Arranger caught my eye a few months ago when I saw a gameplay trailer and I knew it was going to be something worth playing. Consider this: classic tile based movement, but all the tiles ahead and behind you move along with you. It released today and I am already loving it (being 3.5hrs into playing it). The puzzle dynamics are excellent and some of them evoke a nostalgic sense for puzzles from Chip's Challenge which I grew up playing.

It's available on Steam, Epic, Playstation, and Switch right now if you want to check it out.

Apparently Capcom posted a simple statement and photo on X (formerly Twitter) last week noting the 25th anniversary of the original Dino Crisis game being released. Without a doubt, Dino Crisis is one of my all-time favorite games and it represents, to me, an excellent example of linear story telling with interesting gameplay, puzzles, and ambience. In particular, I love the dynamic camera work that appears in the game and the fully 3D environments that separated it from the similar Resident Evil games at the time.

While I will be expecting nothing from this I do share the hope it'll be revived some day. I also hope and recommend you, dear reader, look it up and either play it (on your original consoles or through emulation) or watch a full playthrough to see what it's like.

I grew up gaining a lot of music through CDs primarily and I've long since relied on rips of those old albums for continuing to listen to that music. One downside of that is I've missed out on certain "bonus" tracks until I go back and find digital versions of these albums for one reason or another. Just this past weekend I stumbled on the bonus track "No Roads Left" for Linkin Park's "Minutes to Midnight" album (2007). I've never heard this track even though I've heard this album hundreds of times before. The track is a wonder, especially the crescendo at 50s. If you haven't listened to this album before (or in a while) then I recommend a full listen through with this at the end.

Happy Juneteenth! Since today is a day off for most of you in the states, here's some perfectly useless but lovely insight for you. The folks at Time Extension dug into some research to track down who (possibly, not definitively) the designer was of the famous "bacon strips" logo which Konami used as their primary logo. If you're a fan of old arcade games or even hits like Metal Gear Solid, you'll recognize the logo.

One thing I have only recently discovered is a delightful mode of play inside some Call of Duty games called "Prop Hunt". Why is it so delightful? One team plays as "hunters" with weapons (as usual) and the other team plays as... inanimate props from the level they're playing in. Props, as they're called, can move, jump, deploy decoys of themselves, and change to new (randomized) props all while being hunted. Hunters have to keep a keen eye out for things seemingly out of place and take out the props before time runs out. It's one of those games that feels wholesome and utterly my style.

If you'd like to see what this looks like, then there are a few YouTubers/streamers like OldTime101 who play and post examples regularly.