As a publicly-acknowledged atheist who often has to defend my atheism against friends, colleagues, family, and the occasional real-life troll lurking around a natural history museum (seriously, that actually happened to me when I visited the Smithsonian in real life), I have a casual interest in theology, religious history, and apologetics. I listen to lectures on the historicity of Jesus, and debates about the origin of the universe or life, and so on. I'm thoroughly inoculated against the standard apologetics of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, watchmaker, absolute morality, and so forth. I appreciate when media is willing to engage with theological debate honestly and directly, instead of relying on the typical tropes of the incredulous skeptic (who is also often mopey, depressive, and cynical) that we see so often in TV and movies.

I don't remember exactly where I heard about Indika, but as soon as I did, I added it to my PSN wishlist and bought it when it went on sale. The elevator pitch of a game about a nun who thinks she's possessed by Satan seemed immediately interesting and entertaining. The fact that the game is actually very thoughtful and intelligent with its religious themes (rather than simply being a crass joke) only made it more appealing.

It's unclear to me if some voice-overs are the voices in Indika's head, or just an external narrator.
It often points out contradictions and hypocrisies of religious beliefs and activities, such as the futility of her labors.

Naughty nun and pious criminal

Indika is a thoroughly weird game. I would not be surprised if it ends up being the weirdest game that I play all year. It's a strange mix of walking sim, puzzle-platformer, and retro arcade. It's part Hellblade, part Edith Finch, maybe even part Sonic the Hedgehog, and very Russian.

Put simply, the protagonist, Indika, is a woman who was sent to a convent to become a nun, against her will, because of some perceived sin. She doesn't want to be there, but she's a genuinely nice and obedient person who fulfills her duties to the best of her abilities. Unfortunately for her, the "best of her abilities" isn't good enough. You see, she hears voices in her head, and sees visions of demons, that make her do and say things that are not quite appropriate, and which have earned her the severe disapproval of the other nuns.

One day, one of the nuns at the convent sends her out on an errand to deliver a letter to a monastery in a neighboring town. On the way, she encounters an escaped convict, named Ilya, who believes that God talks to him, and that he is kept alive by an explicit miracle from God. He has a gangrenous arm, but has survived with it for weeks without amputation, and without succumbing to sepsis. The 2 are an unlikely and ironic pair, a nun who thinks she is possessed by Satan, and a convict who thinks he is one of God's chosen people. They decide to accompany each other on a quest to a cathedral, where they hope a holy artifact can bless them both with a miracle -- to heal Ilya's arm, and to exorcise Indika's demonic possession.

Indika questions why God would make people broken, and give them free will, only to demand piety and obedience.

The concept is darkly humorous, and the game plays this humor up throughout. But it also uses the dichotomy of the 2 characters (and their specific predicaments) to explore the ideas of piety, morality, sin, free will, and the existence of a soul. And it does so earnestly and honestly, despite the wacky, whimsical nature of the circumstances and the actual game. The questions that the game poses could potentially have been pulled straight out of any apologetics book, or from an episode of The Atheist Experience.

Because Indika has a habit of making frequent small mistakes, which she often attributes to "sin", she is particularly interested in the idea of the moral equivalence of different sins. Specifically, can an accumulation of little sins add up to the equivalent of a larger, mortal sin like murder? And if so, how many such minor sins would one have to commit to damn themself to hell, the same as a murderer? Since Ilya sees himself as destined by God for a greater purpose, he is particularly interested in the ideas of pre-destination and free will. The 2 characters go back and forth about these topics (and others) several times throughout their journey together.

Well, I hate to have to do this, but I have to make a bit of a retraction to my previous blog about College Football 25. As many of you probably know, I posted a pair of blogs a few weeks back, expressing some of my biggest challenges with College Football 25. Those blogs were focused on the difficulty of the kicking meter, and problems that I was having adjusting to the revised option controls.

I stand by most of what was presented in both of those blogs. After all, the core complaint of both was the lack of tutorials and a Skill Trainer to teach the new mechanics, and the lack of difficulty and customization settings to make these mechanics easier to use for people who are struggling. The lack of such features is still an absolutely valid complaint, and EA has yet to take any steps to address it, other than to include QR Codes linking to online tutorial videos, which you have to watch on a separate device because EA didn't even bother to include links to view the tutorials on the console's browser. I mean, heck, the controller summary in the pause menu still does not show any of the read option or kicking controls, nor does it explain that the Switch Stick exists or how it works.

I may have misread this option tutorial pop-up (which only ever appeared once).

But I will admit that I was actually largely wrong about one of my biggest complaints with the option mechanic. I want to correct that error here, and explain how this mechanic actually works. I had previously explained that I was struggling with the new mechanic of having to hold the X button (on the PS5) in order for the QB to keep the ball on a read option hand-off play, and how the input windows didn't seem to line up with the actual mesh point animation for the hand-off. It turns out the the mesh point timing window is not actually broken after all, and my problems were almost entirely the result of me not understanding how the mechanic actually works.

Somehow, I got the mistaken impression that the user is supposed to hold the X button through the mesh animation in order to keep the ball, and could release the button at any point to hand off the ball. As such, I was pressing and holding X through the snap of the ball, and then continuing to hold X into the mesh point animation, and then trying to release X to hand off the ball.

Setting tool-tips to "Always On"
actually permanently disabled them.

That's not how the mechanic works. In fact, looking back at the Option tutorial pop-up, that's not what it said to do. So I misread it, and because there's no way to bring these tutorial pop-ups back up, or to view the controls in any of the menus, I didn't realize my mistake till much later. I tried resetting the the tutorials in the game's settings, but I think that actually had the opposite effect of completely and permanently disabling all tutorials and tool-tips, with no ability to turn them back on. This is a bug that EA needs to fix, and as far as I know, it has not yet been fixed.

This is about the time of year when I would be working on a review of the new Axis Football video game. But that won't be happening this year. Fans of the indie Axis Football video game series will have to wait another year to get their hands on a new release of the game. Earlier this year, the development studio, Axis Games, announced (via the company developer blog) that they will be moving the game to a bi-annual release schedule. That means a new edition of Axis Football will only be released once every 2 years, instead of every year. As such, there will not be an Axis Football 25, and the next game will be Axis Football 26, which will presumably launch sometime in fall of 2025.

This is bittersweet news. On the one hand, I usually have a good time playing Axis Football each year, and am disappointed that I won't have a new version to play this year.

On the other hand, the new schedule will supposedly give the development studio more time to make more substantive updates for each new release of the game. The rate at which the game was improving has been slowing down the past few years, and a lot more of the features have felt incomplete or un-polished. We also weren't really getting broad updates each year. New features and upgrades were becoming increasingly narrow and focused on a few distinct areas of gameplay. In any given year, we would get either Franchise updates, or gameplay updates, but rarely both.

For example, last year's game include a new playbook editor, but the game lacks the variety of plays and schemes that really make a custom playbook worthwhile.

Axis Football 23 was actually one of the best single-year upgrades for the series, owing largely to dramatic improvements in catch and pass defense animations, and an innovative player-in-motion system. But as good as that release was, it didn't have any new Franchise features. Well, at least not any explicit Franchise features. The other gameplay features, such as a new fatigue system, did have knock-on effects that indirectly improved the Franchise experience.

In any case, this new release schedule will hopefully mean that Axis Games can include substantial gameplay upgrades, and also Franchise updates, and also maybe new features, all in a single new release. Instead of having to spend time supporting an updated a new release every year, and also trying to port the game to consoles and phones, Axis can spend that time working on more features and updates. Hopefully, the result of all of this will be that Axis Football 26 will be the best release of the game so far!

Axis Games is releasing developer blogs about new features of the next game.

Unfortunately, Axis Games is still a very small indie studio. In fact, lead designer Danny Jugan might be the only full-time employee. I know they used to have some part-time developers, but I'm not sure how much (if any work) those individuals still do on the game. So they are still going to be limited in what they can do, and we can't expect a quantum leap in one new release.

I criticized Deliver Us The Moon for its depiction of a near-future environmental apocalypse. These sorts of apocalyptic depictions of climate change can cause people to take the real-life threat less seriously, since it's slower and less dramatic than the fictional depictions that people see. I tried to give Deliver Us The Moon the benefit of the doubt, and assumed that the developers were maybe going for more of a "overpopulation and depletion of resources" kind of apocalypse, and less of a "anthropogenic climate change due to greenhouse emmissions" apocalypse. However, Deliver Us Mars makes more explicit reference to greenhouse gasses and climate change, so I feel like my earlier criticism is a bit vindicated.

That being said, flashbacks show an Earth that is very much still alive, as opposed to the previous game, which made the Earth look like a barren wasteland. Flashbacks show the character and her family hiking through forests and diving among coral, while talking to each other about how much of a shame it is that the forests and coral are dying off and probably won't exist for very long. As the game goes on, we see extreme weather events, and examples of the damage they can cause and the danger they represent. Deliver Us Mars also highlights some of the socio-economic complications of overpopulation, with clear divides between "haves" and "have-nots".

Overall, I like this depiction of environmental collapse a lot better than in the previous game. It's a much more nuanced and (importantly) accurate depiction of the near future of climate change, and it shows the personal and individual cost of climate change at small scales, rather than making it an apocalyptic, planet-destroying event. It's still blunt and heavy-handed in its delivery, but it's far less exaggerated this time around.

The depiction of climate change is much more accurate and nuanced this time around.

Martian sight-seeing

Deliver Us The Moon felt like it peaked early, with a lot of the first-person, zero-G set pieces. After landing on the moon, so much of the rest of the game was just walking around sterile space station interiors. There was like 1 or 2 short sequences driving a rover on the lunar surface, but that was it. The player hardly got to explore the lunar surface at all.

Deliver Us Mars follows a similar progression path. It starts with zero-G segments on the rocket approaching Mars and a space station in orbit of Mars, before crash-landing on Mars. Then the rest of the game is walking around Mars. Despite this similar progression path, Deliver Us Mars is far less monotonous than its predecessor, as it varies the scenery and gameplay a lot more. There's frequent flashbacks to the protagonist's childhood, in which she hikes, climbs, and scuba-dives with her family in playable vignettes. These sequences are very much on-rails, and don't give the player hardly any freedom of exploration, but they are a welcome break from sterile, claustrophobic white walls.

The player spends more time walking and driving on the Martian surface, instead of claustrophobic space stations.

More importantly, there's a much larger focus on exploring the Martian surface. This takes the form of rover trips between levels, and some outdoor levels that require the player to climb and platform across Martian cliffs and canyons.

I felt like College Football 25 would be a real make-or-break title for EA Sports. Madden has been getting criticized for its focus on Ultimate Team, lack of attention to Franchise Mode, and myriad legacy issues that EA just refuse to address. The market has been jonesing for a licensed college football game -- in fact, it's been jonesing for any alternative to Madden. This is EA's chance to really put out a quality product that can earn it a lot of good faith to help carry it through the coming years of renewed football video game competition. I honestly expected that College Football 25 would hit a home run with its Dynasty Mode and feature set in order to earn back that trust and good faith -- especially after it was delayed a whole year from its original expected release.

Instead, I keep feeling disappointed and frustrated with College Football 25 at almost every turn. It feels, to me, like a pale shadow of its NCAA Football forebears. It's a mess of missing features, confounding control and interface issues, bad A.I. (especially on defense), and rosters that are muddled and obfuscated by the legal tightrope of name-and-likeness rights. It checks off almost all of the "must have" feature boxes (like adding the playoff and transfer portal), but this game seems to aggressively refuse to go above and beyond in any capacity.

Strap in and get comfortable. This is going to be a long review...

No-huddle gameplan

The launch version of College Football 25 is really friggin' hard! I started 0 for 7 against the CPU (on the All-American difficulty, with default sliders). I had to play a Boise State home match against lowly cupcake New Mexico in order to get my first victory. Since then, I've been doing a lot better, but victories do not typically come easily.

I have my share of responsibility in this. I don't know the playbooks yet, and I threw some facepalm-inducing interceptions. Linebackers seem to play a lot deeper in College Football 25 compared to Madden, and my QBs weren't putting enough touch on passes over the middle of the field. So Post and Dig routes that would be wide open in Madden were repeatedly being picked by lurking linebackers.

Lurking linebackers make a lot of interceptions between the hashes.

Despite my own mistakes, the designers of the game seem to have gone out of their way to make sure that the barrier to entry would be as high as it could possibly be. The game doesn't seem to want to teach its new features, mechanics, or controls, and it insists on changing things just for the sake of change -- screw my decade (or longer) of muscle memory! Many problems that have long frustrated me in Madden reared their ugly heads to conspire against me as well. I often felt like I could call out exactly how an upcoming play would unfold before the snap, because I've seen all of this so many times in Madden.

Sacks and interceptions tended to come in pairs or triplets.

My star receivers refused to catch open downfield passes, while the CPU receivers all had hands of glue.

Force defenders refused to do their job, and my defense in general refused to contain the edge or take viable pursuit angles. Even if I expected an outside run and spread my line or linebackers, they'd still all crash inside and get smothered by down-blocks.

CPU receivers would repeatedly beat my DBs on in-breaking routes and break free for huge gains or scores, even though I explicitly set inside shade before the snap.

Outside shade was basically an invitation for the CPU to score on a post or quick slant, even if I had a single-high safety or robber to supposedly stop those specific routes.

My blockers would absolutely refuse to block the single most important assignment on the play whenever I needed a run play to be successful, even with elite running teams (such as Michigan).

My own big plays would consistently be called back by penalties.

The CPU teams would go into un-beatable "turbo mode" as soon as the 2-minute warning hit.

And so on, and so on. You've heard or read all of this before if you've looked at any review of Madden in the past decade or so.

CPU-controlled defenders take horrible containment and pursuit angles.

There was even a patch, released a couple days before this review was published, which was supposed to have improved pursuit angles. But in my limited play since the patch, it seems to have actually made pursuit even worse, somehow! Not only do players continue to take horrible containment angles, but any defender that happens to be in the open field on the perimeter, and in a position to stop an outside run, now has an infuriating habit of just bouncing off the ball-carrier. So perimeter tackles that were being made a week ago, are now being missed after the patch, giving up even more big runs and scores to the outside.

I cannot understate how much these poor pursuit and containment angles are ruining my enjoyment of this game! So many of my losses can be directly traced to my defense just completely shitting the bed and giving up big run after big run because they are completely unwilling to defend the perimeter. And there is little-to-nothing that I can do about this, because I can only control a single player on the defense at a time.