Packers lose to the refs Lions get the W

 The NFL refs once again defeated the Green Bay Packers as they continue to set a record on roughing the passer phantom penalties.  Unfortunately due to an odd turn of events the Detroit Lions were granted the win.

 

 

First Impressions: The ArcheAge Chronicles Demo

 I spent some time checking out the ArcheAge Chronicles demo recently, and walking away from it left me with a pretty mixed bag of thoughts.

Here we go again...

 On the bright side, the world is genuinely beautiful, and I did enjoy exploring it. But the world design runs into a bizarre pacing issue where it feels far too cramped. You run a few feet, and there's a camp. You run a few more feet, and there's another camp. You take a couple more steps, and suddenly you're stumbling into a giant point of interest. It robs the world of a natural sense of scale when major landmarks are practically stacked on top of each other.

Entering the final story instanced area; the game does look great!

 There has been a lot of debate in the community over whether ArcheAge Chronicles is actually an MMORPG or just an online action RPG, especially given how developers have talked about steering away from traditional massive faction wars of the original ArcheAge. Coming into the demo, I half-expected a stripped-down, session-based MMO-lite experience. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find it feels much more like a normal, living MMO with plenty of other players running around you out in the open world rather than being bottlenecked into specific instanced hubs.

MMO-lite?  Plenty of players are around you in the open world.

 The UI design needs work, starting with how disconnected the menus feel from the actual gameplay. Inventory and character management screens pop up in a way that takes you entirely out of the experience, breaking the immersion. I much prefer the style New World used, where menus open up as overlays or transparent windows while you can still see your character active and moving around in the world. It keeps you anchored in the environment rather than staring at a static, isolated menu screen.

 Quest design is equally frustrating because missions tend to randomly appear out of nowhere without any clear indication of where you are supposed to go or why the quest triggered in the first place. It undercuts your sense of direction and purpose. On top of that, it is far too easy to accidentally pick up a quest item without realizing it, meaning you stumble into objectives entirely by accident rather than through intentional exploration or narrative progression.

The classic random chance at an upgrade system; can we please move on from this exact UI being in every single game that comes out of the east?

 Then there are the fundamental mechanics. First off, get rid of having to hold shift to sprint and just make sprinting automatic. The combat itself feels too floaty and lacks grounded weight, especially considering the massive size of the enemies and their attacks.  The combat works but doesn't have a sense of impact.  Combat doesn't detract from the experience but could use some continual improvement through the early access life of the game.

 Character building and classes also left a lot to be desired. Even accounting for the demo being limited, everything felt kind of samey. While there are big skill trees, melee weapon types lacked distinct styles and every two handed melee weapon seemed to share the exact same sprint-up leap attack followed by the same basic left-click combo, and magic and ranged didn't offer enough unique flavor either.

 On top of that, the lack of character clothing options combined with rigid class and gender locks made everyone in the game feel and look samey. While I don't hate an outfit-versus-armor system in theory, seeing a character in a dress apparently wearing super heavy armor underneath is misleading. Outfits really need to match their underlying stats in some way. And I would love to see a human using a shield and axe instead of being forced into that big, bulky male character model whenever you pick up heavy frontline weapons.

A cut scene of sailing into the end of demo area; unclear if in the future we'd get to navigate with ships ourselves like the original ArcheAge.

 Overall, the gorgeous world and exploration made it fun to check out for a bit, but the combat weight, cramped world pacing, and messy UI mean the full game has plenty of kinks to work out if it wants to keep my attention.

 Some more screenshots to enjoy:

A useful "what are the chances of something dropping from this loot bag" message but annoying when you have twenty bags to open and have to see this every time.  Also these are loot drops and not purchased bags so why do I need to see this message?

A cool looking statue

Lots of ruins packed into this area and classic random NPCs just living out their eternity at the top of them

Underwater areas are well detailed.  A nice addition but not sure how necessary as it's unclear how much underwater content we'll see.

The game has gliding.  I used it a couple times but didn't find it all that interesting.  I think the game would have been fine without it.  I am sure they will go out of their way now to give places/reasons to glide.

Fishing!?  Alas you cannot complete the quest for the fishing rod in the demo so we'll have to wait and see if they add it later on.

A New World outcast and I am right at home gathering a bush of berries.

The world map slowly uncovers as you explore; about 1/3 of the explorable area from the demo is in this screenshot.

Oddly while you get to pick out an outfit at character creation like the one I chose here you don't get to keep it and reset to the default outfit when you start out.  Unclear if that was a bug or not in character creation.

You can chop down most trees in the game but it is nowhere near as satisfying as chopping down a tree in New World Aeternum.

Yarrr! A pirate's hat outfit reward from the last boss of the demo.

Somewhat final drip at the end of the demo; minus my pirate hat.

Crafting at the cauldron.  These are placed everywhere along with berry bushes right next to them to harvest and make potions.  Felt out of place but the crafting process was fine.

Packers Beat Cowboys

 Not much to say here.  Packers are 4-2 and whooped the Cowboys.  Feels good to be a Wisconsin sports fan lately.

 

Brewers are going to the World Series!

 For the second time in my lifetime, and the first time I am not in diapers, the Milwaukee Brewers are going to the World Series!

 It is probably no surprise, given my long history of Green Bay Packers posts, that I would also be a Milwaukee Brewers fan. As a teenager, I used to head down to Milwaukee and write up game summaries for my Sports Lit class. My dad is a lifetime fan, too.

 And now, after what felt like a decade of being so damn close over and over again to being the team to beat, the team primed for the World Series, the Brewers finally did it. In convincing fashion, no less, by sweeping the half-billion-dollar Dodgers 4-0 in the NLCS.

 The Brewers have saved baseball!

 

 

Packers are the best team in the league! Bears still suck!

 It's been a rough week for Bears and Chicago sports fans.  Ditka?  RIP.  Chicago White Sox's season?  RIP.  And the a cherry on top the Bears proved they still suck.  Packers are the best team in the league!  Seriously though; sorry for your losses Chicago fans.

 

Packers... wait... they won? Nice! the Bucs

 The Green Bay Packers, despite every attempt not to, beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  A classic indeed.

 

Packers Are The Worst Team In The League Falcons 9-24-2026

 The Packers game last night did not go well as they lost to the Falcons 35-14.  Going into the game there was serious discussion the Falcons would go winless this year.  Well they looked like dominant super bowl contenders against the Packers so I guess that means the Packers are now the worst team in the league.  It's going to be a year.

 

Packers Escape Jets 9-20-2026

 Oh boy I am glad I get to post a meme that doesn't involve the thousand yard stare this week.  The Green Bay Packers squeaked out a win against the NY Jets.  Not a pretty game by any means but a win is a win.  Go Pack Go!

 

 

Packers Something Something Vikings 9-13-2026

 The Green Bay Packers picked up the 2026 season right where they left off the 2025 season: with an improbable fourth quarter collapse.  There was a pivotal moment where the Packers could have gone up 25-17 after making a field goal, but a penalty on the Vikings caused them to reconsider and they tried to QB sneak on 4th and short.  Jordan Love came up short and the game spiraled from that point onward.  In a close game where the offense was not executing smoothly it was a dumb call to take points off the board.  There were some terrible penalties called by the refs through the game but unlike other Packers fans I can't solely blame the zebras here; especially when the Packers gave up 29 unanswered points.  On a positive note at least our field goal kicker made a 59 yard field goal. 

 

Crimson Desert Is The Worst Best Game I've Played In A While

Here we go again...

 Crimson Desert has no right to be installed in my Steam library.

 It is clunky, buggy, has terrible controls, a nonsensical story, and is full of baffling design decisions. It feels like a 10+ year old MMO shut down and, at the last second, the developers slapped together an offline single-player mode so players could still wander around the world one last time.

 And somehow I'm loving it.

 Also hating it.

 Mostly both at the same time.

A beautiful game world

 With the MMO apocalypse seemingly underway between games like New World Aeternum closing and Ashes of Creation forever existing in a perpetual state of "ain't happening", I have been itching for an open-world fantasy game to disappear into. My normal gaming group is still fully locked into ARC Raiders, so I didn't really want to dive headfirst into another MMO solo. Crimson Desert kept popping up all over gaming news and social media, and after watching some gameplay videos it looked like it might scratch that open-world RPG itch even if it wasn't multiplayer.

 So I bought it.

 And after several hours with the game I completely understand why the reception has been all over the place.

 People praising the visuals? Correct.

 People praising the open world? Also correct.

 People saying the story is nonsense? Extremely correct.

 People complaining the controls feel like they were designed by aliens trying to approximate human behavior? Also very correct.

 Crimson Desert is a fascinating mess.

I can't resist chopping down trees

 

 The game starts by immediately throwing you into a world that feels massive and alive, but also weirdly unfinished in places. Villages feel populated. NPCs wander around doing their own thing. There are tons of side activities like fishing, gathering, crafting, exploration, climbing, and random little interactions that make the world feel more like an MMO than a traditional single-player RPG.

 Honestly, the game reminds me a lot of No Man's Sky in that way. Not because the gameplay is similar, but because the appeal comes from simply existing in the world and seeing what is over the next hill. The community feels hungry for games like this right now. Huge open worlds where exploration matters again instead of everything being reduced to fast travel markers and checklist objectives.

 The thing Crimson Desert absolutely nails is giving you a world that feels worth wandering around in. There are villages to visit that aren't just combat hubs. Random caves. Weird little environmental puzzles. Mountain paths that clearly exist because someone on the development team wanted players to climb them.

 And climbing in this game is actually pretty good.

 Grappling, vaulting, and climbing all feel smooth enough that traversal becomes fun on its own. There is even this bizarre but amazing mechanic where holding Ctrl lets you precisely target jumps with your cursor. Instead of awkwardly lining up jumps manually, you can literally aim where you want to go and leap directly there.

 I genuinely love this system.

 Which is funny because almost every other control decision in the game feels completely insane.

Another amazing view

 

 The control problems start almost immediately. Early on you walk into a camp where every NPC interaction works normally: walk up and press the interact key. Simple enough. Except the main quest NPC has an invisible wall around him, so you can't actually walk up to him. Instead, you have to notice some tiny prompt in the corner telling you to press Ctrl plus another key to interact with him from a distance.

 Why?

 Why does this exist?

 This bizarre inconsistency continues through the entire game. Sometimes you interact normally. Sometimes you need Ctrl. Sometimes you need to equip a random tool first. Sometimes you need to hold Ctrl while holding the tool while also aiming at the correct object while standing in the exact correct position under a full moon while Mercury is in retrograde. You will literally spend time on YouTube looking up solutions only to discover the answer was “equip the broom and hold Ctrl.”!!!

 Combat controls are equally chaotic.

 Some attacks require left click. Others require holding both mouse buttons simultaneously. Blocking is on Ctrl instead of right mouse button like basically every game made in the last twenty years. Outside of combat, Ctrl does completely different things, so there have been multiple moments where I got ambushed while accidentally pulling out my lantern instead of blocking.

 And as far as I can tell, some of these controls can't even properly be remapped.

 Even sprinting is weird. Instead of holding Shift to sprint, you repeatedly tap the key to maintain speed both on foot and on horseback. Maybe some people enjoy finger cardio while traveling across the map, but I immediately installed a mod to fix that nonsense. (Note: this was patched and changed after I wrote this post up so now it is hold to sprint as it should have been all along).

 Which is another funny thing about Crimson Desert: this game made me a complete hypocrite.

 I complained endlessly about Marathon's UI design, yet somehow here I am tolerating a UI that is significantly worse because the game underneath it is weirdly compelling. Normally a game loses me within five minutes if the controls feel bad. Crimson Desert somehow survives that test through sheer force of ambition.

 Because underneath all the jank is a genuinely incredible open world.

An overview of a location from the map

 Progression is messy and unclear, but there is always something interesting nearby. The game doesn't focus exclusively on combat encounters the way many modern open-world games do. Sometimes you are just wandering through a village. Fishing. Gathering materials. Exploring ruins. Climbing mountains because they exist.

 Then the game interrupts your fun with another cutscene.

 And that might honestly be my biggest complaint of all.

 This fantastic open-world sandbox keeps getting interrupted by a story I could not possibly care less about.

 The story isn't just weak; it actively gets in the way of the game's best qualities. Early on I got stuck outside a castle because guards wouldn't let me enter without the proper clothes. The game technically gives you the required outfit through the main questline, but it was so poorly communicated that I ended up Googling the solution because I thought I had missed something.

 That sort of thing happens constantly.

 The game feels like it assumes you somehow already know how its systems work.

 And yet despite all of this, somewhere around the Mathias fight, the game suddenly clicked for me.

 I stopped trying to make Crimson Desert behave like a polished AAA RPG and started accepting it for the bizarre, over-complicated, awkward thing it actually is. Once I embraced the chaos, I started appreciating the game far more.

 Because there really is something special here.

 Not polished.

 Not elegant.

 Definitely not user friendly.

 But special.

 Crimson Desert feels like a giant ambitious RPG from an earlier era of gaming before every game was focus tested into safe mediocrity. It is overloaded with systems, mechanics, weird ideas, experimental controls, and questionable design decisions. Some of those ideas absolutely do not work.

 But some of them really, really do.

 And honestly, I think players are starving for games that swing this hard again even if they miss sometimes.

 Crimson Desert is frustrating.

 It is clunky.

 It wastes your time.

 It desperately needs quality-of-life improvements.

 The UI is a disaster.

 The controls are absurd.

 The story constantly gets in the way.

 And I cannot stop playing it.

 This is easily the worst best game I've played in a long while.

 

The starting town that you spend a lot, and I mean a lot, of time in

Note: this post was edited with the help of AI (ChatGPT). The thoughts are my own.  The grammatical correctness and em dashes (—) are the AI.