Gilet, the best a man trapped in Silent Hill can get

I realize I’m probably dating myself with that reference, because thinking about it, I’m not sure when the last time I heard that jingle. For those of you who don’t have back pain, commercials for Gillette razors used to be a lot more musical. Anyway, on to today’s word.

gilet, noun – a sleeveless, outerwear-style jacket usually cut to the hip

Learned from: Silent Hill: Townfall (PC, Playstation 5)

Developed by Screen Burn Interactive

Published by Konami Digital Entertainment, Annapurna Interactive (2026)

You might be saying to yourself, “but that’s just a vest!” but apparently you’d be wrong. And so would I, because until Simon, the game’s protagonist, finds a garment laying on a bed that looks just like the one he’s wearing–which is clearly labeled a gilet–I also called any sleeveless piece of upper body clothing a vest. Or, rarely, a jerkin.

But then, a lot of things aren’t really what I expected them to be in Silent Hill: Townfall, including the town, itself. Instead of the eponymous location that the series has usually been built around, Townfall takes place in a town on an island off of Scotland, called St. Amelia in 1996. And yes, Silent Hill f did this time and place switching as well, but I ran into game-breaking graphical glitches the last time I played that, so I don’t know how well it worked there (I should see if that problem’s been patched out yet). The fog is still there, and so are the really freaking weird creatures shambling through it, but everything else is unpredictable and frankly, a bit fresh as a result. If a bit head-scratching at times.

Like, were there actually prepaid cards for electricity in remote Scottish communities in the mid-90s? Because there’s a puzzle that involves one, and that seems like a pretty bizarre thing to just make up, whole cloth, if there wasn’t some precedent for it. I’d like to think that, in addition to scaring myself half to death and learning at least one new word, maybe I’m also learning a bit about a point in time of the history of another culture.

…okay, so while writing this, I did some digging, and the answer is “Yes. Sort of.” From a quick search, it seems like some regions of Scotland did have cards issued to their residents for utility billing purposes, but they didn’t have to keep feeding money into their fuse box like some kind of demented arcade cabinet, just to keep the lights on. It also seems like they were being phased out in the ’90s, and…this is a rabbit hole I hadn’t anticipated going down, in a game where you play a guy who washes up on the beach of an island he left years ago(?), with an IV bag strapped to his arm that causes him immense pain if he tries to remove the needle. Simon may have bigger things to worry about, but I’m finding myself strangely sidetracked by this random tangential detail.

Anyway, so far Townfall seems to be a successful entry in the series, surviving the switch to a first-person view, the change of venue, and some very interesting visual and design choices. I’m not terribly far in yet, but I think I can already recommend this one.

Townfall was one of my most anticipated games of 2026, but there’s plenty other good horror coming out, if the first-person perspective isn’t your style. So, with Spooky Season upon us, consider bundling up (maybe in something with sleeves), and diving into something creepy.

LFG

My wife and I were looking through photos from this year’s just-finished Dragon Con today. We weren’t there this year, and in fact I’ve only been there once, over a decade ago, now, but it’s always cool to see what people dress up as. From the hundreds of Dungeon Crawler Carl cosplays (there’s always at least one fandom that’s really popular each year), to the deep cuts, like the title character from Teen Wolf in full basketball getup, to the completely outside-the-box ideas like the entire Overlook Hotel from The Shining, you really never know what to expect. And while the teeming crowds might make me a little uncomfortable these days, I do miss the convention experience. And there’s one particular photo that brings us to today’s word.

tabard, noun – a sleeveless jerkin with no sides and a hole for the head, often embroidered with a crest or coat of arms

Learned from: World of Warcraft (PC, Mac)

Developed by Blizzard Entertainment

Published by Blizzard Entertainment (2004)

There’s a lot about this post that has me nostalgic for a time before a pandemic made shoulder-to-shoulder crowds seem icky; when MMOs seemed like they were destined to be the next big thing in gaming; when most games still came in boxes, and multinational corporations weren’t trying to kill physical media entirely. Before the world went mad.

There was one photo from the official Dragon Con Facebook page that featured someone I initially thought was a generic Skyrim guard standing by a quest board. But then I looked closer and saw the Alliance symbol on his tabard, and my wife looked closer still and saw familiar names from the Warcraft universe on, not a quest board, but a wanted board. A great cosplay, as you can see below.

I played WoW (and some of the earlier, non-massively multiplayer Warcraft games), like a fiend, back in the day. Despite being an introvert, there are some memories I made with folks online in that game that would’ve been impossible in single-player games. I even joined a guild at one point, which is how I found out about tabards.

Basically, once a group of players got together and established themselves as a guild, they could design their own guild symbol, and even have it emblazoned on tabards that their members could wear around. And, at least as of when I stopped playing, I think joining a guild was the only way to even get a tabard–and back before you could lock in your equipment’s appearance to whatever you wanted, there was a good chance your character would be walking around looking like they’d walked through a junkyard covered in superglue. So, having at least one piece of equipment that was always visually consistent was kind of a nice thing.

I don’t remember what the crest for the Call of Cthulhu guild looked like after all these years, but they were a good group of folks. But I do remember that what led me to stop playing was when our guild got absorbed into a larger guild, and overnight, that friendly atmosphere disappeared and I couldn’t even find help for basic quests because all anyone wanted to do was the raids.

So yeah, not all nostalgia is good nostalgia. But I still miss those days in more ways than one.

The cosplay in question. Thank you, whoever you are in the armor, for bringing me back to simpler times. Fantastic costume!

Simple joy

I’m writing this at the end of a pretty harsh week. Celebrity deaths usually don’t hit me too hard, but we lost a genuinely good person in Dolly Parton, a fantastically entertaining actor in Tim Curry, and Peter Cullen, who was essentially the voice of my childhood, with how many cartoon characters he brought to life. Losing the three of them in as many days has hit a lot of people pretty hard, myself included. So, I thought it would be good to post something lighthearted, possibly even whimsical in a way, to counteract the gloom a bit.

It’s a bit early in the year, but the leaves are starting to change up here. And as further proof that autumn is just around the corner, there are patches of ground in the cemetery I cut through on my way to work that are practically carpeted in maple seeds. As a kid, I always got a simple joy out of watching those little helicopters spiral their way to the ground, sometimes trying to catch them. And seeing them now reminded me of today’s word.

whirligig, noun – a child’s toy that spins, typically a top or a pinwheel; something that constantly whirls around

Learned from: NetStorm: Islands at War (PC)

Developed by Titanic Entertainment

Published by Activision (1997)

NetStorm came out during the real-time strategy boom of the mid-’90s, when everyone and their grandmother was developing an RTS to cash in on the success of Warcraft II. You had sci-fi takes on the Cold War, ancient civilizations battling it out, robots, and wizards, and games where you were placing monsters in dungeons, trying to keep the heroes out–all vying for attention in a market that, by this time, had all its eyes on the upcoming Starcraft. NetStorm held the distinction of being one of the more thematically unique takes on the genre, though it wasn’t enough to save it.

The game was set on islands in the sky that you built up and connected as the game went on, sort of Tetris-style, trying to set things up in such a way that you could build what you needed and supply power to different buildings…I think. I only ever played the demo of this (I gather the instruction manual for the full game was practically a novella), so I did the best I could to make sense of the built-in tutorial. Anyway, being set in the sky, there were various tech trees broken up into things like Sun, Wind, and Storms, I think. One of the units I remember most was the Whirligig, which would spiral through the air across the map to drop bombs on the enemy. But there were also lightning cannons, and solar death rays, and airships–the last of which were important for capturing the enemy’s high priest (to sacrifice them and win the match), if memory serves.

To call NetStorm ambitious is something of an understatement. I remember being a little lost at sea, trying to juggle three or four different tech trees, all of which required different resources and arrangements of your islands. It was surprisingly deep and complex, and while I remember being intrigued, I never did pick up the full version. And it seems I wasn’t the only one; NetStorm virtually disappeared as soon as it came out. I don’t remember any talk of it on forums, or even many reviews, and I probably would have felt a bit cheated if I had spent my allowance on it, given how sparse the multiplayer scene must have been.

And that’s a bit of a shame. NetStorm was weird, but it certainly had its own identity, with a style that was a mix of tribalism and steampunk that at the time I hadn’t ever really seen before–and rarely, since. I’m sure there was depth there that would’ve been satisfying to fully explore, but it released into a market that was already pretty saturated, and just a year before the juggernaut that was Starcraft hit the scene…making this another game that Blizzard inadvertently helped murder before it had a chance to shine. RIP, Battleborn.

With all the unexpected game remakes and revivals these days, maybe it’s not too much to hope for someone to pick up the rights to *NetStorm*? It’s gotta be cheap.

Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage

I have a few days off from work coming up, and I’m not wholly sure how the place is going to function in my absence. I also don’t think I care. I put in for this PTO before various circumstances led up to be operating with literally half the staff we’re supposed to have. At the time I put in the request, it was largely just because I didn’t want to deal with people and political talk for a few days around voting in the primaries (I put in for time off in early November for a similar reason). But now? We’ve been barely a skeleton crew for over two months, and it turns out this brief respite from work is more for my mental health than anything else. Which brings us to today’s word.

zoochosis, noun – a condition arising in captive animals presenting as repetitive and/or harmful behaviors, believed to be caused from the stress of captivity

Learned from: Zoochosis (PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, XBox One, XBox Series X/S)

Developed by Clapperheads

Published by Clapperheads, Storymode (2024)

Full disclosure: I have never actually played Zoochosis. It landed on my radar because the initial trailers looked creepy and different: You play as an overnight zookeeper who discovers that some of the animals in your care are infected with alien parasite things that cause them to mutate into Resident Evil-style abominations under certain conditions. It was a neat concept, and the trailers made it seem like once one of these animals transformed, you’d either have to chase it, or be chased yourself, potentially through the entire zoo, until you managed to escape or subdue it.

Then the game came out, the reviews were decidedly lukewarm at best, and I decided to watch a bit of gameplay before I decided to buy it.

I’m glad I did, because most of what the early trailers put forth was misleading at best. The basic setting is the same, but you don’t discover these horrors for yourself–you’re straight-up told about them, because the zoo administration is aware and actively cultivating these parasites for…reasons. The zoo is also significantly more compartmentalized than it initially seemed, meaning you have to deal with each set of animals/mutants in a pretty small area. Add in bad voice acting, dodgy animations, and gameplay that seemed much more tedious than expected, and I’m glad I didn’t pull the trigger on this one. That’s not even touching on the laundry list of bugs that, judging from the comments on Steam, have largely gone unfixed.

I actually didn’t know zoochosis was a real word until just recently; I figured it was just something the developers made up as a cool-sounding title. So, for as much of a mess as the final product turned out to be, at least I got something out of the disappointment.

I wanted to run from mutant giraffe monsters through a dimly-lit zoo, not play a first-person farming sim sprinkled with glitchy, half-baked, small-scale combat.

They always told us vegetables were good for you

It’s 2026, and the wealthiest country in the world is dealing with food sanitation issues you’d have expected maybe in the 19th century. The biggest headlines are about cyclosporiasis, which seems to be caused by a single-celled parasite being found in an ever-increasing list of produce. That’s not to say the life of a carnivore is any safer, since screw worms are literally eating livestock alive. Oh, and half the continent is currently on fire. What a great time to be alive. Though, at least one of those things brings us to today’s word.

amoeba, noun – a single-celled organism that engulfs its prey using pseudopods

Learned from: The Boulder Dash Construction Kit (Apple II, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, PC, ZX Spectrum)

Developed by First Star Software

Published by Epyx, Databyte (1986)

I learned something today, in looking up this game; the Boulder Dash Construction Kit is apparently the fourth game in the series. I’d always assumed it was just the first game, with a level editor included. Maybe that’s why some of the levels seemed so tricky to my much younger self.

At any rate, the series casts you as a cave explorer looking for diamonds, while avoiding amoebas (which would keep multiplying unless you walled them off and suffocated them), slime (which slowed you down I think), moths (which…ate you?), and of course, the titular boulders (which could crush you as boulders tend to do), and other things I’m probably forgetting. The levels ranged from fairly straightforward to maddeningly difficult, and while I dabbled in the level editor a bit, I never really liked the game enough to make many stages. Not that there was an Internet around back then to share them on anyway–that was an incentive later in life, and I did make a few multiplayer Half-Life maps back in the day. But if nothing else, the game taught me a word or two.

Totally not Indiana Jones, you hear us, Lucasfilm?!

And good riddance

Since at least 3/4 of my news feed today is about Linsey Graham’s sudden death, I may as well chime in on it. The man was a spineless hypocrite, even by the so-low-you-could-trip-over-them standards of the GOP. He was staunchly anti-Trump, calling him a “kook” and saying if he got the Republican nomination, “we’d be destroyed, and we’d deserve it”…up until both the nomination and election went to him in 2016, at which point Graham couldn’t lick those boots hard enough. Same when Trump ruthlessly and continuously mocked Graham’s close friend, John McCain; I’ve seen stronger pushbacks from paraplegics. And then of course, there’s his record regarding women’s rights, gay marriage, and really anyone who wasn’t a crusty old white dude. He was a pestilent dung heap of a human being, and the world is better off without him. Which brings us to today’s word.

objurgate, verb – to denounce, condemn, severely rebuke

Learned from: Neverness to Everness (PC, Mac, mobile, Playstation 5)

Developed by Hotta Studio

Published by Perfect World Games (2026)

We got anime Grand Theft Auto, before GTA6, except with paranormal stuff and catgirls with superpowers, so I’d argue there’s no real reason for GTA6 to even exist, honestly. Especially when it’s going to cost $80, while Neverness to Everness is free to play. And yeah, it’s a gacha game, but there’s a surprising amount of stuff to do without spending a dime. Want to steal cars and get into fights with biker gangs and the cops? Go for it. Want to get lost in a D&D-inspired game-within-a-game and go on a medieval hack & slash adventure? Well, you have to progress the main story to get to it, but it’s there. Want to explore pocket dimensions where you’re being chased by shadows that only move if your back is turned; or fight spectral fish who are causing trouble by following a river that no longer exists; or run down a tanuki who’s stealing from vending machines? There’s weird stuff around every corner. Or you can play mahjong, or go fishing, or do street races, or buy and decorate an apartment, or…yeah, it’s a lot.

And it’s populated by a cast of quirky and (mostly) likable characters. There’s also Taygedo, but we don’t talk about Taygedo.

But the good characters range from the catgirl who fancies herself a mob boss, to the werewolf security agent, to the guy whose move set taught me today’s word, who I…don’t really know much about. I got him on my team through a random pull, but he hasn’t shown up a ton in the story yet. His name’s Baicang, and he curses enemies. One of the curses is called objurgate, which deals AoE damage…I think. See, his curses are all tied to activations in a string of combos, where Chinese characters pop up over enemies as he fights them. The problem being, I don’t read Chinese, so I’m not sure which curse I’m ever going to activate at any given time. He still dishes out a lot of damage, but my strategy with him is trash, because while his skill descriptions are in English, the visuals aren’t. So, I never know what I’m really tossing out there.

Still, NTE is a fun game so far. Maybe a bit on the easy side sometimes, but there’s enough to see and do in the city of Hethereau, that even if the combat isn’t often a challenge, there’s still a lot of other stuff to experience.

Based on the official title card from the game, Baicang works for the Bureau of Anomaly Control, likes a good drink, and seems pretty professional. In-game, he comes across as a bit more of a loose cannon.

Can’t touch this

I was talking to a coworker today about the recent holiday weekend. Neither of us went to the fireworks, because we don’t really like crowds–especially post-COVID. And I mentioned how it’s kind of amazing that I actually went to a convention as big as Dragon Con about ten years ago, considering people were packed into the hallways like sardines. Simpler times, and I guess being in costume helped. But that brings us to today’s word.

aphenphosmphobia, noun – the fear of being touched

Learned from: Death Stranding (PC, Mac, Playstation 4, Playstation 5, XBox Series X/S)

Developed by Kojima Productions

Published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, 505 Games (2019)

If you know me personally, you know I am not a fan of Hideo Kojima. At all. I think his games are bloated and pretentious, and the man really should just start making movies. But Death Stranding was free on the Epic Games Store at one point, and for that price, I figured it was worth a try. I still want my money back.

In the future, a cataclysmic event has fractured the United States, and inexplicably caused what remains to look an awful lot like Iceland. Invisible monsters roam the land which can only be detected by weird test tube babies, and if someone dies they explode for some reason, unless their bodies are properly dealt with. And we’re expected to take all this seriously, when the game is populated by characters with names like “Die-Hardman.”

I hate Hideo Kojima so much.

Anyway, our hero, Sam Porter Bridges, is tasked with delivering cargo from one isolated settlement to another, to try and reestablish connections between people. And in case the “joke” in his name flew over your head, I’m pretty sure the game explains to you how fitting it is, considering he’s porting things to people to build bridges. Oh, and Sam has aphenphosmphobia. The irony!

Most of the “gameplay” involves you guiding Sam across vast expanses of empty, bizarrely treeless wilderness (because again, post-apocalyptic America looks like Iceland, I guess), listening to mellow music and trying to avoid any slopes that are too steep–because Sam might fall and hurt himself or damage his cargo. And honestly, the implied threat of having to make the long, boring trek back to base after making a misstep was enough to keep me meticulously navigating him through the first mission. Then I got to the second task, and encountered roving gangs of people who are just so keen on making deliveries, that they attack any couriers they see to try and steal their cargo, and I just couldn’t anymore.

I don’t care how cool the boss fights look. They aren’t worth suffering through the rest of the game.

The fury of a thousand suns

Part of what I love about this blog is that I occasionally still find new words to add to it in the present day. Coming home from an awful day at work and playing a good game is a welcome relief; discovering a new word in the process is even better. And believe me, the days at work lately have been truly abysmal. We aren’t operating with a skeleton crew so much as a stick figure drawn by a kid in the remedial class. Barebones would be an improvement, and it’s making me increasingly angry, especially since the closest end in sight is at least a month away. That’s a story for another time, but in a roundabout way, it brings us to today’s word.

sinter, verb – to heat a powder until it bonds into a solid

Learned from: Mina the Hollower (PC, Mac, Nintendo Switch 1&2, Playstation 5, XBox Series X/S)

Developed by Yacht Club Games

Published by Yacht Club Games (2026)

Mina the Hollower is an interesting little game that’s a bit like old-school Zelda on steroids. You play as the eponymous Mina, a mouse engineer who’s tasked with repairing a group of generators you built some time ago, because they’re mysteriously breaking down. Along the way, you’ll die a lot, fight a wide variety of enemies, and occasionally throw their remains into the trusty bone sinterer in your hideout to use as resources for leveling up. You know, just like Zelda.

Actually, there’s quite a lot here that sets Mina apart, even in just the four or five hours I’ve spent with it so far. You still have the top-down open world, an array of secondary weapons that also sometimes have utility in traversing the map, and all that, but if you dig just a little under the surface, things get more interesting and complex.

Pun fully intended, because one of the game’s core mechanics involves burrowing underground. You can do this to dodge enemies, get more distance on your jumps, move faster, unearth buried items, and more. It takes some getting used to–especially learning what you can tunnel under safely, and which things will still hurt you–but it becomes a really fun and engaging gameplay mechanic after awhile. I’m not 100% sure the game is worth the hype it’s been getting yet, but it’s not bad by any stretch.

The game thoughtfully provided its own definition. Which is about the most generous thing it’ll offer you as a player; *Mina the Hollower* is hard!

Hard to stomach

I recently got back from a weekend-long trip to visit some friends I haven’t seen in far too long. We watched terrible movies, played a bunch of board games, beat another escape room, and drank enough alcohol that by all rights, the weekend should have turned into the beginning of Disco Elysium, or maybe the old Neuromancer adventure game, at some point. Especially if you take into account that some of the booze was nearly an entire bottle of Malort. Which brings us to today’s word.

duodenum, noun – the part of the small intestine that connects to the stomach

Learned from: Earthworm Jim (Sega Genesis, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Game Gear, PC, Sega CD, Sega Master System, Super Nintendo)

Developed by Shiny Entertainment

Published by Playmates Interactive Entertainment (1994)

I feel like a lot of things in this post require some degree of explanation, so let’s get the worst one out of the way. If you aren’t…acquainted with Malort, it’s a liquor most closely-associated with the Chicago area, though you can find it anywhere these days. Because we live in the worst timeline. Malort tastes like what you’d get if someone bought a crate of grapefruits, stored them in a basement next to the furnace, and upon finding them again a year later, made the decision to ferment them in a bathtub that hasn’t been cleaned since the Bush administration.

It is vile, and for some reason, one of my friends brought a bottle, and offered to go shot-for-shot with anyone else who drank it. Somehow, nobody died. Or even puked, that I’m aware of.

Earthworm Jim is a character created by the artist, Doug TenNapel, and the game he stars in could only have come out in the era it did, when Ren & Stimpy was somehow normal, and all bets were off. It was also one of those games that varied drastically, depending on which system you played it on–to the extent that the Genesis version had an entire extra level, which I believe was the lair of Doc Duodenum.

When your main character is a regular earthworm who crawls into a discarded space suit that turns him sentient, bipedal, and buff, and whose kidnapped girlfriend is an ant princess (I think), having one of his enemies be a disembodied organ who is also a mad scientist doesn’t seem any…more…weird, I guess.

At the time though, the game stood out for its fantastic art style, smooth animations, and fun platforming, as much as its large cast of bizarre characters (Evil the Cat was always a personal favorite). I remember the sequel being a bit of a disappointment, but if you can track down the original today, it’s well-worth playing.

In my headcanon, Doc Duodenum is the inventor of Malort.

You oughta know

As we progress further and further into a dystopian cyberpunk future, without most of the cool tech, I occasionally find myself looking back at what might’ve been. I mean, if we’re careening toward a megacorp-controlled future anyway, we should at least have the magic from Shadowrun, or the consciousness backups of Altered Carbon, or the the cybernetic limbs of…well, any of them. Instead, it’s just the growing social and economic inequality, AI threatening our jobs, and rising international tensions and violence. Which brings us to today’s word.

aught, noun – zero, nothing

Learned from: Deus Ex (PC, Macintosh, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 2, Playstation 5, XBox Series X/S)

Developed by Ion Storm

Published by Eidos Interactive (2000)

Deus Ex was one of the first immersive sim games I played. You could call it an RPG. You could call it an action game. Or a stealth game. Any of those labels fit, depending on how you wanted to play it, and for the time, that was mind-blowing. Hell, you could even beat most of the bosses without directly fighting them, if you did the in-game research to find their weaknesses. You really could do anything.

Well…pretty much. The first mission or two is more or less set in stone–including the part where you’re handed a 30.06 (or thirty-aught-six) sniper rifle–because they had to set the stage somehow. Also, there’s no option to just stick with the organization you start off working for, after a certain point. Which is understandable, because the folks at Ion Storm would have had to make essentially an entire separate game if you could. And sure, the ending you get does ultimately boil down to a single choice you make in the final chapter, but everything in between is up to you.

Want to take the slow, careful, stealthy approach? Go for it. Do you desire to commit literal war crimes every time you run into an enemy? Go nuts, as long as you have enough white phosphorous rounds. Want to hack your way through every security system? Talk your way through things? A mix of any or all of the above? Just wander your way through the world, uncovering weird experiments, government coverups, maybe/possibly aliens, and more? The neon-lit world is your oyster. Deus Ex was remarkable when it released over a quarter of a century ago, and I’d wager it’s still worth visiting now. Just don’t let the blocky, low-res character models throw you off.