Earlier this month a new record dropped from Teen Mortgage. A stand out group in my continuous rediscovery of rock and punk since a long hiatus in my youth.
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Best Games: Split Fiction
Another game enters the Best Games of the 2020’s today, and we say “toodaloo” to an inspired take on the modern search action genre.
Split Fiction (2025) goes on as #38
Everybody loved It Takes Two, I’m more of a Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons man myself. Well, actually I didn’t find anyone to play it with and was jealous of all the people that did. So when their next game was announced I was paying attention.
Split Fiction mostly reminds me of Wario Party. But wrapped in a narrative, and fun art, and spectacle, but the mini games are longer, and creatively thoughtful about how two people will do them together. So not Wario Party, but you get it. It is at it’s best when everything it’s doing is in service of asynchronous cooperative game play that changes just often enough to not get stale.
It does that 9 times out of 10, and that 10th time is when it over stays it’s welcome. Either a mechanic or mini game just stops clicking and you get to look around at the set dressing that is holding everything up and question it. But not for long, because you’ve just been whisked into a side story where you are pig that does big farts. Now we are back to the fun and your doing it with a friend.
Metroid Dread (2021) is off the list. My entire run of this game was a week at the beach for Thanksgiving. It had my full attention and was a great modern take on the genre it inspired. But when I got back to regular life I never went back to it.
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Game Changer s7
Holy shit did the new season drop with a banger. Hour plus episode, with three contestants I love, left to their own devices for a year to complete a series of challenges. The behind the scenes that came out the following week is an excellent 40 minutes companion piece. Apparently the first edit was over 2 hours, not gonna lie, I’d watch that.
Dropout continues to be worth every penny I pay for it. Killer D&D + improve comedy, there isn’t another service out there offering such a concentrated dose of goodness for your cash.
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Insta: Anatomy of a scroll
The amount of time I spend on my phone killing time or seeking distraction out of habit is regularly concerning to me. Not capital “C” concerning, like what state will this world be in when my kids inherit it. But lower case “c” concerning, like am I rotting my brain on this stuff, when I could be doing anything more constructive.
I picked Instagram as my app of choice a while ago and then further refined that to be a source of inspiration. Mostly following artist, musicians, sports, and skateboarding. But that intent has been massively diluted over the years. My anecdotal experience is one jammed up with ads, suggested accounts, and often more videos than pictures. So lets test it with some real world tracking, ten days, scroll through 15 post, and see what gets served up.
Date Followed Sponsored Suggested Tue 3/18 @ 12:30pm 10 5 0 Wed 3/19 @ 8:45am 4 4 7 Thu 3/20 @ 9:30pm 8 4 3 Fri 3/21 @ 7:30am 9 4 2 Sat 3/22 @ 3:00pm 8 2 5 Sun 3/23 @ 7:00pm 4 5 6 Mon 3/24 @ 7:30am 5 5 5 Tue 3/25 @ 8:00am 7 5 3 Wed 3/26 @ 8:45am 8 5 2 Thu 3/27 @ 8:00pm 6 4 5 Total (%) 69 (46%) 43 (29%) 38 (25%) Instagram lets you change your view to only accounts you follow, but it is not the default view and resets back to allowing for “suggested” content every time you open it. There is always room for conformation bias doing something like this. But this little exercise certainly confirmed my anecdotal experience of feeling like I am seeing more and more stuff I didn’t intentionally sign up for. The pipeline is rotten and more of it keeps coming into my head.
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New Music: Chicken & Sauce
That Mexican OT + Sauce Walka and a whole album? I have fallen off my new music feed, but this is a killer surprise to start the weekend.
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Best Games: Kingdom Come Deliverance 2
I’m continuing to prime the pump with new ideas here. Similar to the Best of Richmond, the Best Games of the 2020’s series will be a continuous list of, you guessed it, the best games I’ve played in the 2020s. The list is mostly complete through 2024, though there are some older games that are on my backlog that will surely make an appearance. Post-wise, as I play games that unseat top 50 incumbents on the list, they will come off and new games will go on. Today’s inaugural entry…
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 goes on as #25
The game I’ve easily put the most time into in 2025. Not only because it requires it, as a highly immersive, open world, role playing game, but because it’s hooks got in deep. It is essentially a medieval times game with systems on top of systems. Every action you take, be it conversation, a fight you pick, an item you steal, seems to have some form of consequence or impact on the world. Fight bandits in the woods and get covered in mud and blood. You better wash up and change clothes before talking to a merchant if you don’t want to pay higher prices.
That is one silly example, but it is just a foothold into the matrix of systems that underlie a game with great story, writing, world building, relationships, factions, and more. And it is all built in the CryEngine, as in Crysis and Far Cry. All that means is that it plops you down in a beautiful and detailed landscape. Roaming from town to town on horse back reminds me tons of Red Dead. In fact, it is easiest to sum it up as “Red Dead 2, but 14th century Europe”. From top to bottom a great game.
Valheim (2021) is off list. Still a great game, but it’s early access 15 minutes of fame didn’t stand the test of time when I went back in 2024 to play it with my kids. The progression felt punishing the second time through, and the mystery that sustained that
Coming soon…
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Great Falls
Stealing the opportunity to test video to gif from Mike, of a trip we took to Great Falls National Park during the kids spring break earlier this month. “Billy Goat Trail” is an awesome medium to hard hike on the way to beautiful 360 views of the falls. Worth a visit.
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ABCs of Richmond
In December last year, on the side of a chilly field, a fellow soccer parent let my wife and I know about a novel concept. The restaurant ABCs. His family had been partaking in a 2024 goal to go to a new restaurant in Richmond for every letter in the alphabet. Could we do that? Our kids are old enough, we should get out more, why not?
Introducing our very own 2025 ABCs of Richmond. We didn’t commit to it until late February, but have been running up our list recently. I’ll keep the page going with the collected entries and periodically post about new additions here.
E. Eazzy Burger
Killer burgers and fries tucked between Ardent and ZZQ. Already two of our favorite spots in town. The outdoor seating and ready access to excellent beer got a big thumbs up from our whole crew.
G. Gersi
We went to this little Italian spot in the Fan with friends after numerous recommendations. Everyone was right. Daily handmade pasta and crisp cocktails. I’d recommend the Gersi Manhattan and a reservation ahead of time.
A wine bar with upscale food, right near the Carpenter Theatre. We already had tickets to a show, and needed an “H”. We were treated to fantastic service, atmosphere, food, drink, and great night out.
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Altor SAF
I’ve watched a lot of the Lock Picking Lawyer over the years, but I can’t recall the last time he didn’t instantaneously get into a lock through conventional means. This ridiculously thick lock required him to custom build a tool to pick it. He also mentions that the “Strong as Fuck” lock is unlikely to be cut through because of it’s construction, weighs over 13 lbs., and cost $300.
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Deli Boys
I recently caught co-star of Deli Boys, Asif Ali, on an episode of Comedy Bang Bang. A very entertaining guest that convinced me to give the show a shot. It was great, started slow, but I watched all ten episodes on a quiet week night and had a good time with it.
The two male leads are great, but Poorna Jagannathan as Lucky Auntie really steals the show. She is the bridge between smart and dumb humor and the sparks of violence and caring moments.
180 Lunches 