying that to almost every boss fight in the game, the "wait for opening bit" is pretty much synonymous with "run around in circles and shove your head up its arse". As for other players, it becomes a matter of who has a bigger stamina bar or, alternatively, resorts to pyromancy first; which is, frankly, a dick move.

"Not cool, mate."

Oh yes, and then there's those moments when the game simply decides it doesn't like you. You see the whole entry above this one about Dark Souls generally being fair and playing by its own rules? Sometimes the enemies don't get that message, and attacks you've clearly dodged will connect, or others will simply decide that walls and other barriers don't count for them (Gwyndolin, I'm looking at you...). It doesn't sound like much, but tell that to the massive boulder-rolling guy who somehow managed to Katamari me up after I was behind him, taking the remainder of my health (and 10'000 souls) with him. Bastard...

No-One Talks About the View

Well, OK. Not entirely true. In-game, it's impossible to go within fifty paces of a sprawling, sun-drenched vista without getting drowned in a hundred "Praise the Sun!" and "Gorgeous view" messages from other players.

"Heh, giant lady boobs."

But back in the real world, people are far too busy discussing what a grammatical change in an item description in the latest update means for the extended lore (see below) to remember that these games could sell themselves on their looks alone. Yes, sometimes the backgrounds look like they wouldn't be out of place in a cheap Dreamcast game, but that's an exception to the rule, and the general environment building and enemy design is phenomenal! I actually had a genuine stop and "Woah..." moment (teensy spoiler alert) upon reaching the Kiln of the First Flame, the game's final area, just due to the brilliant, ash-soaked beauty of what would soon be the setting for an epic final showdown. It was atmosphere at it's very best.

It's not often that games manage that real awe factor.

I've heard that Dark Souls 2 really lets it go on the interesting boss design front, but with this one there were multiple occasions where my first death at the hands of some of these brutes was entirely down to me being dumb-struck at how cool they looked (the big guy up top being a prime example). 

"Goodness, you have wonderful complexion! Do you exfoli-auuuughaeorhppp..."

The Story Doesn't Matter

Die hard Dark Souls fans just love their lore. They get all up in scouring the minutiae of every item to find out what relation giant spider lady was to this that and the next thing. Yes, the story is exceptionally esoteric and open to a multitude of interpretations, as well as extremely engaging and well put together if you'd like to put the time into it (which I, and the some 20 wiki tabs I had open for quite some time, did), but it's really not necessary. Yes, Seath the Scaleless up there may have betrayed all of the other dragons and become the creator of magic as we know it in this world, but to me he's just the naked lizard dude who killed me one time before I got to stab him to death in his weird wriggling dick-snake legs. But that's fine, because these games boil down to being very fancily dressed boss-rushes, and the story is just another treat for those who want it. 

Who needs weapons made from the tails of felled dragons when you could have menu screens instead.

You're not missing out on anything by not bothering to go back to that area you only visited that one time to speak to someone you had no idea was even going to be there, and it's mental that anyone could suggest that. Enjoy the game for yourself the first time around (you'll still be able to complete it even if you miss a few quests or items), and if you liked it, go back with the wiki open and scour every inch to your heart's content.

All in all, Dark Souls has been a lesson to me in taking the consensus on something with a pinch of salt. The expectation of gruelling difficulty in my head couldn't possibly have been lived up to, which marred my enjoyment of the still very hard and possibly best designed late areas of the game, and often I found myself swamped in research trying to understand little breadcrumbs of lore so I could find every secret or just learn more about the world. That's partially a character flaw on my part and also endemic of the community that surrounds these games. People want you to get as much as you can out of what could otherwise be a very sparse experience, which is admirable, but we all need to realise that it's OK to miss a few things or not understand what the hell is going on, because in the end you just killed a giant flaming centipede and all you want to do is savour the moment.

I love you, Dark Souls, you imperfect beauty, you.

4 Games That Have Grabbed Me and Won't Let Go

(This post was originally meant to have been finished two weeks ago; it is entirely the fault of the games I was trying to review that it has taken so long. That be irony that.)

Hello readers. I have something very important to speak to you about for a moment; a dark shadow that hangs over the heads of upwards of 40% of the world's population, costing the country billions of dollars/pounds/kroner/shrunken heads a year. I am of course talking about the horror that is addiction.

That's a lot of shrunken heads.

Well, OK, truth is I had the exams for my Neuropharmacology course (yeah, sounds pretty smart, right?) last week and I feel bad for not posting something what with the impending doom of 8 timed essays in 3 days having been looming ever nearer. As the course is all about drugs, the brain and, in particular, addiction, it got me thinking about my gaming habits. No, I'm not mainlining GTA's into my eyeballs and going on murder sprees or whatever certain news outlets would love to have happen, but I've certainly noticed a glacial change in my gaming habits over the years.

"DEAR GOD, NO! CHANGE IS COMING!" - A Daily Mail writer, presumably

Gone are the days when I would charge through Metal Gear Solid three times in 24 hours (yes, I did that with Guns of the Patriots; on release day no less) or devour Oblivion like a hungry orphan at an all-you-can eat buffet. It feels like in recent times my video game diet has moved away from large, reasonably widely dispersed moments of game-binging and turned to a more consistent, bite-sized affair. I've gravitated towards shorter, one-more-go styles of games like the exceptional Invisible Inc. or Super Meat Boy. On an unrelated note, they also seem to have followed the pattern of becoming increasingly brutally difficult; I blame the corrupting influence of Demon's/Dark Souls absolutely and entirely.

"Remember when you used to have fun playing games?" said the giant dragon before
murder-fucking me with fire.

This switch between having set periods of time for a good old fashioned game to a persistent, transient presence of them is fascinating to me. Is it as a result of a change in my gaming habits to fit around a more...*shudder*...adult living schedule, where I only have small periods of downtime between work, or is it simply mimicking the recent changes in the games industry that have allowed indie developers to unleash their little bundles of addictive hell onto the unsuspecting masses? I dunno.

But the point is that I've recently found myself irreversibly attached to a handful of games like oxymorphazone to an opioid receptor (sorry! It won't get out of my head!). Now, my ongoing obsession with FTL is well documented and nothing new, so that doesn't count, but here's five other games that, due to a perfect mix of pick-up-and-playness, difficulty or just splendid charm, I will likely fail my exams as a result of.

1 - Human Resource Machine - Tomorrow Corporation (PC)

I don't understand computers. Digital things in general are on par with drawing a pentagram on the ground and summoning Baphomet as far as I'm concerned. How someone can write down a bunch of numbers and words and make a program or game is utterly beyond my comprehension; so of course I got this game that's all about learning how to code, go figure.

The basic gist is to get objects from the inbox to the outbox of a floor in a big office building using your adorable little worker drone. Input commands and away she/he goes, picking up little blocks and putting them down. If you've played Tomorrow Corporation's other games (World of Goo, Little Inferno) you'll be glad to know that their trademark weird cuteness is back in bucketloads.

Look at her go, performing mindless data entry!

Things start out easy enough, with you having to sort out zeros or add two numbers together, but very quickly you'll be tasked with multiplications, boolean logic algorithms and other concepts that would be straight up mind-numbing in any other context. Instead, they're adorable and moreish. The sensation of creating and running a working sequence for the first time is borderline orgasmic, and forms that basis of the game's lasting appeal. That feeling of success, of having started with nothing and used the tools at your disposal to work out how to sort numbers in the order of the Fibonacci sequence all on your own, mmft...

Then come the optimisation challenges...

"We heard you were a completionist, so we made you this." - Some sadistic bastard at Tomorrow Corporation

These are optional (I repeat, optional) challenges that test your programming mettle by asking you to complete levels using a limited number of commands or in as few steps as possible. This shit is my kryptonite (see BitTrip below), because it's essentially the game goading you into doing stupid challenges by saying "Go on, bet you can't do this," and I get got by it every bloody time. In the case of this game, it usually means you sit for three hours trying in vain to work out how to shave one extra command off your sequence (see the infuriating photo above); it is agonisingly amazing, and just compounds that sense of achievement when you finally get it. If you're a puzzle fan, or like doing maths for fun (you psycho) then have a bash at this.

Soon you too will learn the horror of zero terminated sums.

2 - Crypt of the Necrodancer - Brace Yourself Games (PC)

Take a roguelike, give it even more adorably cartoon-pixely good looks than your average indie game (that's a tall ask as it is) and then make it Dance Pad compatible. Congratulations, you've just made yourself all of the money ever, because your game is genius. Welcome to the spectacularly vibrant, and surprisingly challenging world of Crypt of the Necrodancer.

Stop to admire the gorgeous design and you will die. It's a cruel world like that.

Jargon time: Crypt of the Necrodancer is a procedurally-generated rhythm-action dungeon-crawler rogue-like hyphen-fest of exploding pixels, shiny loot and red dragons. Those guys can go die.

Fucking twinkle-toes bastard.

Every enemy has a particular pattern of dancing around the level and attacking you, it's your job to work out how to skip around them and deliver righteous funky chip-tune justice without getting knocked off beat. It's a brilliant mix of fast-paced and strategic gameplay that pretty much makes every death entirely your own fault; but like hell you care, cause it's fast, satisfying, and the merchant is an opera singer.

Everything about this game is magical.

Longevity comes from unlocking new characters with unique abilities and buying stronger items by collecting diamonds during each run; the difficulty is that you don't get to keep your diamonds between runs, and to progress you have to complete each of the 4 areas (with an awesome musical boss at the end of each) without dying. Necrodancer asks a lot of you, but makes the whole experience so rich and enjoyable that dying hardly even feels like a failure. Go buy this game.

3 - BitTrip presents... Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien - Gaijin Games (PC)

Bit Trip Runner 2 is a tour de force in perfect game balance: the levels are challengingly long but never too lengthy, the difficulty curve is so gradual (thanks to three expertly tiered difficulty settings) that it might as well be flat, and as a result of these two things, every failure is all on you, buddy. I've not played such a wonderfully hard yet fair game since...I dunno, chess? You hit that flying robot? Well that's cause you jumped instead of ducked. You didn't kick that barrier down because you were too busy jumping on trampolines and blocking Pong pellets while ducking? GROW MORE FINGERS THEN, YA WUSS.

The game isn't unfair, you just haven't developed enough carpal tunnel to unlock the next level yet.

It all comes down to muscle memory really, so if you're not a fan of repeating the same 40-120 second segment of a game, gaining a couple of seconds closer to the finish line each time then you should probably steer clear of Bit Trip. But, once again, like Crypt of the Necrodancer and to a lesser extent Human Resource Machine before it, it's that sense of accomplishment when you finally complete the level you've been stuck on for the past two days that makes this game like digital crack. All of a sudden you go from a bumbling mess of fingers that can't get past the first bloody obstacle to fucking video game Neo, blasting your way through like it ain't no ting. And as is customary, if collecting every piece of gold and getting a bullseye on every level on each of the three difficulties isn't enough for you, then you can up the challenge further by skipping over the mid-level checkpoints for an extra point bonus. There's absolutely nothing to gain from this other than the smug satisfaction of knowing that you didn't need help from no gherkin/burger-faced man.

Fish-people, I'll allow.

All this delicious challenge, along with an onslaught of vibrant, mildly unsettling cartoon visuals, makes this game straight up impossible to stop playing. Here's a few choice live mid-game quotes from my dear lady-friend, Naomi, who, after being introduced to Bit Trip, has since stopped showering and only communicates via peppy chip tune chirps and wails of despair:

On losing a level the 48th time: "NNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!"

On losing a level the 49th time: "Flip!"

On spotting Slenderman: "........nope."

The background goings on in this game can get pretty freaky.

On finally winning the level: "OK, just another few levels."

On realising she missed a single piece of gold in the level: "I hate this game."

Bit Trip Runner 2 is wonderful.

4 - Pokemon Picross - Jupiter Corp. (3DS)

Nintendo is evil. Straight up satanic; and Pokemon Picross is their Necronomicon. This game is the culmination of everything awful about both the franchise it draws inspiration from and the company that allowed this monstrosity to occur. What's so awful about this game? It's repetitive, heavy on the hand-holding, and full of more pay-walls than there are circles in hell. But worst of all I CAN'T STOP PLAYING IT!

I see those god-forsaken little dots in my nightmares.

Pokemon Picross is exceptionally simple. You start with an empty grid (see above) and have to fill it in with either little black dots or crosses according to the numbered clues around the outside of the grid. That's it. The game adds a Pokemony element by making each puzzle a Pokemon that you "catch" after competing it, providing you with special abilities depending on the type of the Pokemon in question. For example, electric-type Pokemon slow down the puzzle timer, fire-type fill in a cross of rows and columns at the beginning of the puzzle; all stuff designed to help you finish the puzzle in the fastest time possible or within the parameters of the individual puzzle "Missions", where you can earn Picrites. That's right, I just mentioned a weird-sounding in-game currency; oh, did I omit to say that this is a free-to-play game?

Say hello to my little friends...

Yes, it's true that you can grind the game without having to pay for Picrites, as there are daily challenges that net you 10ish Picrites a day, but Pokemon Picross doesn't mess around when it comes to asking for your hard earned cubes. Here's but a few things that you have to pay for with Picrites:
- Entry to every new area of the game (each containing approx. 8-10 puzzles)
- Buying a new pencil to unlock Mega-evolution levels
- Buying a different pencil to unlock hard versions of all your completed puzzles
- Upgrading the number of available party slots for Pokemon skills
- Upgrading your energy bar
- Instantly refilling your energy bar when it runs out

You will be seeing a lot of this screen.
It's not fucken magic when you need to shell out the bloody things to cross the road.

Then there's the added stuff like timed legendary Pokemon; you come across one every 2 areas or so, but they only turn up one at a time. If you move on too quickly, the game will automatically spawn the legendary in the next locked area (obviously to encourage you to spend some ching-ching) so you have to remember to move yourself back to previous areas before waiting so you can mop up the legendaries you may have missed. Oo, and I've not even got round to mentioning missions and Alt world properly yet.

These are missions.

As you can see, missions are obviously a major source of Picrite revenue and there are 3-4 per level. When I discovered that you could use your hard-earned Picrites to unlock an Alt area with harder puzzles of everything you've already unlocked, I naively thought "Hooray! Twice as many Picrites per area!" But no. All of the Alt world mission give you absolutely fuck all for completing them. 80 Picrites down, you get a good old handful of sand in your face. Fuck you, Nintendo.

At least I got exactly the same puzzles again, but with slightly different clues. Woo!

And yet, and yet. Even though you're limited to playing in 30 minute stints, everything has a countdown timer, and the game is actively trying to fuck you and your money over at every turn, I love this game. I'm happy to play the same levels over and over again cause they're darned good fun, and you can keep trying to beat your last time. This is actually the first ever free to play game that I've actually put real money into, and what with it being a genuinely good and fun game, I don't mind one bit. Give Pokemon Picross a bash. If it's not your thing, no sweat; if it is then you've found yourself a whole new world of great, cheap puzzling that'll keep you coming back for more. Plus, there's like 6 normal Picross games on the Nintendo Store for like 3 quid a piece.

I Bought A SNES: How To Handle Stress Expensively

There is a perfectly good reason why I haven't been posting much this month. That reason is exams. Dear god. Exams.

They're like a really boring Saw trap that you volunteer to do.

I handle exams very poorly at the best of times (usually with the crying and the binge eating), but this year's lot are different to my usual medical school fare what with me studying an inter-collated degree (a fancy name for cheating a second diploma out of one more year of work). Poof goes the multiple choice questions and here comes the essay train, derailing itself into your skull at 120 words a minute. As such, I upped my exam stressing game with daily frivolous purchases. On the lead up to the exam week, these included a couple of Professor Layton games. Then the rest of them.

Professor Layton is a gateway drug.

Two days before Exam 0, I was starting to feel the burn. Cold sweats, coughing up blood... Wait, no, that's TB. Cold sweats, wishing I had TB... So, seeing as I'd recently got New Super Mario Bros. earlier the week before and one of my Wii controllers was gubbed to fuckery, I hopped back on eBay to buy some cheap Chinese knock-offs. No news as to whether they actually work yet.

I have not learned from that time I bought Gamecube controllers that only let you turn left.
I completed Ocarina of Time with those bastards.

So, naturally, on exam day, after 4 hours of god-awful essay questions and writing that made worse use of the Oxford comma and unnecessary conjunctions than this very sentence, I needed more things. So I bought a SNES.

Quite a lot of SNES.

The lady I bought it off on eBay was lovely, and every game even came packed individually in bubblewrap like dozens of poppy Christmas presents! Also, if you read my recent post on MyRetroGameBox, you know how much of a sucker I am when it comes to the adorable quirks of second hand games. The box for (one of my two copies of) Mario Kart has evidently been subjected to the beautifully simplistic humour of a 7 year old.

Princess Peach has been subbed out for Frida Kahlo.

All in all it seems like studying is a very expensive pastime; I would not recommend it. Although the residual effects are pretty sweet. Actual articles will occur as of next week, my little snookums. <3

Listen to more Podcasts

2016 is going to be the year of podcasts, for me anyway. I started to get into them around the end of last year when I caved and finally listened to the much talked about Serial (which I'll talk about in more depth later). My biggest issue with podcasts was mainly "where am I going to find the time to listen to them/what am I going to do whilst listening to them?" because I can't just sit in a chair staring at the wall whilst listening to them, I needed to be doing something that I could just slip into autopilot for. I couldn't exactly listen to them whilst reading or writing or anything to that effect, so I started listening during the, for a lack of better words, obvious times. Like when I'm on the bus going to work or university, or walking to the shops. Then I started listening when I was cooking dinner, which I when I noticed a change in my behaviour.

The more invested I got in whatever podcast I was listening to, the more I wanted to listen to them, obviously. So I started cooking more complex meals that would take longer to prepare so I could listen to a podcast, or I'd deep clean the flat (which is kind of difficult considering my new flat is never messy, what a strange complaint), or I'd walk somewhere rather than taking the bus. Basically, podcasts make you skinny and productive. Who knew? Well, I say productive, they're also a fabulous means of procrastination.

So I thought I'd share with you a collection of my favourite podcasts, and hopefully you'll enjoy them! These podcasts are all free to listen to, so you can be broke yet entertained.

Serial

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Serial is a non-fiction podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig, whose voice is like a silky flowing river of chocolate. It had its début in October of 2014, with the first season investigating the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, an eighteen year old high school student. Lee's ex-boyfriend, Adnan Masud Syed, was arrested and charged with first degree murder. But, did he do it? Well, that's what Serial tries to find out. Interviewing the people involved, going over case files, taped recordings of police interrogations, trying to replicate various scenarios to test their credibility etc. Serial is a masterclass in storytelling, and was credited as "an audio game changer" after winning a Peabody award in 2015.

Season two has just begun as well, with, at this point, four episodes released so far, telling the story of Bowe Bergdahl, an American solider held hostage by the Taliban for five years, who was then arrested for desertion following his rescue. 

Serial is engaging, it's clever, it's sometimes difficult to listen to and it's something that you can't afford to miss; and the music is absolutely fab. 

It's available to listen to:

On its website.

On iTunes.

On Soundcloud.

Criminal

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Criminal is similar to Serial, but instead of a whole season focusing on a single story, each of the episodes are stand alone stories. Hosted by Phoebe Judge, Criminal is a show about, well, you guessed it: crime. It ranges from people who have done wrong, been wronged, or have been caught somewhere in the grey moral area. Over the course of their show, they have had many characters. There’s the man tasked with trying to break up a Venus flytrap crime ring, a journalist who befriended a female serial killer, a mother-daughter coroner team and another man whose Good Samaritan turned out to be a blackmailer. It's like a bite-sized Serial, with half hour episodes instead of hour long episodes, and it's stand-alone structure. But despite my continuous comparisons to Serial, Criminal is a show in its own right, and equally brilliant in it's own way.

Criminal is available to listen to:

On its website.

On iTunes.

On Soundcloud.

This American Life

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This American Life  is a weekly, hour long radio show hosted by Ira Glass. Each week they tackle a different theme or topic, such as regrets, changes in status, propaganda etc. and is usually presented in a three act format. Primarily, it functions as a journalistic non-fiction program, but it also features essays, memoirs, field recordings, short fiction, and found footage. The first episode aired in 1995, so the archive of episodes is absolutely huge, so I'm not going to pretend to have listened to them all. It's an incredibly intelligent, insightful, sometimes emotional, often funny and definitely a great listen.

It's available to listen to:

On its website. 

On iTunes.

On Soundcloud.

Limetown

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The first fiction podcast on this list, Limetown is a six episode podcast about an experimental town called Limetown, whose inhabitants all disappeared overnight. Journalist Lia Haddock investigates this event, with harrowing results. I don't want to go into too much depth on this one, for the sake of spoilers and such. Some of the voice acting can be a little clunky, but for the most part it's incredible, especially a particularly horrifying 911 call, which just really gets to me for some reason. The story is really well put together and really entertaining.

It's available to listen to:

On its website.

On iTunes.

On Soundcloud.

Not Too Deep

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Not too Deep  is a part audio, part visual podcast hosted by youtube personality Grace Helbig. These past few podcasts that I've recommend, however brilliant they may be, might be a bit heavy to listen to every single day. Not too Deep provides that refreshing break of undiluted silliness, with questions like "who would you most like to throw cold spaghetti at?" and "worst pants shitting story in three words". All of her guests are youtubers, however it isn't exactly necessary for you to be a fan of the people she interviews in order to enjoy it - a lot of the people she interviews I haven't heard of, or don't watch on youtube, but it makes for enjoyable listening nonetheless, because what they talk about is usually so nonsensical, it has nothing really to do with their career on youtube, so don't be put off by that. Like I said earlier, it's part visual as well, as Helbig and her guests film a challenge video (usually making fun of whatever popular challenge video is making the youtube rounds) before recording the audio part. It's funny, self aware and very charming.

It's available on:

On its website.

On iTunes.

On Soundcloud.

On Youtube. 

Ear Biscuits

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Following down the youtube path, Ear Biscuits is a (purely audio) show from youtube duo Rhett and Link. I don't actually watch Rhett and Link on youtube, but I've found their podcast to be a really interesting listen, and them to be really great interviewers. All of their guests are youtubers as well, but that's where the similarities with Not too Deep end, as Rhett and Link, well, they're wanting to get deep. So that means that maybe you do need to be familiar with their guests before listening, unless you just like listening to people talk about their lives. But as a fan of a lot of the youtube personalities that they've interviewed, like Grace Helbig, Hannah Hart, Mamrie Hart, Natalie Tran etc. this podcast has proven to be really insightful about the stuff that they may not necessarily share online.

It's available to listen to:

On Soundcloud.

On iTunes.

Right, and that's all from me today! Hopefully at least one of these podcasts tickles your fancy. Happy listening!

Everything, Adequately #4 - Widescreen

I use a lot of brown in my drawings... I guess it harks back to my childhood when I would refuse to draw anything but muddy puddles. True story.

Also, I think "Space Sand" makes for a lovely, succinct description of Dune.

Last Minute Christmas Ideas: A Pet Rock

'Tis the season to be lazy. Fa la, etc. I'm afraid I'm going to be fobbing off on a real post this week, so I thought it only appropriate to help you, yes you, dear reader, fob off on your gift giving this year. Why buy someone something nice and useful when you could make them something they'd never possibly want instead? As such, I give you...a pet rock!

The gift tag says "Help, I'm trapped inside a tiny purple bag!"

OK, so I promise it's not the massive skive of a gift that I alluded to it being. I gave this to a friend of mine as a wee jokey present and made a little guide to looking after their new pet rock, so a good couple of hours of MS Paint went into this; that's plenty effort. This post, however, not so much. If you'd like to make your own pet rock, all you need is:

- A rock

- Some googly eyes

- Glue (strong stuff)

- Paper

- A printer, preferably with ink in it

Step one, you could probably work out yourself. Glue the googly eyes onto the rock. No shit. This is the worst crafting post ever; does it even deserve that difficulty rating? Eh, why not.

Difficulty - 0 (10 if you are also a rock)

Duration - Infinite (you never stop looking after a pet rock)

"I will outlive you."

Googly eyes on? Good. Now print out my little booklet. See? I've done all the work for you. Really it's you who is the slacker. For shame. FOR SHAME. 

I've shown the pages below individually, but the best way to print them is obviously paired like their pages would be so you can staple it together. Oh yeah, you need a stapler.

- Stapler

It's darned annoying that Blogger doesn't let you show separate images side by side, so I'm afraid you're going to have to exercise your scrolling finger. Other than this, I can't really think of anything else to tell you... Well, I guess, you know, have a nice Christmas and all that.

Love you.

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[So has this one]

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Scientists have narrowed Emma Stone's appeal down to either her cartoonishly huge eyeballs or her "husky 60-year old with throat cancer" voice.

Rocks don't sleep. They wait.

Other illnesses cut from the final edit:

- Limestone Disease

- Acid Rain

- Tectonic Eruption

- Earthquake

- Psybeam

Ah shit, I got into naming Pokemon moves again.

Pulitzer Prize-winning stuff, this.