Kanye is Back, New-I's, and More: Fanboy Roundup #6
October 24th, 2020: Fanboy Roundup #6
10/24/20
Topic #1: Fire Emblem Migrates West for the Winter
April 20th, 1990 marked not only the tragic death of Scottish actor Alex McCrindle, but also the release of the first Fire Emblem game in Japan. The game has perhaps one of the best names of the first installment in a game franchise, with "Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light". This game was famous for never coming to western audiences, but to mark the broader year of its 30th anniversary, they are finally porting it to the Switch. Interestingly enough, it's not coming over in the form of Nintendo's online Virtual Console, but as a six-dollar eShop title. Though, surprisingly, it's also being released alongside many brand new collectibles and trinkets for fans of the "Fire Emblem" franchise (pictured above). There's certainly a lot of content here, and even though I'm not a huge "Fire Emblem" fan myself, I can easily appreciate how wonderful this must be to diehard fans. Hopefully this means that more Japanese games now have something of a potential for coming over to newer consoles. My most wanted is Gamecube's "Doshin the Giant"; frankly because being a huge derpy monster god seems fun as all hell.
Topic #2: Nah Nah Nahnye! (New Single)
A day less than a year ago today, Kanye West released his latest studio album "JESUS IS KING". It was a weird one, for sure, and like a lot of fans, I personally think it was one of his worst. Not even Nostradamus could predict where Kanye would go with any of his next albums musically, but following this latest album, it's clear to see its successor will probably have a religious angle. This is what I had thought for awhile, and still thought through the somewhat popularity streak of "Wash Us in the Blood"; a single protesting racism released back in June. I figured that song wasn't just praising biblical figures because it was something of a one-off single to bring more awareness to the horrific things going on in society. What I did not expect, however, was for Kanye to pull a fifteen-year-old Soundcloud rapper on us with this latest track "Nah Nah Nah". It was released just over a week back now, and it's pretty terrible. It's Kanye usually rapping pretty bad bars, sometimes in an off-beat type of flow that does not work whatsoever, while all over a generic trap banger beat. Maybe some fans of the genre would like this song, but I am a relative fan of the genre, and I think this track is terrible. Perhaps my personal hopes and expectations for Kanye's future didn't entail such bad music, but this is probably the most unpredictable artist in music right now. For all we know, the recently rumored "Donda" will be an instrumental house-fusion record.
Topic #3: Ninth-Generation UI Reveal: PS5 Opinions
The Xbox Series consoles and the PlayStation 5 have been at constant war this year, and it seems to get increasingly intense every day. When one company does something, the other has to follow suit within mere days it seems. In this case, (from my perception, at least), both companies came so close as to announce their user interfaces on the same day. Starting with PlayStation, I'll say they brought some interesting features to the table. Luckily for Sony, however, nothing was too controversial; perhaps because many were pleased with the amount of new and changed content. A good user interface should be something that veterans and newcomers alike should be familiar with almost instantly, and PlayStation seems to have at least covered that front for PS4 owners. To me, it all seems confusing despite my many past experiences with PS4s, but perhaps I was just overwhelmed with the features. All in all, while I am a PlayStation fan, I'm not a very huge supporter, but all that should matter is that fans are mostly pleased.
Topic #4: Ninth-Generation UI Reveal: Xbox Series Opinions
The definitive YouTube announcement for the Xbox Series X/S user interface was very hard to find, and I'm convinced does not exist. Nonetheless, I was able to come across multiple videos using it actively while avoiding a general public opinion as to not influence my own opinions on the system. Some people may remember the time I planned to make a string of blogposts relating to the Xbox Series in its own... well, series. These are consoles I personally still want to buy and while this UI reveal might make me a little more skeptical, it won't stop me from buying the system. The user interface looks a bit too confusingly modern, and seems to try to pack too many features in, which in turn obscures it from being clear or direct. I feel the exact same about the PS5, but I think that some of the features shown off were much more necessary and cool. The Series X/S UI looks like a lot of pointless new features meshed in with a bunch of useful old features that were barely improved upon. This time, however, things are much more jumbled up, and the very obscure things are sometimes advertised far more than things one might need and use more. The one major great takeaway from this that makes it at least a worthy competitor to the PS5 UI is the extensive customization. There are a lot of things that you can re-arrange to exactly where you want them, and a lot of different background themes available immediately as well. Overall, while the user interface might look bad in its default setting, the user experience may just turn out to be much more pleasant.
Topic #5: New Ariana Grande Album and Single
In early 2019, Ariana Grande went from releasing a pretty forgettable album on my twelfth birthday to releasing an album twice as good with twice the popularity. She cranked out this second album in under six months, mind you. If I had any say in the matter, I would tell Ariana to take a break and work on the quality of her music at least until 2021, but her past release schedule says different. A pretty decently scheduled twenty months later, Ariana randomly announces she'll be releasing a brand new album, presumably named "Positions", within the next couple of weeks. This was pretty shocking, and while people are still unsure of whether this album should prevail or flop, it's a wild announcement nonetheless. A little over a week following this announcement, (yesterday as of writing this), we received the title track as an all-new single from the album. Upon listening, I think it's a pretty standard modern Ariana track, but falls more on the "Sweetner" side of things. It's a slightly generic pop ballad over a trap beat that falls short of any potential the also somewhat generic lyrics could've had. Ariana defining her new style first appearing in "Sweetner" is always a good thing, but this is a style that seems to rely too heavily on a formulaic approach with most of these albums singles. It's going to be interesting to see where she takes this album; it will either be genuinely good, so bad it's good, or so bad it's bad, just god forbid it be the same thing as her last two.
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