Omori, Axiom Verge, etc.

Right, okay. 

Life has been going alright, I guess.  There's some ups, some downs, some longer-term, some shorter-term.

Omori

I finished playing Omori.  I quite enjoyed it overall, though it felt like it was more of a time sink than I might have liked.  I think the game does a good job with some of the darker elements, and the story development, so it can maybe feel a bit disappointing that I had to trudge through a bunch of combat and other stuff to get to all that.  Sort of like watching a really good anime but then every other episode is average-quality filler, or something.  It felt a bit rough around the edges at times, and sometimes you can sort of feel the RPGMaker / RPG genre in general come through in perhaps not the most helpful way, but overall it's quite impressive as an RPGMaker game and something that really did interest me.  I only played through the game once and went through the more or less "normal" route, so there is a significant amount more interesting stuff to see, but at the moment I honestly don't feel like having to engage with the experience of having to replay games and manage multiple save points and all that in order to see the rest of the content.  Maybe some other time, or maybe not.

Axiom Verge

On a whim (and mostly because it went on a sale) I decided to pull the trigger and buy Axiom Verge, an indie metroidvania title from 2015.  Axiom Verge was...fine.  It does some pretty cool things, it does other things less well...overall it's fine.  Some of the upgrades are pretty unique and the way that they influence your movement is nice.  One of the cool parts of these styles of games is their ability to present you with the same room later in the game and have it be recontextualized based on your expanded abilities.  A higher jump means that you see platforms differently...being able to grapple to ceilings means you're paying more attention to those...things like that.  I think that was done pretty well here.  The map design is sort of forgettable, less evocative and all that, and some of the secrets are arguably too hidden, but it's fine overall.  Surprisingly, the audio was something that stood out to me as not being up to snuff with the rest of the game.  Like most of the rest of the game, the music is......okay.  It's not =bad= per se, but it tends to be quite heavy on the bass, which got a bit fatiguing for me, and overall the soundtrack (like the level design) lacked memorability due to not having strong melodies.  The sound design is chiptune/8-bit, but in sort of a cheap "sfxr"-like way.  I really don't know why so many game devs use the same sfxr-like sound effects, it's a pet peeve of mine when I hear some of those really basic/dry coin/menu sounds that for whatever reason show up again and again.

Playing through Axiom Verge really drilled two things into my head.  One is how awesome of a game Super Metroid was (maybe Metroid Fusion as well, perhaps even Zero Mission?).  I look at Super Metroid from 1994 and compare it to Axiom Verge and honestly, Super Metroid hits way higher on almost every single axis.  The visual design is better -- Samus's sprite reads better, is more distinct and colorful, and the suit upgrades changing the color of your sprite is a nice touch.  The level design is better -- the "hub and spokes" system that Super Metroid uses is a great way of organizing rooms, and there are a lot of spaces that are just really memorable.  The music is so much more memorable and pleasing...heck, even the story is something I enjoy more in Super Metroid.  The movement, too...just being able to dash/run in Super Metroid (even sans Speed Booster), it feels so damn good.  None of this is intended to poke at Axiom Verge, more just to highlight how great I think Super Metroid is...

The other thing is how lucky I am to have expertise in such a diverse set of gamedev skills.  Granted, there's plenty of things that I'm not so strong in (and lots of stuff in Rhythm Quest that needs work, I'm sure...), but being able to put this game together as a one-man team and avoiding the sense of, for example, being primarily a programmer and only mildly proficient in visual art and design, or having the visuals look great but the audio sound uninspired...it's something I probably take for granted from time to time since it's just the norm for me, but if I stop and think about all of the Ludum Dare entries I've seen, other indie games, etc. it's clear that this is definitely =not= the norm, and something I should be thankful for.  I guess "lucky" is perhaps really not the right word as it's not like I was born with all of these skills -- I worked steadily and continuously over many years at each of them...

Rhythm Quest

Rhythm Quest has been going well!  I was approved for switch dev access, so I'm going to be trying to handle a Switch port (exciting!).  I've been working on adding more levels, more good stuff to the game, which has been fun.  I also have a demo or two to put together, so I'll probably be trying to transition to a round of polish and wrapping everything together in a complete package for that.  I'm getting the feeling that the game release is going to be pushed back again from where I originally anticipated, but not because I haven't been on track; simply because now that I'm really getting into it, I feel like I have something great on my hands and I want to make sure that I go some extra distance to make it the best thing that it can be.  But we'll see how that all works out...

Life

I said life has been going ok and that's not really a lie.  If I zoom in or out I can tell you different things; I could tell you that I've been having a really good time and looking forward to a lot of things.  Or, I could tell you that I feel depressed, having a very low sense of self-worth because I'm convinced that I am not -- was not -- good enough to be loved.  I could tell you that I'm happy to be done with dental work for the time being, or I could tell you that I'm -_- at receiving my jury duty summons.  I think in the end everything just sort of comes out in the wash.

I feel like I am starting to lose more and more of my old self, but I suppose that is inevitable.  I can only take solace in the fact that the ghost of my past will come back to haunt me and remind me of what it is that is important.  Even if I've already lost it, there is still more that I can do.  Just because I gave up doesn't mean I can stop.  I can feel perhaps more strongly than ever, the temptation to just stop caring anymore.  I've even started to give into that temptation.  But I feel like I'll still come back to it.  If I stop to remember who I really am, it seems obvious that I have to come back to it.

Feels like it's been forever, but really it's been about a week and a half?  It always feels longer than it should...probably because it is.

I'm on vacation this week (though I may end up trying to get some stuff done here as well).  Always feels nice making a home away from home.  I had the luxury of staying in the exact same place that I did during a previous trip, so the space was already quite familiar to me and the first thing I did was organize all of my belonging into the space and rearrange things as I saw fit.

It was a good start to the trip, with a flight that had lots of extra empty seats, and already a bunch of nice food, including my first homecooked meal here -- pasta carbonara (a sauce made with eggs and parmesan cheese) with bacon bits and diced mushroom, along with a haddock fillet which I pan-seared and seasoned simply with some salt, pepper and smoked paprika.  Plus some raw cherry tomatoes for extra veg.  The haddock turned out great, I'll have to remember to get this fish again if I see it in the markets.

I started playing Omori, which has been interesting so far.  Really reminiscent of what I've seen out of Deltarune so far, but it's hard to really tell since for both stories I'm not deep in enough to know exactly what they have to say or what they are "all about".  The battle system is interesting in an odd way, it's got some nuance to it but I'm not entirely sure I'm really appreciating it as the theoretically "rps"-based emotion system with its pros and cons to each seems awkward to utilize effectively.  On the plus side, I guess that means there is a sort of depth to the battle system, in that the options are open enough that you can formulate your own sort of strategy.  On the other hand, it's also tempting to just ignore all of it entirely.  Maybe it's the sort of thing that will grow on me as I put more thought and time into it.  It does seem a little "heavy" in that it's not really the most accessible thing...I can see someone who is new to games having a lot of trouble wrapping their head around it since so many concepts are introduced all at once, so this game is necessarily making the assumption that you've already got a handle on how JRPG combat works, I guess.  Anyways, besides all that, I'm intrigued so far, and we'll have to see what comes out of it.

Oh!  That's right, speaking of games, I finished up Chicory.  I don't really know that the ending of Chicory itself really left me satisfied, but the conflicts it brought up were poignant and in general there were definitely moments where I felt strong emotions.  Some of it is a bit reminiscent of Celeste in the general theme of confronting your own doubts and darkness.  I think that this throughline in Celeste was a bit more satisfying in its conclusion, but I think that the conflict in Chicory felt more poignant.  I don't think that the conclusion in Chicory lived up to the questions that it posed, which makes me wonder about what sort of ending =would= have settled / answered those conflicts.  That is something that I'll have to ponder for myself.

I took a short break from my relationship with "the world" at large.  Honestly I just felt a bit sick and tired of it.  I don't really think that relationships are black and white enough to the point where you can call people "givers" and "takers", but you can certainly feel like you're too far on one side of that divide from time to time.  The interesting thing is that I used to blame others for some of the things that they did or did not do with regards to my presence in their life, but honestly looking back on it, I can't really blame them, which is sad in its own way.  I was trying so hard, yet at the same time I could still see how it would be justified, the way I was essentially snubbed.

I learned that perhaps the only positive thing to do for yourself with this would be to help others to help you, but I recognized that there are times when that is simply not something you feel like doing.  So, I didn't.

A content creator I vaguely follow posted something recently, and I excerpt:

"Trying to form a meaningful and long lasting bond with any human being on the planet feels like an impossible herculean task. If you're a child all your close friends will inevitably move to a different town. If you're lucky enough to still have them, your friendship will just slowly wither away as you get older and grow apart. The only thing that's left to replace the true connections you once had are some shallow workplace relationships where you kind of get along with someone 15 years older than you. [...] It feels nearly impossible to have an in-depth fulfilling conversation with anyone. Nobody even wants to anymore, people are just satisfied with shutting themselves in and relying on escapism rather than developing genuine connections. It's like humanity all collectively decided to settle for mediocrity."

"To me, the relationship process is simple. You try your best to learn everything you can about someone's personality, interests, and motives in the limited timeframe you have to figure whether or not you will be compatible long term. If it's going well, then you try to establish common ground and build off of each other comedically and conversationally. It's very interesting. Unfortunately many people prefer small talk texting where one of you will just eventually ghost because nothing is really going on. I hate texting. It's just a watered down version of calling, which is a watered down version of real life communication."

And you couldn't really fault anyone for feeling this way, pandemic or no pandemic.  We can wish that other people would just step into our lives the way we want to, but most of the time it doesn't work that way.  More often, dealing with other people can feel like dealing with animals or pets -- they're kind of set in their ways and you often can't really depend on them taking the initiative; you sort of have to just show them how if you want them to try and do something specific.  Imagine trying to care for a pet that lives in a different household; it feels like it would be exhausting.  In the same way, it's tough for others to venture out of their own way to cater to your needs unless you are already part of their daily routine.

This is I think why the idea of "being needed" can be so alluring.  If life has already proven to you that you won't be a part of others' lives by default, then being needed in someone else's life would have them inevitably form a connection with you, wouldn't it?  The problem with this thinking is that you cannot "force yourself to be needed" by someone.  Just because you are a reliable, dependable, great, smart, funny, charming person who may have all the positive traits in the world, doesn't mean that you would be needed by someone, or frankly, by anyone.

I really don't know what I'd tell myself from 15 years ago about all this because honestly, I don't think I have any constructive advice that I can come up with.

Rhythm Quest development has still been going along smoothy!  It =feels= like I slowed down a bit, probably just because the first week of working was all the backdrops which seemed really noticeable and was a low "effort-to-impact" ratio.  I had one or two days this week where I was busy with other stuff as well, but eh, still managed to get enough done to feel pretty good about it.  I think I caught another cold though...=(

I finally mastered how to make shui zhu yu...(spicy sichuan "water-boiled" fish).  It's been such a long time in coming, since this is a dish that I've tried many times before, with quite mixed results, but I feel like I really have it down now.  One new addition I have to the process is to strain the broth after adding chicken stock to the fried/mixed doubanjiang paste.  This isn't very traditional, as far as I can tell, but getting rid of all the chili bits and seeds from the doubanjiang makes the dish way easier to eat.

I'm using "facing heaven" chilis for this dish along with green sichuan peppercorns (both from mala market) and I'm finding that you can be quite liberal with both (depending on spice tolerance, of course).  It feels like it actually takes a bit for the mala flavor to infuse into the dish, especially for the fish (I'm using swai fillets), so it can probably help to give it some time to sit and/or just use a heavy hand for those flavors.  Well, that, or you can just use a ton more oil than I did.  I may also experiment with dumping the peppers into the oil as opposed to dumping the oil onto the peppers at the end, that may be nice.  The leftover broth can easily be used to make a second serving, which may even turn out better than the first...

I am slowly trying to get acquainted with various types of cheeses after having been gifted a charcuterie board and knives.  It's been so long since I've had many types of cheese (if ever) so I feel like there are so many that I have no idea what they really taste like.  I like gruyere and parmagiano-reggiano i know, and cheddar is...cheddar.  Brie is nice, and mt tam is even better (mm, triple cream cheese), but for example I got to try out some aged gouda recently.  Not bad but I think not really my favorite.  I think gouda looks really pretty though!

Have another trip coming up soon, as well as (unfortunately) a bunch of dental work (boo), but I guess things are pretty ok overall.  I haven't been knocking it out of the park in terms of keeping up with music, letter writing, all that other stuff, but I've been working at it from time to time, which is all that I can really ask for anyways.  Feels like ages since I've found the time to stream any ALttP though.  Chickies seem to be doing okay too, though I had to give whitechicky a bath because she got poo'd on =(  Feels like I'm continuously iterating on their living quarters...they've been living together for the time being (and doing fairly well at it too), but I'm going to be splitting them up since it's better that way for my trip...

I was worried about getting back into Rhythm Quest development, but I managed to hit the ground running with quite a lot of good progress on artwork this week, so I guess (unsurprisingly) there was no real cause for concern.  If anything I may have worked a bit =too= much...

Both quails ended up being boys...so they are going to be due for beheading at some point.  They are too noisy and useless to keep around, unfortunately.  On the plus side, it'll be a significant amount less stink with them out of the picture.  Hopefully dumbchicky doesn't mind that her two "children" (emphasis on the quotes) are going to be taken away.  Chicky.

I finished reading Typers (https://shanekentknolltrey.tripod.com/), or rather, what the fanfic author had finished.  I can't say it was amazing or anything, but it wasn't a bad read at all, though I've got precious little to compare it to -- this sort of writing I feel like is more up my brother's wheelhouse.  Shame that I'll never get to see a resolution to the whole thing, but at least my curiosity is satiated for now, and that's yet another loose thread from my memories tied up in classic Timm[ie] fashion.

Military concerns continue to be the bane of my campaigns in Emperor -- I've discovered that building some sort of standing army is an important early priority to get out of the way, otherwise the other cities feel too invited to start attacking.  The next mission is on a huge map where I'm supposed to found the capital of the Qin dynasty or something and I've got a strong feeling that I'll be forced to revisit the same city multiple times across the course of the campaign, so I should make sure that I set things up well.

I watched season 2 of The Promised Neverland anime back when I was still recovering from my cold and it was...eh.  I'd echo the general sentiment that it felt rushed and ill-equipped to portray what may have originally been a good plot from the manga (?).  However, there is a somewhat memorable scene where Emma learns to kill and clean an animal for food for the first time.  Having done that deed for many a quail in my time, I appreciated that they showed the significance of that and how it changed something in her, albeit small.

Things are going well, in general, but somehow my mood seems to have turned sour today.  Better luck next time I guess.  Tomorrow is Friday, at least, and there is the weekend to look forward to.

2021 in Review

I used to do quarterly retrospectives back when I was in school, so the last time I had one of those was....2012...

Let's go by topic matter, I guess.  I'll try to keep it a little succinct.

Rhythm Quest

Probably the biggest headline for me this past year was quitting employment to work on my indie game, Rhythm Quest.  Having put a solid 7 or so months of work into it now, it's....at a pretty good place.  I guess 7 months is a little misleading -- really there was quite a bulk of development done a few years back.

Full-time indie development has its own sort of rhythm and challenges to get used to, but given my record of following through on these sorts of things, I wasn't =too= worried about maintaining consistent progress.  It's easy for me to feel like I'm not working fast enough (to be fair, I slowed down quite a bit during the past two months), but looking back on it it's hard not to say that I've put in quite a lot of solid work.

My hope is for development to finish in 2022...it's just up to me to maintain a steady pace in order to make that happen. 

 

Cooking

This year saw me try to reduce my meat consumption -- previously I was having some sort of meat with every meal and that's gone down, though I usually still have some each day.  Red lentil curry and dry-fried green beans have been some notable additions to my repertoire this year, but I think the biggest exploration has been into vaguely roman-style pasta dishes.  I don't know if I actually made a single tomato sauce-based pasta dish this year...instead I leaned heavily into using parmagiano reggiano cheese and making cacio e pepe or carbonara.  Sometimes the classic roman pasta dishes are a little plain for me so I take to adding in mushrooms or some shrimp, but overall I feel like I really explored and enjoyed pasta a lot more this year.  I also enjoyed making basil pesto sauce with pasta, as well as butternut squash pasta.  I even cobbled together a nice pasta that utilized some leftover pork shoulder as well as pork juices in an emulsified sauce...

Ironically despite eating less meat, I somehow managed to gain something on the order of 10 pounds (!?) this year, which astounded me as I've been stuck at the same weight for quite a number of years.  Not sure exactly which factors led to it, but the extra weight is actually a healthy sign for me, so I'm not complaining.

"Dance"

Social dance continues to be vacant from my life and I continue to get exercise via a mix of DDR and freestyle dance practice.  DDR is the "easiest" form of exercise, so that's what I default to.  I played less DDR this year than last, but I leaned fully into becoming a doubles player, so I've been moving around more and enjoying more complex patterns.  I believe last year I managed a Max 300 clear somehow, but I haven't really tried to replicate that.  Perhaps that's a goal to work towards again?

Freestyle dance progress is....I'd like to say slow and steady, but really it's more slow and sporadic.  It's not high on my priorities, so I only get around to it every once in a while.  But it's something I'm interested in, so I do my best to work on my movement.  It takes a lot of work.  I was pretty bad about doing tai chi this year, but eh, you pick and choose your battles.

 

Chickies

This was probably the other headliner for me this year.  Funnily enough, the actual number of birds in my life stayed the same, but the 4 duckies are gone (now in a different home, doing okay there), and instead I've got two silkies and....more recently, two quails.  It's certainly been an experience integrating the chickies into my life, and coming up with a good setup and routine to care for them.  I approached it all with a bit of trepidation, but as with all things, now that I've put in the work, it's settled down into a comfortable routine and they are doing pretty well.

Games

Here's what I can remember playing this year....

- Mega Man 7 FC
- Mega Man: Rock and Roll
- Mega Man: Super Fighting Robot
- ALTTPR/SM/SMZ3 (1991/1994)
- Mega Man X2 (1994)
- Terranigma (1995)
- Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997)
- Baldur's Gate (1998)
- Descent: Freespace - The Great War (1998)
- Descent: Freespace - Silent Threat (1998)
- DDR (1998)
- Pop'n Music (1998)
- Freespace 2 (1999)
- Pharaoh/Cleopatra (1999-2000)
- Diablo 2: Median XL (2000)
- Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom (2002)
- Symphonic Rain (2004)
- 2064: Read Only Memories (2015)
- Stardew Valley (2016)
- Sky: Children of the Light (2019-2021)
- Coffee Talk (2020)
- The Last of Us Part II (2020)
- Rhythm Doctor (2021)
- Little Nightmares II (2021)
- Hades (2020)
- Chicory: A Colorful Tale (2021)
- EDDA Cafe (2021)
- Deltarune Chapter 2 (2021)
- Pokemon Unite (2021)

Hades was of course a highlight, but everyone kind of knows that already.  Stardew Valley continues to be a great netplay-and-voice-chat hangout game.  Symphony of the Night was solid, and Pokemon Unite really impressed me with how fun it made the moba experience.  TLOU2 really impressed me, and of course I've got a soft spot for the city-building games (Pharaoh, Emperor).  I'm loving Chicory so far, as well.  Read Only Memories is probably the best adventure game / visual novel I've played in recent memory.

Overall out of everything I played, Hades is an easy standout, but I'm looking forward to having more praise for Chicory as well.

Music

I only had 3 non-monthlies releases this year and only one of those was a full album (the School of Sorcery OST), but overall music has been going well.  The big cleanup I did of my VSTs and such really helped, and I managed to track down some great new sounds, which I've already put to good use.  I finished up the Super Mega Zero soundtrack commission this year as well, which I consider one of my better soundtracks to date.

Life Overall

The beginning of the year feels so long ago, it's hard to even remember how I was feeling throughout the year.  I remember some bad times -- nothing horrible, just bad -- but I think you're bound to have some of that every year.  From what I can remember, I honestly feel like the year went fairly well.  "As well as can be expected for another year in the covid pandemic", is the natural thought, but honestly it seems old hat by now, and I've already waxed about how we were already halfway isolated to begin with.

Finishing Rhythm Quest is the obvious goal and hope for 2022, but it's honestly just as important (a prerequisite, really) to ensure that I'm enjoying life as I do it.  I don't know if it's just the holidays, but I feel like I've been gaming more often these days, and honestly I'm all for it.  I feel like it's made me remember how to enjoy life a little more; that there's actually something you're supposed to look forward to at the end of the daily tunnel/grind.

Edit: I forgot to note that this past year also saw me take a big step in trying to reduce my material possessions by cleaning up my wall decorations and such.  That felt like it was a long time coming but I think still represents a sort of turning point in how I'm approaching some things in life.  I've written about it here as well, about feeling less like things are inherently meaningful.

Read Only Memories, Emperor, Chicory

Been playing through games at a quick pace recently, it seems.  Most of that is due to the holiday season, and the fact that I'm truly taking a break from work -- of almost all sorts.  Part of it is also due to the fact that I seem to have gotten ill more than usual...first with the booster shot side effects, then more recently with some sort of cold/other bug.  Bleh.  Well if there was any doubt left in my mind whether I should be trying to work on something or other, that's more or less gone now since I've no energy in my system to do anything like that.

2064: Read Only Memories

This is a game that I picked up and played through recently -- part of the itch.io racial justice bundle from a while ago (insane how much stuff is packed into that).  This is a game released back in 2015, though you might not guess it from the 2d pixeled graphics.  So, not actually that old, especially by the standards of games that I tend to play.  This is also set in a similar (same?) universe as VA-11 Hall-A, which came out a year later and had a handful of tie-ins/references.

Read Only Memories is an adventure game, I guess you could call it a point and click (?), but whatever, one look at the game and it'll become clear how it plays out.  I was a bit skeptical on how exactly it would be at first, since the very first moments of the game are pretty lacking in terms of any sort of excitement/etc.  But you delve into the actual thick of things soon enough, and then you start proceeding through the plot line, which consists more or less of unraveling a mystery of sorts.

I really enjoyed Read Only Memories, probably just because I thought the writing was great.  I felt like it did an excellent job of making a linear storyline =feel= less linear than it actually was, specifically and especially with regards to dialogue choices.  Read Only Memories has a few points where it seems to really try to let you know that you shouldn't expect the story and dialogue to just run on rails, as some other generic-adventure game would.  In the first segment of the story, the deuteragonist AI Turing serves as a sort of crutch for worldbuilding exposition -- you constantly get briefed by them on the sci-fi elements of the game as they come up.  But at one point when you ask Turing, they stop and express frustration, asking why you don't just look it up yourself / why you didn't already know that.  This moment subtly calls into question these sorts of genre conventions where NPCs are, ahem, "robotic" and subservient to whatever needs to happen in the dialogue to lead you to the next thing.

In the end there are a lot of choices in Read Only Memories that don't end up affecting the overall narrative, but there's enough mention given to your choices that you feel like they =could= or =could have=.  Even though rationally in the final chapter of the game I sort of already figured out that this is just a linear narrative without major branch divergence, the way that this is executed made me feel as though my decisions still bore weight, regardless of whether or not they actually did (in truth, some do, some don't).

Overall I really liked it.

Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom

I mentioned that I had started this one, and I'm really enjoying it thus far!  The systems are similar to those of Caesar/Pharoah, but different enough to present new challenges.  Like with Zeus, there's a global labor pool, which is a huge difference and allows you to concentrate on creating nicer housing blocks without having to worry about providing labor access to industries.  The widescreen/increased resolution patch for Emperor works without a hitch, and overall the game works really well, though I guess it's not quite as good as the Caesar III Julius/Augustus port.

I've been playing on Very Hard, as it seems like that's actually a manageable -- yet difficult -- level of challenge for me.  My main struggles so far have been trying to establish a city quickly enough and set up profitable trade routes (which must be negotiated in this game, not just purchased) before I run into debt and lose all my money.  I'm starting to get a good handle on how I like to build my housing blocks already!

The cities in Emperor are definitely more aesthetically pleasing than those of the other games, and I think that's one of the draws of this particular game.  Being able to section off your housing blocks using residential walls is cool, and there are less requirements on how farms work as well (because of seasonal crops), so those are easier to just lay out wherever.  Trade is a little different, as there are dedicated trading stations as opposed to caravans/ships taking directly from warehouses.  Food distribution is a little different too, as generally the idea is to only have one granary (called a "mill" here) and really centralize your housing block resources.  This of course is possible because the positioning of housing blocks compared to industry is more lax because of the global worker pool.

There's also a "feng shui" system which can be annoying if you're a perfectionist, but also provides an interesting sort of challenge / planning if you're trying to account for buildings which for example need rocks nearby to be auspicious in feng shui.  So far I haven't really been focusing on it too much.

Anyways, I'm really enjoying it!  Probably my only complaint so far is that there are missions which make you revisit old cities which you have already built up and try to reach new goals with that existing city.  That can be disorienting especially if there are one or more other missions in between -- I'd probably rather just have a new map for every mission and start fresh, as part of the fun in these missions is really setting everything up well from scratch, rather than trying to cobble together an existing thing and repurposing it to be better.  In theory the city that you won the previous mission with was good and well-functioning, but potentially having to deal with your previous mistakes is worrying.

Chicory: A Colorful Tale

I started this one up just recently while down with my latest sickness.  This one was released less than a year ago, so definitely one of the more recent ones.  I had the chance to play a short demo of this a while back, and was intrigued, but the game has gotten way better as I've gotten into the later chapters (now at chapter...4 I think?).  Sure, the first chapter was kinda fun, but I feel like if things had just continued on at that same level / pace, it would have really gotten boring.  But the next few chapters introduce all sorts of really fun activities and toys and such for you to play around with.  I've been playing using my Wacom Tablet and that has been working amazingly well; feels like it's really the ideal way to play the game for sure.

Not only am I liking all of the fun drawing stuff that has been introduced, but I'm liking where the story is going (so far) as well.  I have pretty high hopes for this one, but I guess I shouldn't expect anything too grand -- that's a recipe for disappointment no matter how good the thing is.  But I'm certain that whatever Chicory has in store for me, I'm going to enjoy it.

Maybe I'll do a year in review post later, but for now, that'll do it.

Symphony of the Night

Played through all of Symphony of the Night in a couple of days!  It was a fun game; nothing was really too bad about it (aside from perhaps the infamous voice acting), though on the flipside i wouldn't say anything was particularly outstanding about it either.  Just an overall good package.  It's really cool seeing an RPG-styled twist on the classic Metroid formula -- one that ended up defining an entire genre together with Super Metroid.  Exploring different areas, encountering new enemies, searching for secrets, it was all pretty enjoyable.  Some balance issues, particularly with the equipment / some of the more overpowered items, for sure, and a few secrets / item descriptions that are a little =too= obscure/cryptic, but even aside from all that everything was more or less fine.  I guess the other thing that's a bit odd is the entire second half of the game being locked behind a "bad end" in which you need to explore and solve a bit of a riddle in order to progress through.  A bit curious since the bad end also gives you the same credits sequence.

Overall I'm pretty glad that I played through it, but at the same time I can see how there's room for improvement and how other games have tried to take the same formula and clean it up a little bit in their own style (looking at Hollow Knight as an example).

Oh, I made it to Master rank in Pokemon Unite as well, so woo.

Now I'm onto starting to play Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom.  I'm not sure whether I'll play through on Hard or Very Hard difficulty (Normal is probably too easy), so I'll start on Very Hard and see how I fare through the first couple of missions.  I'm enjoying it so far!

It's been okay.  I didn't really get much done this week, though understandably so.  I did end up getting all of my xmas mailing done, so all that's left there is a few extra things that are still coming in the mail, and then the ol' Santa run.

Since I've still been feeling slightly ill I've mostly been lazing about, though I did end up cleaning out all the chicky stuff this morning; that was good.  I even took some time tonight to actually try and work on a little bit of spriting for Rhythm Quest, so at least it wasn't like it was a zero productivity day.  Tomorrow, maybe I'll try and knock out the last commission piece that's due for the year, and I have some knife sharpening to take care of as well.  Maybe some more spriting too, who knows.  Next week is already Christmas week, so I probably won't really work any.

I finished watching Arcane, since, like I said, I've been lazing around.  Spoilers ahead I guess?  It was alright, if a little overdramatic at points (but I'm not often bothered by this sort of thing).  I didn't have too much specifically to criticize wildly, but I didn't really have that much to specifically laud either, besides the art style being pretty interesting to look at (especially the backgrounds).  I think the central story conflict portrayed between Vi and Jinx is a solid one...but I think the execution maybe left a little to be desired.  There's a point near the end where Jinx says something to the effect of "I thought we could maybe be like we once used to, but I've changed...and you've changed, too."  I think that's set up to be a poignant moment, since that's really what drives the proverbial nail in the coffin (even though you already know it's coming).  But I think it didn't really have as much impact because as an audience I'm not really sure I saw how Vi changed specifically, or at least how Jinx sees her as having changed.  Is it that she's concerned with more people, more bigger picture things now? (Caitlyn, the impending war, etc)  Is it the fact that she walked away from Jinx at the bridge?  Is it just the fact that they solidly on different sides of the conflict?  I'm not really sure.  I think as a storyteller I see the power in this moment coming from the fact that we are ostensibly rooting for Vi and Jinx to resolve their differences and be with each other again.  The shallow tragic end to the Vi-Jinx relationship is for it to be doomed because external forces drive them apart in the end.  The deeper resolution is for there to be a realization as the viewer that it's impossible for them to be with each other anymore, even in the absence of external forces.  I feel like that was not really sold on me effectively, so I guess maybe the execution was a bit lacking in that regard.

Moderna booster kicked my butt, so I've just been sitting around and watching videos all day -- catching up on all the matches from Smash Summit 12, as well as Arcane: LoL.

The birdies have been doing ok...quails are growing up bit by bit -- there is one really fast one (maybe the oldest?), and one really small yellow one (was born after the other two).  The electric chicky heater has replaced mommy dumbchicky as their heat source since dumbchicky is too kicky and doesn't stay put.  Chickies are starting to get a little stinky; hopefully it will be better once they can graduate back to the bigger bin with more pine shavings.

Got 2 more knives, haha.  They aren't for me, though; presents for xmas.  But they are really nice!  One of them has a really pretty handle...

 

The new Median XL patch dropped and I don't think there were a ton of changes / relevant changes to my paladin, but I've instead been working on leveling a sorceress instead.  I tried a poison build for a while, which actually worked really well for leveling, but was having a lot of trouble with bosses (I was missing one piece of the poison set, and probably lacking elemental pierce, maybe that's why?), so I've transitioned out of that and into a lightning build.  I'll probably just be farming K3BA for a while to get levels, so if I happen to get more set pieces for something like a cold sorceress build, I could try that too, or whatever.  We'll see.  I'm honestly a little surprised that I'm still going on strong with this, but I guess ARPGs are just addictive in that way.

 

Still playing Pokemon Unite as well.  I've basically become a Snorlax main, though I keep on wondering whether I should go back to playing more Blastoise since I keep seeing good Blastoise plays.  Mamoswine is apparently pretty good this patch as well.  I might pick up Talonflame, actually...

Baby quails, The Last of Us Part 2, Unholy Melee Paladin Respec, The Matrix: Reloaded

It's been ok....until this morning when I had interrupted sleep for the second night in a row.  The day didn't really go so well.

Let's start with the stuff that's more relevant to the people who are likely to be reading this.

So...dumbchicky has actually managed to hatch some baby quails, amazingly.  I found one dead baby chick (not sure what happened to it, maybe it got stuck, or trampled, or something), and one other egg that might be cracked (in a bad way), but other than that she has four healthy baby quail chicks scooting around and nestling under her belly now.  This was our experiment to see if we could break her out of her brooding by actually giving her some eggs to hatch, and lo and behold, despite her clumsiness she actually managed to do a good job.

Unfortunately since she has been in lockdown she has also been having really stinky poos in her bin since I'm not putting her outside to poo anymore.  I woke up at 5AM this morning because I smelled her poo from the other room ....  .... sigh.  I also didn't get very much done at all on Rhythm Quest done today, so I wasn't in the best mood.

Anyways, we will see what happens with these quails, I think my current plan is to keep them until they start causing any sort of problems, then......they will probably become dinner, lol.  So far they have been causing me a surprising amount of stress despite actually taking care of themselves fairly well.  But I guess that isn't totally surprising.

 

In other news, I finished up The Last of Us Part 2!  The game actually went on a bit further than I expected, but I think it was warranted in order to really reach the appropriate conclusion.

Overall I really appreciated this game, though I don't think it is one for the weak (as should be fairly obvious).  There are fairly gratuitous amounts of violence and gruesome acts depicted (as is probably pretty clear if you know of the game), but I think surprisingly I think a lot of this felt rather necessary in order to really reach the proper impact of the game.  That said, I have some counterpoints that I'd like to bring up about this.  First, while I think that the violence involved in the game's "main" plot scenes is feels justifiable to me, I found myself a bit off-put by the amped-up level of physical violence during gameplay compared to TLOU1, particularly in using melee weapons.  I think that there's a big part of TLOU2 (arguably all of it) that leans into the discomfort of violence, but I think that the melee combat felt a little over-the-top when compared to both stealth kills and weapon-shooting, and this was definitely amped up from TLOU1 from what I can remember.  There's a youtube video I remember watching where a reviewer/player was commenting on how they were excited about how many different "fatalities" were included in the game, when using different melee weapons in different situations.  Regardless of whether or not this person "missed the point", I just felt like this feature in particular was outside of my taste.

I also think that despite the multitudes of accessibility options present in TLOU2 (the navigation assistance/hint feature was a godsend, not to mention the motion sickness options without which I probably could not have finished the game in the first place), there's a distinct lack of options around trigger warnings and violence/gore settings.  I don't want to be too critical here as there is no real way to make this game work without a significant amount of violence and if you included "trigger warning for violence" it'd end up getting redundant.  As I mentioned before, TLOU2 has some very dark and gruesome moments, and I don't think those can really function any differently.  However this is honestly too much to stomach for a lot of people and I'm just wondering whether there could have been an option to simply cut to black during some of the more intense / triggering moments.  I understand this might seem a bit silly, "why not just close your own eyes" you might ask, but I really feel like this is a legitimate concern.

Despite all that, I think they really pulled it all off well in the end, and I really appreciated seeing what they had to show, even though it went into some very unpleasant territory.  TLOU2 does a very good job of pointing out parallels and putting you in similar yet different situations, or maybe similar situations with different contexts.  The story is told linearly for a majority of the game, but there are some important/major exceptions to that, and the game uses that to full effect in order to recontextualize actions and situations which you thought you might have understood at first.

I saw this mentioned in reviews, as well, and I think it's quite obvious how TLOU2 does this on a very surface level.  But I think what makes me appreciate TLOU2 is that it doesn't just stop at a surface level, it goes much deeper than that.  Subtle things such as seeing the same piece of artwork in two different settings (is it graffiti?  Or is it a holy symbol?) really gets your head going.  It's not just a one-and-done thing, TLOU2 is really thorough in how it explores this theme and I was really impressed by that.  TLOU2 makes you feel different ways in similar situations and when it does so, it doesn't feel like a slap in the face; it makes you ask yourself, "why?".

I enjoyed the gameplay as well, I think the additional tools and crafting options compared to TLOU1 really help to spice things up and make combat/stealth feel very fresh.  The downside of this is that the more new things that get added to your toolkit, the more overwhelming it is when you need to quickly do a gut instinct reaction.  In a brain-dead FPS game if an enemy sneaks up behind you, you do the same thing you always do -- wheel around and shoot it dead, using the same buttons you do for everything else.  Here, that isn't so simple, as you've got stun bombs, pistols (with detachable silencers), throwable bricks, crossbows, etc.  This works out great when you're hidden under cover carefully planning an angle of attack on how to assassinate three zombies without making any noise.  However when you run into an unexpected situation, there's this moment of "oh god, what do I press, what weapon do I even have out right now, argh" -- or at least, there was for me.  So I think that was a weak point of the combat design.  Granted, the goal of stealth combat is to =avoid= those sorts of situations in the first place, so perhaps it's not such a big deal, but I did want to note it as that was a moment when things felt a bit clumsy for me.

I could say more about the story and characters in detail but I've written enough and I don't want to do a deep analysis and this has all been spoiler-free anyways, so I'll just call it there.

In Median XL news, I finally took the plunge and respec'ed my Neutral paladin into an Unholy Melee Paladin, currently using the fire-based Blood Thorns skill -- though in hindsight I'm wondering whether I should have chosen to go with the cold-based Lemures skill.  I actually had the complete 4-piece  equipment set for this build, so that was a a pretty good start on things; then it was just a matter of figuring out all the mystic orbs, socketing, skill speccing, etc.  It took a lot of looking at different things (including the only forum guide written on the build, which is...unfortunately several versions out of date), and tweaking a bunch, but that happens to be something I quite enjoy in my RPGs, so I didn't mind a ton!

Funnily enough, I might not have actually went through with the respec, except I still have not been able to find the glove piece of the neutraldin set (despite trying a bunch).  I wonder if luck had been different, if I would have just stayed as a neutraldin?  Anyways, the new build unfortunately actually seems to have significantly less single-target damage (lemures might have been doing better on that.....).  On the plus side, I managed to clear an uber quest that I was really struggling on with the neutraldin build!  The new build also sustains much better, and I'm able to farm areas like teganze and fauztinville without having to resort to chugging potions or anything like that.  So in that sense I think it's been an improvement, which is great to see.  Unfortunately I'm still at a similar plateau of sorts and there aren't obvious ways to drastically improve my build without lucking into some nice sacred uniques or doing more min-maxing of charms and stuff.  But we'll see how it goes from here.  Patch 2.1.0 is dropping in 3 days, so I might just download that and see what that brings anyways, though I don't think there are a ton of changes to Paladins in particular.

I =did= keep a copy of my saves before respecs, so I could also try rolling back and going for a lemures build as well, if I end up hitting a brick wall.  We'll see.

Edit: Right, I guess I can also mention that we watched through The Matrix: Reloaded.  I've seen it before, but this was so long ago that there's no way that I could remember that much about it.  I was unsurprised by the fact that it was....a pretty poor movie.  However this time around it was so much more clear to me exactly why this is -- at least, to me.  It's not the convoluted plot, it's not the dialogue, it's not the needlessly excessive fight scenes, it's not the awkward let's-show-sex-as-if-we're-mature-now attitude, though all of those of course reflect poorly.  It's the fact that there's no stakes or meaning to any of it.  The fight scenes in the first film worked so well not just because they were cool but because they had meaning to them.  Neo fighting Morpheus has a clear undertone of Morpheus wanting to unlock Neo's potential, but at the same time showing him that he's still too weak in his current state.  Even when Neo and Trinity are just blazing guns like crazy to rescue Morpheus, the emotional message is in Neo's confidence -- he's proactive, working as part of the team.  It's notable how little of the fight/chase scenes in The Matrix: Reloaded have any dialogue involved, or at least any meaningful dialogue.

The same is true for all of the exposition and world-building.  In the first film, all of the exposition about Zion, the Nebuchadnezzar, The Matrix, and all of that works well because we're pulled in by the mystery and intrigue set up by the first chapters, by Neo (and ourselves) wanting to discover the truth after it being hinted at for so long.  In the second film, we get a whole bunch of shots that show the architecture and culture of Zion, but there's no reason to care about any of it.  Morpheus (tries to) give a really grand speech about how humanity will prevail, yadda yadda, but again, it falls flat because we weren't given any significance to it.  It almost feels like a Star Wars movie, but...not a very good one.

The ironic part is that the movie itself seems to repeatedly pose the question of "purpose" -- postulating that choices are predetermined, but the only important thing we can do is find out "why".  Unfortunately the film really fails to answer that question for itself.  Why did it matter?  Why did we bother watching this?

There is some actual potential in some of the ideas and plotlines presented in the story.  Neo's visions of Trinity's death are really important, as is the revelation that The One can't actually end the war or save humanity.  Morpheus has built his entire existence upon this belief, so having it torn down so unceremoniously is obviously a huge thing.  There's a story here somewhere about the weight of expectations, and about how even though Neo became The One, up until this point he was still just playing a part.  Who are we when we no longer have a path before us to follow?  Agent Smith becoming a virus -- the very thing he compared the human race to in the first film -- is also significant.  And no, "it gets covered in the third film" isn't a good excuse for any of this.