It’s no secret that I love gaming. I’ve been streaming a bunch of Phasmophobia, a game where you hunt ghosts, on my YouTube. You should subscribe to my channel so you can get notified the next time I stream! You can help me hunt the ghost, chat along, get scared, and crack jokes! It’s a lot of fun, and more people than ever are joining in on the hunt! Follow this link to get to my channel.
Play an alcoholic rock-star cop or a moralist sorry cop or a socialist hobo cop in Disco Elysium, a novelistic adventure game that reinvents storytelling in gaming. Imagine Divinity: Original Sin on a shroom trip and you’ll have the scent of it. Elysium is elusive yet seductive, disgusting yet entrancing, and malformed yet beautiful. It is all of us at once, a social commentary that accounts for the implausible, a miracle of narrative fiction, and better than most (if not all) modern lit. Its moments of pretention are counterbalanced by its guttural urges and sweet fleeting feelings. It is the darkness and sadness of humanity, an episode of Black Mirror meets Dishonored, a suggestion of what’s to come and a reminder of what preceded it.
A standard cop game has shoot-outs-a-plenty. Not so with Disco Elysium. Wander between misbegotten scenes like Guybrush Threepwood and have aimless conversations. Pick from a long string of options that either make your character seem quirky or jaw-droppingly insane. Let the warmth swell in your heart until you see the beauty in the madness.
Like a D&D game, Disco Elysium offers you skill checks and dice rolls. You level up weird qualities that have unclear advantages. Your character can dwell on thoughts to unlock new abilities or enhance his own derangement. You’re supposed to be solving a mystery, but your body is a sack of crap, and your head is swimming with substances. Good thing you’ve got your partner, Kim, by your side to keep you straight. That is if he or anyone else in this punctured city can be trusted.
Who’s to say you’ll have the same experience I did? All roads lead to mystery in Revechol, but your choices set the tone. Will you recover your badge and gun? Will you help cryptid hunters find the truth? Will you allow local tweakers to turn a church into a discotheque? The plot points are optional, but the consequences have weight. Here we have a story game that accomplishes its narrative ambitions. No more “so-and-so will remember that” without any payoff. This game has real stakes, real heart, and not just 2D platitudes about darkness and light.
Your mind speaks to you in Disco Elysium, but you can shut it off if you like. Be an analytical cop running visual calculus. Be a sexist cop with a feminist streak. Be a capitalistic fascist union scab. Revel in your own misery, misdeeds, or your inability to change the past. Disco Elysium’s message is about the weight of consequence, the inescapability of the past, present, and future, but it also provides a sly smile. Who says disco’s really dead? The spirit’s still alive, baby.
If you own a WiiU, you might also own an external hard drive to go with it since the system’s internal memory is sorely lacking. This article exists to help those suffering from external hard drive woes, as they can be quite frightening.
The most important fact is that the WiiU does not generate enough power to power an External HD that is charged via USB UNLESS you use a USB Y-Splitter. The way it works is that an External HD that charges via USB must be plugged into the female port of the USB splitter, and then the USB splitter’s two male ends go into the WiiU. (I’ve plugged mine into the vertical USB ports on the back.)
If your external HD is receiving enough power, it should make a whirring noise when the Wii U is turned on and the HD is plugged in. (If things are going well, your Wii U should recognize the external hard drive in its data management screen in Settings.) If things are not going well, you might find that the WiiU suddenly cannot recognize your external HD and all your saved game data is apparently lost.
If you’re like me this could cause a panic, but luckily all may not be lost! There are a few additional things to keep in mind. By default the WiiU puts external HDs to sleep when they are not in use, but you can toggle this function off by going into data management, holding DOWN on the D-Pad for four seconds, then holding the plus and minus buttons. An option will appear to let you turn off the WiiU’s sleep function for external HDs.
If your content still doesn’t appear or your HD still isn’t recognized, try restarting the system once more. Check your connections to make sure they are snug, and after leaving the HD plugged in for a few minutes, reset once more. For whatever reason, my content suddenly appeared after doing all these steps in order. I will warn you not to futz with the external HD while content is running, as it may cause your content to crash.
My friend “Big Trav” and I have started a gaming podcast called “The Entitled Gamer.” Please give it a listen, subscribe on iTunes and leave us a positive review.
We have some fun episodes available already, including an interview with some sexy cosplayers, and an episode featuring the best video game music of all time.
In other news, Spellbound Sword has nearly reached 100,000 reads! Even though it’s only a rough draft, my family-friendly fantasy adventure about a boy and his magic sword has reached a worldwide audience, and new fans discover it every day.
I am currently working on building the second draft of the book, as well as plotting potential sequels. The game plan is to query publishers and lit agents once the book is in professional enough condition. Check out the free version now while you still can!
Matt Shore 