This Week In Media: Music, Games, and More

RandomCrazyNews #2 8/28/20 The day after the first "RandomCrazyNews" entry was released, we started something called "Song of the Day" on our Instagram page. This is pretty self-explanatory; we'd post one song each day in our story with the same formatting. We've compiled it into a highlight, and at the time of writing this, we've surpassed 70 days. The songs vary heavily in terms of artists and genre, and they are simply songs we like. At first, the songs followed a weekly category, but that was abolished a few weeks later, and now these songs are random. Many are more indie songs or hidden gems from bigger artists that we hope to introduce our fans to. Go follow us on Instagram to stay updated with "Song of the Day" and more news at @randomcrazystudios. Also in June, we released our first ever live performance on YouTube. It was performed live on Friday, June 26th, and later released to YouTube on June 29th. Setting everything up and recordin...

August 24th, 2020: Fanboy Roundup #4 8/24/20 Topic #1: "Ninjala" Review The Nintendo Switch eShop's well-known variety of indies vary in quality, and quite a few of these are free games. Naturally, free games on other platforms would be published by big companies and riddled with micro transactions, but Nintendo's been different for the most part. Today, we're discussing two new somewhat heavily-marketed free Switch games that were released at the end of June this year. The first of which is called "Ninjala"; a game described as a ninja and bubblegum game. At first glance, this is clearly a free-to-play Splatoon ripoff. It's a game in a more American style of Splatoon's said Japanese punk. When the game launched, the multiplayer was notoriously bad, which immediately turned people off of the game. It had a way bigger install base than initially planned, but that's no excuse for unpreparedness. Nonetheless, many people realized they had overhy...

Alex the Astronaut - The Theory of Absolutely Nothing (Review) 8/21/20 DISCLAIMER: As a fan of Bright Eyes for nearly as long as I can remember, I would usually jump to review their new album. Though, I want to construct my opinions more on that and perhaps do it after the upcoming "Fanboy Roundup" on the 24th. Also, this review is very subject to change as I listen to the album more in the coming weeks. That's what happened with Phoebe Bridgers, and I give Punisher a 9/10 now. Ever since her breakout Australian gay anthem "Not Worth Hiding", Alex the Astronaut has since proven to be another gay indie icon. Her style can only be described as "indie"; it never really crosses into true rock and it's just barely too heavy and fast to be considered folk. She's stood on this confusing yet lovely line for a while, and it's going to be very exciting to see how she makes this style into an album. Artists like Mac DeMarco have done this many times b...

The Rise and Fall of Fortnite 8/18/20 DISCLAIMER: I like the idea of doing these "rise and fall" essays as an unofficial series when there's not much to talk about and I have a lot of time to pump out a quality essay. Let me know what you think by messaging us at our @randomcrazystudios Instagram and we'll get back to you as soon as possible. I also have one of these planned for TikTok and I might look back a bit and do musical.ly and/or Vine essay. Also, let us know whether you like these app or trend discussions because they're pretty fun and interesting to write, and we're always looking to branch out. In July of 2017, a new survival game not much different from the recent "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds". This game was called "Fortnite", but it was much different from what comes to mind when you hear that game now. Today, "Fortnite" is known for its free to play battle royale mode, which was released two months later after ...

A Very Smurt Retrospective Theory #1 - The Depersonalization of Very Smurt and the Hidden Meaning Behind It All 1/24/20 - 8/15/20 DISCLAIMER: This is a completely reworked essay from January 24th, 2020. It is a deeper dive into the tracks of "Meme God" rather than the marketing like the last essay was. This is the first part in something of a spin-off series to the Very Smurt Retrospective. It will be entitled "A Very Smurt Retrospective Theory". Please bare with us as we fight through COVID-related struggles to get out completely new and original content, thank you. These will count as full essays, but be posted much less frequently as they are sort of a backup of normal blog posts. This essay's paragraphs are also a little more sparse than normal. In essays in this future spin-off series that I write from scratch, they will be longer. If you are unfarmiliar with what the original series is, the first "A Very Smurt Retrospective" post on July 28th exp...

A Very Smurt Retrospective Pt. 2: The Debut Album 8/11/20 DISCLAIMER: If you are currently unaware of what this is, it is all explained in the disclaimer of our first entry in this series released on July 28th. Also, please excuse the fact that the first entry is in formatting shambles; it will be fixed as soon as possible. For most musicians, the debut commercial album is their first big splash into a music career. It also aims to introduce as many people as possible to their music. For Very Smurt, this was announced on October 18th, 2018, with an Instagram post containing the album cover and its title. Smurt went into this project having a large following backing him up incase of failure. Though at that time, the Dreamy Meme Team, soon renamed to the Gang Gang, was more likely to fail than this album. With Lil Creeper kicked out, Smurt's solo efforts betraying the group, a mutual distrust of Stacey's Dad, and the war of the two EPs, things had broken into shambles. As one mig...

What Does a Pikmin 3 Port Mean for Nintendo? 8/7/20 DISCLAIMER: This essay was written on August 5th right after my viewing of the “Pikmin 3 Deluxe” trailer. These were my raw, early thoughts on the game. If these change drastically, or more important news comes out about the game, I’ll post a redux discussion. The “August 7th” in the title is technically just the publishing date, but it’s usually the writing and editing day as well. Also, these are my thoughts, but out of boredom I’ve edited this essay a lot more extensively than I normally would. I would do this for every essay if I gave myself more time to put quality over quantity, but that’s a discussion for another day. So, it appears that Nintendo’s holiday title this year will be a port. Perhaps not “Pikmin 3 Deluxe”, but if they had any true new video games ready for us, they would already have been announced. “Paper Mario: The Origami King” seems to have set a COVID standard of around two months between reveal and release, wi...

DaBaby - BLAME IT ON BABY (DELUXE) (Review) 8/4/20 DISCLAIMER: This review is going to be more track-by-track than others because I felt it would be cool to take you readers through my listening experience and have something of an overview at the end. I'm aware it's weird that this is my second deluxe album review in two essays. As mentioned in my last essay, this format is quickly coming back. Though, while some artists like Earl Sweatshirt add a single and a one-minute track and call it done, DaBaby called it a "new album", added 10 new tracks, and a remix. Before I dive into more DaBaby, I should probably state some thoughts on his music. One of the main minor arguments against him is that his flow and most of his beats are all the same. I honestly can't argue with this, but if you've struck stylistic gold, then a switch-up only every once in a while is perfectly fine. Then again, with two new albums every year, it could get repetitive a couple of years fro...

Earl Sweatshirt - FEET OF CLAY (Deluxe) (Review) 8/1/20 DISCLAIMER: Sorry if you're seeing this late, it had trouble posting last night and I didn't realize until now. I also forgot to promote it on the Instagram story, sorry. Normally, I wouldn't review albums and EPs nine months after they release. Though, thanks to the "Deluxe" album that seems to be returning to the mainstream in these past couple years, I get to review Earl Sweatshirt's latest album. Some might simply review the last two tracks that were added to the deluxe edition as exclusives, but I have had strong opinions on this album ever since it launched. I haven't had a medium to express these opinions until now, so I'm very happy I have an excuse. This review also gets a little more track-by-track than my others, but I'll try to focus on the main album and discuss the tracks to support my opinions.  Earl Sweatshirt's "FEET OF CLAY" was never, and is still not, a bad al...