Tag: crisis | A Banana Peeled

Tag Archives: crisis

Why I don’t play certain games (part four)

Posted on February 22, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I have more to say about games I play/don’t play/the state of the industry. I mean, there’s a lot going on there. Most of it is extremely shitty at the moment. I wrote about it in yesterday’s post, but I have more to say today. It’s pretty fucking bleak. I can’t stop thinking about how PlayStation announced on Thursday, February 19th that it was closing Bluepoint Games. People were talking about it (of course), and I thought it would carry us to the weekend. Most people were furious about it, and I thought that would take us into the weekend.

But, no. Xbox, as they have done for the past few years, said to PlayStation: Hold my beer! In their 25th anniversary year, on a Friday, Microsoft announced that Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox had ‘retired’ and that the second in command (president), Sarah Bond ‘resigned’.

Look. This is just bullshit. I mentioned it yesterday, but I wanted to say it again. It’s fucking bullshit. I don’t doubt that Phil Spencer was planning on retiring sometime soon, but I highly doubt that he would choose to it right before the 25th anniversary (November). And Sarah Bond ‘resigning’? Naw, son. She was presumed to be Spencer’s heir apparent, and there’s no way she would resign abruptly on a Friday night.

This is all ridiculous. And I’m mad that PlayStation seems to be getting away with shitcanning Bluepoint Games.

Side note: Ok. We have to talk about the elephant in the room. A Bloodborne remake. Bear with me. Ever since remakes have become the rage, there’s one that comes up time and time again. Bloodborne (FromSoft). It’s actually pretty funny to watch From fans bring it up every time there’s a big event, only to have their hopes dashed once again.

I’m not in the know at all, but it has always been obvious to me that From did not want to do a remake/remaster/touch it at all. In fact, I would gather than Miyazaki did not like to think of a game once he was done with it. He doesn’t like to do sequels. He had someone else direct Dark Souls II and some say Dark Souls III, though Miyazaki is credited with being the director of the third game. With the latter game, there are conflicting opinions on why he did that game. Some think he did it to make up for the shortcomings of the first game because he did not have the time to finish that one in the manner in which he would have preferred.

Others think that it was just a cynical cash grab. Or rather, that they did the third game in order to make money to do other things. I have not seen anything that supports or validates the second opinion, but of course people are going to say that. I’m not saying that it’s not true. It does seem like he doesn’t like to repeat himself, so I can see that he might have done the sequels begrudgingly. But he did do them.

This is my long-ass way of getting to the point. Which I’m not there yet.

When it rains, the umbrella breaks

Posted on February 3, 2023 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

So. Today I went to the car so I could go to the grocery store. The battery was dead. Ugh. I called my brother to confirm how to jumpstart the battery. He gave me a battery charger years ago beacuse I’m single and he’s the one I would call to demand a jump from (and have done). I got the car going, which is great! But the emergency exclamation point light was on (which, I’ll say was the case yesterday–and I thought it was probably low air pressure in my tires as that has happened before), but then another light came on. A message saying to check the hybrid system with an angry red warning symbol.

Well, hell. I Googled it and discovered that it could range anywhere from the car is about to immediately explode to the sensors might be bruised. I have done the very mature thing of deciding this isn a problem for next-week me, which is the adult equivalent of putting my fingers in my ears and pretending I can’t hear someone screaming at me.

My brother called me back and told me it could be a fuse. I really hope that’s all it is. There’s another light on, but I know what that one is. It’s an exclamation point in parentheses–which my brother said is a tire that is flat on the bottom. I can see it now that he’s said it, but I always thought of it as an exclamation point in parentheses (though I call them brackets). I did Google it the first time I saw it and realized it had to do with air pressure, but I never made the connection to the image. I don’t go by images–I go by words.

So this is a angry red triangle with an exclamation point in it. My brother insists it’s orange from the pic he saw on the internet, but it’s red in person. Or this could ba a blue dress/gold dress situation. Anyway, as I was talking to my brother, I went out to the car bectause my brother said there should be another message, and I had thought I had seen one.

I did not. Instead, the check hybrid system message and angry red exclamation triangle both started flickering on and off. Like, it was there, then it would disappear. A few seconds later, it was back> I informed my brother what was happening, and he said it might be a fuse.

This is what I think is wild. The message covers everything from a fuse being wonky to the hybrid battery being bad. That’s a five dollar problem and a several thousands of dollars problem. It makes my head hurt to think that it could be anything from one to the other. Five bucks could fix the problem or it might take $8,000. If it’s anything close to the latter, it might be time to buy a new car.