danbruno.net

February 2026 media

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 21:13:24 -0400

Xenoblade Chronicles X: This is the one Xenoblade I hadn’t touched yet, and I used the recent Switch 2 upgrade as an excuse to pull it out of the backlog. I’m dozens of hours in and still can’t quite decide how I feel about it! The evidence suggests I’m enjoying it well enough, but I can’t help but wish I liked it either more or less. If I liked it more, I’d feel better about the immense time commitment; if I liked it less, I might put it down in favor of something I’m not as ambivalent about. As it is, it’s just good enough for me to endure the joylessness of collecting n monster parts every so often. I may demote it to a back-burner game where I occasionally chip away at low-impact sidequests instead of the main thing I’m playing.
The Grand Budapest Hotel: Hey, you ever hear of this Wes Anderson guy? (I know, I’m late to the party here; I don’t watch a lot of movies.) What a ride! I’m almost afraid to make comparisons to other films for fear of sounding like that Boss Baby tweet, but it scratched a similar itch to O Brother, Where Art Thou? for me. I loved Fiennes as Gustave, and I could look at that hotel set forever. Great score from Alexandre Desplat as well. Will I be back for more? Sometimes I think “Maybe I’ll finally become a movie guy and watch through this director’s (or actor’s, or composer’s) filmography as an entry point,” and then I think “Well, I dunno; that’d take a long time,” and then I think “Wait a minute, I bet I spent more hours on video games this month than it would take to watch every movie that person has ever touched.”

January 2026 media

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 21:14:19 -0400

The Legend of Heroes: Trails beyond the Horizon: We’ve enjoyed years of improbable wins in the overseas Trails fandom, from localizations of the niche spinoff titles to remakes with simultaneous worldwide release dates. Horizon, though, may represent the most improbable win of all: the international releases have somehow caught up to the Japanese ones. Nothing to sneeze at when we’ve been an entire decade behind at times! I’m loving the game itself, too—it’s an overindulgent mess but a wonderful one, like a sundae with too much hot fudge.
”The Lord of the Year” on Shelved by Genre: The literature podcast Shelved by Genre is talking through Tolkien for the entirety of 2026, from The Hobbit to The Silmarillion. It’s been a pleasure to read along thus far; the leisurely pace affords them time for taking long digressions or reading favorite passages aloud, and keeping up is a breeze. The premise of approaching the books as a “naive reader” is immediately stretched past the point of credulity, but I appreciate the approach—it’s refreshing to take the words at face value first and not lead with eyebrow-waggling allusions to what we know will come later.

December 2025 media

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 20:51:14 -0400

The New Yorker at 100: A recent Netflix documentary made for the preeminent (or rather preëminent) magazine’s centennial. The New Yorker is a relic in many ways—some interviewees valiantly argue that it’s not entirely old-fashioned—though in a time of crumbling institutions and cynical brand cashouts that actually doesn’t seem so bad. I found myself envious of a world where a great reported piece John Hersey’s “Hiroshima” or Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” could drive the national conversation. Who could do that now? Hell, who else even employs this many fact-checkers and copyeditors anymore?
‌How a Game Lives: This coffee table book features transcripts of ten Jacob Geller video essays, thousands of words of annotations, and an afterward for each from a guest contributor. What a pleasure to experience these again in a new format! Something is definitely lost in translation without the usual audiovisual context, but Geller writes with enough clarity that it’s less than you might think. I also benefited from being forced to attend to the words on the page rather than half-watching a YouTube video while I eat a bowl of cereal or whatever. They’re worth devoting attention to!

November 2025 media

Sun, 30 Nov 2025 20:55:32 -0400

Of Light and Air: Winslow Homer in Watercolor: This is the new special exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I only knew a couple of Homer’s pieces from their appearance in the MFA’s regular galleries, and they never really spoke to me one way or the other—but after seeing the larger survey of his work here, I’m much higher on him. (I think it was a mix of getting more context on his work and learning that perhaps the paintings I was familiar with happened to be ones I liked less.) And hey, learning to love a new artist is exactly what I want from an exhibition!
‌A Mighty Wind: I like a Christopher Guest mockumentary, but I don’t know if this one has the juice. Maybe the folk music scene isn’t as ripe for parody as heavy metal or dog shows, as well-drawn as the featured acts are. Or maybe they just didn’t push the characters far enough: I found them almost too plausible, to the point that their foibles felt like affectations bolted on for laughs instead of believable extensions of their natures. I still enjoyed it, and the soundtrack is great, but I think it’s the weakest of the Guest films I’ve seen.

I left Epic

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 18:40:18 -0400

Today was my last day at Epic Games.

I haven’t written a ton about career stuff here, so for context: I previously worked at Harmonix Music Systems for thirteen years, from August 2008 until its acquisition by Epic in November 2021; I then worked at Epic for another four years from November 2021 until, well, just now.

I’m not sure I ever quite fit in at Epic. I was happy enough for a while, as I still mainly worked with Harmonix people on Harmonix-like projects (check out Fortnite Festival if you haven’t!). But as Epic’s own values and priorities gradually seeped in, I began to grow alienated. I didn’t want that feeling to corrode my passion for my work or to hold back my team, and so I decided it was time I moved on.

There is another reason: acquisition aside, seventeen years is a long time to stay in one place! Even if things were going swimmingly, I suspect I’d be itching to move on by now and try something else. In particular, one thing I’ve learned at Epic is that my heart is not in big live service games; over the past few years I’ve felt a growing urge to make something smaller that is all my own, and to do that I needed to leave.

It’s not lost on me that it’s a frightening time to willingly give up any job, not least one in as competitive an industry as video games. Pursuing indie development instead is, of course, even more risky. Nevertheless, that’s what I’m going to do! It’s something I’ve always wanted to try, and if I don’t seize the opportunity while I can I know I’ll regret it.

All my best to my former colleagues, who I know will continue to do great work at Epic. I’ll be writing more about what I’m up to soon!

October 2025 media

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 23:30:53 -0400

Pokémon Legends: Z-A: I didn’t grow up playing Pokémon games, and I’ve mostly been lukewarm on the modern ones that I’ve played. It’s just appealing enough that I keep trying, though, and Z-A is working pretty well for me! I like the Xenoblade-esque combat, the compact wild zones, the fashion, even the single city setting. I don’t think the series got its hooks into me early enough for me to every truly love it, but I’m glad I can like it. This will be the first one I finish in years.
Ys vs. Trails in the Sky: Alternative Saga: Originally a niche PSP game, this goofy crossover fighter has gotten a surprisingly full-featured port to modern platforms. They’ve included everything from improved graphics and framerate to online play with rollback netcode (!) to a message log to match the recent mainline Ys and Trails games. The game itself is nothing to write home about, to be honest, but as a Falcom fan I was happy to see it get an official release at all—let alone one made with such care.
The Naked Gun: The new one, that is. I guess it makes sense that this exists; no franchise with any juice left is ever off the table for another sequel or a reboot, no matter how many years (or actors) have passed. But man, what a weird thing to see in 2025! They literally don’t make them like this anymore. The combination of Nielsen-style slapstick and contemporary references gives it an anachronistic flavor, but I think it lands. Liam Neeson brings just enough self-seriousness for his Drebin to work.

September 2025 media

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 21:30:35 -0400

Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter: An incredible remake of one of my favorite games of all time, with combat mechanics cherry-picked from across the series, a light dusting of new sidequests and dialogue, a solid new arrangement of the soundtrack (which can be reverted in the settings), and the most appealing 3D art Falcom has done yet. My only real complaints are localization quibbles; it’s annoying that GungHo changed a bunch of proper nouns and even pronunciations rather than maintaining continuity with earlier releases, as NISA did. But that’s not nearly enough to sour me on it—I’ve played the original Trails in the Sky through to the credits multiple times, and I’m thrilled to do it again.
Hades II: It’s still early, but I’m not as high on this one as I hoped I would be. The characters aren’t bouncing off each other quite as well; combat feels a little overcomplicated now; I don’t know that I wanted a wider variety of resource nodes to mine; I don’t even like the music as much. All that said, the core is still solid and it’s still a lot of fun to play. It’s just a victim of the incredibly high standards the first game set. If things stay as they are and my opinion doesn’t change as I play more, a slightly lesser Hades is not the worst place to be; even if my opinion improves, I can’t help but think I’d be more excited if a studio as talented as Supergiant had opted for something less iterative.

August 2025 media

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 23:36:14 -0400

The Magician of Tiger Castle: Pitched as the first novel for adults from Louis Sachar (though personally I think it’s comfortably YA), this is a breezy fable about an immortal magician from a fictional European kingdom. It occasionally evokes Sachar’s magnum opus Holes, particularly in the way the plot jigsaws together, though with its own distinct, slightly sardonic flavor. I read through it in a single afternoon, grinning the whole time.
The Serviceberry: This is by Robin Wall Kimmerer, who you may know from Braiding Sweetgrass. It makes a straightforward and compelling case against the excesses of capitalism, using the reciprocal gift-giving of indigenous societies as her example and the nonhuman natural world as her metaphor. Kimmerer has a real talent for expressing subtlety with plain language, such that her points shine through without the prose feeling overworked.

July 2025 media

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 19:06:14 -0400

Donkey Kong Bananza: Before release, my concern about Bananza was that each level would be like a big tub of sand that you’d have to slowly scoop out to find all of its collectibles. And while there is an element of that, they do a good job of minimizing how frustrating it can get with clever design—you rarely find yourself digging aimlessly in practice, unless you enjoy it. And there’s a top-shelf Nintendo platformer in there too! It’s not quite Odyssey or Galaxy, for my money, but it’s very good. This is the “launch window” title that the Switch 2 really needed, I think; man cannot live by Mario Kart alone. I just hope we don’t have another multi-year wait for Nintendo EPD’s next big blockbuster.
Umamusume: Pretty Derby: Yes, the horse girl one. A gacha game that’s themed around horse racing, filled with anime tropes, and also somehow an idol music thing feels like an almost radioactive combination—“a cigarette-themed slot machine,” as Jacob Geller put it. But I’ve been enjoying it so far, in the way that I enjoy lots of things that are probably bad for me, like fast food. I have a tolerance for gacha mechanics, but the fatal flaw for Umamusume will be the high time commitment: once the novelty wears off I’ll resent running its roguelike career mode every day, which is long even when fast-forwarded. When Genshin is fallow, I can do my dailies in five minutes and put it down…
Close to Vermeer: A documentary about an Amsterdam museum putting on a Vermeer exhibition. I know nothing about the museum world behind the scenes, so it was fun to see some of that here: the scale model of the exhibit they use to determine the layout, the staff testing out how far people ought to stand from the paintings, the sophisticated analytical techniques, the politicking required to borrow art from other museums. There was also a great subplot about the authenticity of certain Vermeer pieces that exposed simmering tension between various groups—collectors and curators, Americans and Europeans, scientists and aesthetes. Really enjoyed this one!

June 2025 media

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 22:55:25 -0400

Mario Kart World: The game is fine. I’m ambivalent about many of the changes—increasingly so, as I spend more time playing—but it’s still Mario Kart, and it’s still fun. The new Knockout Tour mode is the clear highlight of the gameplay additions, and it feels appropriately chaotic. The real unexpected coup here, though, is the soundtrack. It features hundreds of tracks spanning forty-plus years of Mario’s history, all with fantastic new arrangements. (I especially love the ones that treat Mario themes as though they’re jazz standards.) Forget an $80 game—they could have sold me an $80 CD collection.
Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time: I remember being charmed by the original Fantasy Life, though I never finished it for some reason (Dragon Age: Inquisition, probably). Fantasy Life i has much of that same charm, as long as its grind falls on the right side of pleasant for you—it has a cornucopia of progress bars to fill up, and a variety of enthusiastic celebrations on completing them. It also has a bit of a kitchen-sink design philosophy–in addition to the expected crafting and action RPG stuff, there’s also an Animal Crossing-esque town builder, a lightweight open-world area, and a roguelike dungeon mode. It’s a lot!
Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma: This was my actual favorite game of the month. I’d bounced off of Rune Factory in the past, but here everything came together: the story and characters all clicked for me, the combat was at worst passable, and its basis in Japanese folklore and aesthetics felt fresh compared to the Western fantasy mishmash that many of these games use. I worried that the farming bits might involve too much tedium, but it’s surprisingly incidental–the town-side gameplay is really more of a management thing, where you assign tasks to your villagers and then help out as you see fit. Highly recommended!