I never keep up with the zeitgeist when it comes to anything in media. TV shows, movies, video games, you name it. I’ve come to accept that I will always be behind, looking at stuff years past the point of their popularity. Anyone who’s been reading my stuff for so long have probably noticed me covering things long past their prime.
And that’s okay! There’s no need to keep up with what’s current and popular unless you’re on the entertainment beat, or your friends won’t sto...
2025-07-12 21:45:35 +0000 UTC
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So back in October 2024, after covering the stuff I got at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, I had teased I was gonna write a “Some Stuff I Bought” at the end of the year to cover the stuff I got outside of that con. But then I forgot to. With good reason, though.
Since it is the middle of 2025, and I have bought more things since. So let’s do a bit of catc...
2025-06-18 19:28:03 +0000 UTC
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I. Love. Doom mods. Out of all the things I’ve written about over the years, it’s the one thing I consistently come back to writing about. What a bunch of folks have done to push the 32-year-old game engine never ceases to amaze me. This was one I wanted to write as early as last year, and I think it’s time to dig back into that.
When id software released the Doom source code around 1997, littl...
2025-05-07 16:45:33 +0000 UTC
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There seems to be a lot of hay going around about ray-tracing technology in video games. That stuff where lights reflect off of surfaces that makes it look more like real life. Probably the biggest technology arms race next to high dynamic range rendering and accurate water physics. For a modern video game, ray-tracing can be a valuable tool to make your game world feel more alive. But not so much if you’re trying to bolt on ray-tracing to an old shooter from 1997.
2025-04-07 17:09:54 +0000 UTC
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Way back in 2016 I wrote about Shadowgrounds, a top-down horror shooter by Frozenbyte, the developers of the Trine franchise. I thought it was a neat little game for what it was, and while it wasn’t super unique, it was at least a bit of fun for a few hours. Towards the end of the article I wrote:
One day I'll get around to the sequel, Shadowgrounds: Survivor,
2025-03-16 21:23:43 +0000 UTC
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I gotta say, 2025 has been off to a terrible start. What with everything happening in the USA, I decided to try to take my mind off things by well, doing anything that didn’t involve doomscrolling 24/7. Watching movies, playing games, that sort of thing. I ended up picking up a game that was a post-apocalyptic free roaming action game from 10 years ago that felt… a bit too on the nose at times considering current events.
2025-02-20 22:25:51 +0000 UTC
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I like Resident Evil. Whether it’s the horror aspects of the first few games, or even the goofy action-driven pivot the series took after Resident Evil 5, it’s one of those franchises I have a soft spot for. Except for Resident Evil 6, that game is… not good.
One of the core mechanics Resident Evil relies heavily on is the inventory system. Your character can only hold a fixed amount of items, thus there’s a bit of strategy beyond exploring a ...
2025-01-15 21:53:11 +0000 UTC
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Every time December rolls around, I always feel a compulsion to writer about a Christmas-theme video game. There’s some pretty okay ones, but there’s one that’s always been on mind and have thought about writing about it, but just felt there wasn’t enough there to justify it.
That game was Duke: Nuclear Winter, an official expansion for Duke Nukem 3D by Simply Si...
2024-12-20 23:47:30 +0000 UTC
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I kind of miss the seventh generation of shooters. Sometimes you’d find a game that while not amazing, was at least trying something interesting. Other times you could end up stuck in the sluice gate of Activision’s budget hell, with games like Soldier of Fortune: Payback, Jurassic: The Hunted or The History Channel: Battle for the Pacific. (By the way, those are all by the same developer: Cauldron, a Slovakian game studio that’s since been absorbed into ...
2024-11-22 01:35:51 +0000 UTC
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One of those "why the heck did I record this?" moments.
Then I saw that there were two segments on Who Wants to be a Millionaire (airing on this station since KATU is an ABC affiliate): One of them was covering the recently released PC game, made by the folks who did You Don't Know Jack and the later Jackbox Party Packs; and a contestant who got on the show, but failed to win the Fastest Finger.
Plus a news blooper and commercials, because why not
It's surreal to realize thi...
2024-11-19 19:18:06 +0000 UTC
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A while back, I was looking for an alternate version of Tommy Tutone’s “867-5309/Jenny” that appeared in Rock Band 3, but sure enough every time I tried to look for this version, it kept giving me the original version from 1981’s Tommy Tutone 2. Eve with putting in the album name and “re-record,” it kept coming back to the original album version and not this unusual re-record that was used...
2024-09-17 23:33:56 +0000 UTC
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The Fast and the Furious franchise is one of many movie franchises I just haven’t really watched. Much like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the various Star Wars and Star Trek spinoffs among many, many other series, I just can’t really see myself sitting down and watching these by myself. I know this is partially a fault of me treating watching things as a social experience, but some day I will watch those popcorn action flicks with Cool Cars and equall...
2024-07-24 22:24:25 +0000 UTC
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Sometimes I think a lot about what is defined as "the worst video games of all time." There's a lot of games in that category that I sometimes question if they deserve that distinction. After all, sometimes people get swept up into the backlash and hate of a product that they go with the flow without really thinking if it deserves it.
While I'm thinking about this, something related to that comes up. So I’m on a Discord server where a random bad game is picked every month and people ...
2024-06-14 23:26:10 +0000 UTC
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Around 1989, a plucky little sports competition show debuted that captured the hearts and minds of Millennials everywhere: American Gladiators, a show where contenders fought against “gladiators,” men and women who had background in stunts, sports or otherwise. Its campy stadium-like presentation combined with the play-by-play commentary of hosts Mike Adamle and Larry Csonka – with a few other folks before and after – it seemed like peak weekend viewing, after the Saturday mo...
2024-05-23 00:09:44 +0000 UTC
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For several years, it really felt like the mainstream rhythm games of the past, like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, had been thrown to the dustbin of the past. Mostly to be fondly remembered by those who played it. The diehard fans moved on to open-source versions of those games like Clone Hero and YARG, while challenging themselves with unique custom...
2024-04-24 20:36:35 +0000 UTC
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Have you ever written a critique about something, then come back to it years later to see if it still holds up? I have that feeling with a lot of things I’ve played. Since I try to improve myself as a person, sometimes I have to reassess my opinions on something or if I’ve changed. With how games change from day one to day 365 thanks to the wonders of patches and Early Access, it has me occasionally revisiting stuff to see if it’s gotten better. And in this case, it’s going back rough...
2024-03-26 00:37:18 +0000 UTC
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You know, there’s a kind of genre I don’t quite get why people like it: The puzzle platformer. I’ve tried playing some of the ones so highly recommended to me, only to leave with frustration and disappointment. A lot of puzzle platformers get me so frustrated that it soured the overall experience for me. But there’s one I played recently that got me rethinking my outlook on this genre, transgender memes notwithstanding.
2024-02-18 01:02:06 +0000 UTC
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You know, for a few years I had no interest in Fortnite. I played it a bit here and there, but mostly thought of it as a thing that wasn’t really for me, that whole building-while-shooting being the biggest barrier to entry for me. Shoot a guy and suddenly they’ve built a whole castle for defense just feels old. Then developer Epic Games introduced Zero Build, which got rid of that. That, combined with Chapter 4: Season 1 introducing the Doom Slayer from Doom and Geralt ...
2024-01-17 18:41:05 +0000 UTC
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Well, 2023 is almost over. It’s been a tough time around in my neck of the woods, which has affected me writing any substantial articles, and I apologize for this. I’ll try to get back into the swing of things in the new year.
For many years, I’ve documented the stuff I bought because I find it interesting. Around 2022 I started a new format where I post updates every June and December. Naturally, I’ve been keeping tabs of the stuff I bought throughout the year, and since we’r...
2023-12-29 22:31:58 +0000 UTC
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I never thought I’d ever come back to this again. The last article I ever wrote about video game food and drink was 2016, covering the previous iteration of this specific drink. I mostly left these behind because I felt like I was being a dime store Dinosaur Dracula with these kind of articles, and decided to write things of more substance.
But if Mountain Dew – sorry, MTN Dew – is gonna go for a throwback, then ...
2023-11-22 23:30:35 +0000 UTC
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(an updated version of this article is available here: https://asecretarea.com/2023/10/28/blood-of-the-werewolf-pc/)
(content warning: blood and cartoonish gore.)
Y’know, I realized there haven’t been many good games where you play as a werewolf. Out of all the horror monsters out the...
2023-10-25 22:25:09 +0000 UTC
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(content warning: mention of suicide.)
My tastes in music are… rather eclectic. If you’ve ever been a longtime reader of the site, you’ve probably had me write about some of the weirdest stuff and sometimes finding good stuff in them. I end up picking up soundtracks a lot because of the licensed music. Hell, while I may not talk about it a lot on the site here, I really enjoy rhythm games. So when I saw a rhythm game based on one of the most notable EDM a...
2023-09-17 16:41:12 +0000 UTC
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In the many years I’ve been writing about oddball video gaming stuff, I thought I covered it all. The unofficial expansion packs, the weird cross-promotions, the mostly forgotten cheap games that came out during the 2000s. But it wasn’t until recently did I realize there was one genre I never talked much about: The hidden object game.
A genre I haven’t really covered here, the hidden object game involves usually finding a bunch of items inside a room to make progress. For a good l...
2023-08-27 23:06:15 +0000 UTC
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(An updated version of this is available here: https://asecretarea.com/2023/06/26/total-overdose-pc/)
If there’s anything I kinda miss about gaming these days, is the sense of people copycatting ideas from other games because they became a breakout success. Sonic the Hedgehog was popular, so here’s a bunch of platformers of characters with some ‘tude. Tony Hawk’s ...
2023-06-22 20:46:23 +0000 UTC
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(An updated version of this is available here: https://asecretarea.com/2023/05/23/hell-yeah-wrath-of-the-dead-rabbit-pc/)
(content warning: cartoony violence and blood.)
Ever had a moment where you’re scrolling through your library on Steam or some other digital storefront and spotted a game in your library that you have no memory ...
2023-05-21 04:04:02 +0000 UTC
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(an updated version of this article is available here: https://asecretarea.com/2023/04/21/who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire-the-album-usa/)
(unfortunately, due to Patreon's blogging system, I can't embed audio tracks directly into the blog post. Instead, I attached the audio files for you to listen to while reading. Wh...
2023-04-18 19:19:28 +0000 UTC
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You know what I haven't covered in a while? A game mod. How about a game mod for Half-Life, one of my favorite games of all time? Sounds good.
I've always been fascinated by Half-Life's mod scene, which had some really creative stuff being made for it. Even to this day people are doing some outstanding work with the that 25-year-old game engine. But let's jump back to 2005, when Half-Life 2 was new. Let’s talk about Black Ops.
2023-03-27 21:19:54 +0000 UTC
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(As always, any feedback is appreciated!)
Game show video games are fascinating to me. If you’ve been a follower of my work, you’ve probably read a few pieces on me talking about game show games in various ways, from comparing game music versions of iconic game show themes to 2023-02-25 00:24:35 +0000 UTC
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I never really cared for post-apocalyptic stuff. That stereotypical dystopia of derelict cities fighting off some zombie horde or devastating dust storm while people living in squalor... It all felt a bit too played out to me. Considering what’s happened in the past few years with us living through a global pandemic, I can't say I'm really interested in playing too many things that hit a bit too close to reality.
That doesn’t mean I never play those kind of games. I've played ...
2023-01-23 18:00:05 +0000 UTC
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About 10 years ago on another Wordpress blog I had, I made a rather dumb, wordy rant about retro pixel-style games sucked and how I was getting sick of them appearing everywhere. This was before games like Undertale and Celeste released, games that showed how you could make that style work perfectly. In essence, it was me being a graphics snob, which is somewhat uncharacteristic of me these days.
I only mention this because this post is gonna be about a game that use...
2022-11-23 21:32:46 +0000 UTC
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