I’ve been playing a lot of classic indie strategy roguelite game FTL: Faster Than Light this week, and that, along with watching a lot of west coast Baseball games, has totally ruined my sleep schedule. But I gotta say: FTL is one of the best video games ever made. It’s tough as nails, which forces you to use every single tool at your disposal. All of those tools are interesting, which makes for wonderful strategic depth. And the real time element means that when things start to go wrong, which happens often, they go wrong hard, and the game gets tremendously stressful. That sounds like a bad thing, but successfully navigating the situations this game puts you in feels great, and learning to reliably navigate them is incredibly rewarding.
FTL is by the same tiny studio that made Into the Breach, one of my other favourite games ever. The studio, Subset, is like, three guys. Just really astounding work. Into the Breach has been living in my head, informing basically every thought I have about games and game design, for years. I don’t really have a larger point I’m building to, which is why I’m putting all this in the intro instead of giving it a segment. Anyway, this week I’ve got Baseball Corner and the music segment as always, with the notable difference of having written micro reviews of five albums instead of a normal review of one album. So, enjoy.
This week I followed the Kansas City Royals and the Arizona Diamondbacks, and let me tell you, it was the most fun I’ve had with this segment so far. These teams are both exciting to watch and full of likeable guys, and they both seem to have the fun kind of fanbase. To elaborate there a little, I’m realizing that there are basically two kinds of baseball fanbase: fun-havers, and dorks. When their team is winning, fun-havers go into buoyant joy mode, while dorks go into laudatory pencil-pusher speak mode. When their team is losing, fun-havers start cracking jokes, while dorks start crashing out and demanding their manager be fired.
The Kansas City Royals currently have the worst record in Baseball. Despite this, r/KCRoyals has been fun to browse, because its users are having a big laugh about it all. One poster is in there contemplating drinking an expired Royals branded beer to bring the team good fortune, for example. There’s also a lot of “what the hell are they doing with this lineup sentiment” going around, but the tone is more “frantic and confused” than “I am a Baseball genius who understands the game better than this multimillion dollar franchise’s analytics department,” which is way less annoying.
Now, despite being in a pretty rough place right now, the team is fun to watch. They’re sort of the anti-Mets in this way. Their big problem is leaving guys on base, but that means they’re actually getting hits, so it makes for enjoyable if sometimes frustrating viewing. Now, I will confess, I was in an unfortunate position this week where Royals, Diamondbacks, and Blue Jays games were all frequently overlapping, so my viewing wasn’t as careful and diligent as I would’ve liked. I can still point to two highlights for the Royals, though: Seth Lugo’s pitching performance on Monday was very impressive, despite the team ultimately losing in spectacular extra innings fashion, and the Tuesday game ended wonderfully, with Maikel Garcia stealing home on a wild pitch to walk off the Orioles. That latter moment had me laughing out loud. One of my favourite things about Baseball is how often it can end in ridiculous anticlimax like that, and I love teams that tend to pull that sort of thing. That this moment ended an 8 game losing streak makes it all the more beautiful. The Royals needed some bizarro magic to snap the curse they were under, it seems.
This is a good time to note that the Royals remind me a lot of the Blue Jays. They have a similar tendency to winning via weird nonsense, and they’re struggling in some of the same ways right now: leaving a lot of guys on base, and having relievers blow games in late innings.
On the whole I like the Royals about as much as I like the Mariners, meaning I now have a solid favourite in all three divisions of the American League.
Now, the Diamondbacks are just an all around good Baseball team, with a fanbase that seems to really, genuinely love and appreciate them. Dbacks games are a blast to watch, and their fans strike me as just generally good natured. I had a great time following them, and as of now they are my NL team.
I’ve gotta point to the Wednesday game against the White Sox as a specific highlight here. At the two extremes of the Baseball game spectrum you’ve got the pitching duel and the slugfest. I’ve been seeing a lot of pitching duels so far this season, as most team’s bats are taking some time to warm up. So, as much as I like watching good pitching, this White Sox/Dbacks game was a breath of fresh air. The final score was 11 to 7 for the Dbacks, and Ildemaro Vargas hit two home runs. Nolan Arenado hit a home run too, and Corbin Carroll and Geraldo Perdomo both tripled. The White Sox showed up too, though, with Munetaka Murakami launching a two run shot in the 7th. As an aside, Murakami was a blast to watch through this whole series, and I’m excited to cover the White Sox.
That gets me to what I really enjoyed so much about the Dbacks: they just have a really good, well rounded offense. They have several legitimate sluggers, but they’re all also guys who run well and can hit singles. They’re not the limping longball Yankees or the smallball Brewers, they just swing the bat well. It’s really exciting to watch an offensive lineup that has so much pop and so much pep.
On the pitching front, my main observation is that Zac Gallen looks like a gamer. I think he knows what wavedashing is.
So, three rounds into this MLB first impressions project, my ranking is as follows:
1. Seattle Mariners
2. Arizona Diamondbacks
3. Kansas City Royals
4. New York Mets
5. San Fransisco Giants
6. New York Yankees
Next week I’ll be going Chicago mode, covering the White Sox and the Cubs.
Okay, I’m going shotgun mode this time. I listened to a bunch of stuff and didn’t settle on any one thing to review. Here are mini reviews of five albums that came out in the past week.
"Frog for Sale" is a new album by New York indie folk rock trio Frog. I had never heard of these guys before stumbling on this album, but they’ve been around a while and seem to be pretty prolific. I enjoyed this album quite a lot. It’s equal parts early Mac DeMarco, Ween, and They Might be Giants, though a bit raunchier than any of those acts tend to be. The raunchiness got close to turning me off at some points, but the herky jerky grooves and incredibly catchy vocal melodies kept me hooked. This sound, acoustic but groovy with capital WG Weird Guy vocals, is extremely up my alley. “Bad Time to Fall in Love Again” and “Best Buy” have been getting stuck in my head constantly, and I think the rest of the album is just going to keep growing on me.
Rating: ☆
"Little Miss Sunshine" is the debut album from British singer/songwriter Eaves Wilder. It’s pretty straightforward 90s influenced rock music, with nice melodies and some good riffs. Wilder’s vocal performances are the standout characteristic: she has a really distinct voice, and her singing sounds great. I love the way she hits the melodic dips and swings on “Hurricane Girl.” There isn’t anything really mind blowing on this album, it wears its influences on its sleeve, but if you like Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair, Garbage, and other stuff in that vein, this album is for you. Wilder seems like a really talented songwriter and performer, and I’ll be looking forward to whatever she does next.
Rating: ☆
"Erasure" is an album by Austin, Texas grunge act Sap. I have a pretty normal/lukewarm relationship with grunge: I enjoy the canonical texts, but the genre has never been a pillar of my taste or personality like it is for some people. I don’t use the phrase “some people” with derision here: in fact, I would say I like everybody I know who does relate to grunge more intensely than I do. Anyway, my point is, this is a very solid grunge album. It sounds straight out of the 90s. The only thing I can really fault it on is trying too hard to ape Nirvana. Now, this stuff isn’t exactly my thing, but if you’re a grunge person Sap should definitely be on your radar.
Rating: ○
"I LOVE ALL MY DOGS" by gunk is a sort of avant-garde hip-hop album, incorporating elements of hyperpop and autocroon. It’s a fascinating project, because it just sounds nuts (I mean this as a compliment). Blown out kicks and bass sounds, fuzzy synths playing disorienting melodies, and the vocal delivery, alternating between rapping and autotuned singing, put the listener in a hazy, sort of confused state. There are way too many little production details to untangle in a short review like this, and too few hooks to feel like I have a solid impression of the album after just a few listens. What I will say is that autocroon stuff tends to slide right off my brain (I have friends who have tried to get me into Bladee and Yung Lean, and I just...hate it), but this mostly didn’t. It’s still sliding off my brain a little, but it has a vibe that made an impression. gunk has a lot of personality and the production is wild, so even though listening to this album had me in basically a fugue state, I like it.
Rating: ○
The last album I listened to this week was "Traditional Noise" by April+VISTA. It’s a laid back, relaxing album that sort of oscillates between R&B, folk, and soft jazz. “Very Bad News” is an uptempo song with a really banging bass riff, but otherwise things on here are pretty mellow. The instrumentation is lush, and singer April George has a beautiful voice. The album is also delightfully paced. The songs shift back and forth between sparse and full arrangement, which keeps things fresh even as everything is pretty slow and low key, and there are these little one minute tracks that combine soft instrumentals and sound collage at the start of the album, in the middle, and right before the end, which break things up in a nice way. It’s a really pleasant listen, and one that I’ll probably return to and enjoy even more.
Rating: ☆