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 ...
2025-07-12 21:45:35 +0000 UTC View PostSo 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 y...
2025-06-18 19:28:03 +0000 UTC View PostI. 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 engin...
2025-05-07 16:45:33 +0000 UTC View Post
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 ...
2025-04-07 17:09:54 +0000 UTC View Post
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 i...
2025-03-16 21:23:43 +0000 UTC View Post
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 ...
2025-02-20 22:25:51 +0000 UTC View Post
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.
<... 2025-01-15 21:53:11 +0000 UTC View PostEvery 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.
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, Jurass...
2024-11-22 01:35:51 +0000 UTC View Post
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...
2024-11-19 19:18:06 +0000 UTC View PostA 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 origin...
2024-09-17 23:33:56 +0000 UTC View Post
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 do...
2024-07-24 22:24:25 +0000 UTC View Post
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 wit...
2024-06-14 23:26:10 +0000 UTC View Post
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...
2024-05-23 00:09:44 +0000 UTC View Post
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 game...
2024-04-24 20:36:35 +0000 UTC View PostHave 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 g...
2024-03-26 00:37:18 +0000 UTC View PostYou 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 expe...
2024-02-18 01:02:06 +0000 UTC View Post
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 castl...
2024-01-17 18:41:05 +0000 UTC View PostWell, 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...
2023-12-29 22:31:58 +0000 UTC View PostI 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 2023-11-22 23:30:35 +0000 UTC View Post
(an updated version of this article is available here: https://asecretarea.com/2023/10/28/blood-of-the-werewolf-pc/) 2023-10-25 22:25:09 +0000 UTC View Post
(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 soun...
2023-09-17 16:41:12 +0000 UTC View PostIn 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...
2023-08-27 23:06:15 +0000 UTC View Post
(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 co...
2023-06-22 20:46:23 +0000 UTC View Post
(An updated version of this is available here: https://asecretarea.com/2023/05/23/hell-yeah-wrath-of-the-dead-rabbit-pc/)
(content warning: cartoo...
2023-05-21 04:04:02 +0000 UTC View Post(an updated version of this article is available here: https://asecretarea.com/2023/04/21/who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire-the-album-usa/)...
2023-04-18 19:19:28 +0000 UTC View Post
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 peo...
2023-03-27 21:19:54 +0000 UTC View Post
(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 2023-02-25 00:24:35 +0000 UTC View Post
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 thr...
2023-01-23 18:00:05 +0000 UTC View Post
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...
2022-11-23 21:32:46 +0000 UTC View Post