Page 17 – Burning the midnight oil at noon

Tactical Thinking

I first played Final Fantasy Tactics in… 2002, probably? I don’t remember which one, but I received it as a birthday gift one year, and since then it has been the gold standard against which I measure all other tactical RPGs. I’ve played dozens of them, and I think that I’ve beaten maybe three in addition to the original FFT.

Since Triangle Strategy released a few days ago, I’ve been putting a lot of thought into why it is that I usually bounce off any tactical RPGs that aren’t Final Fantasy Tactics. And I’ve come up with a fairly simple answer: unit classes. For me, 90% of the appeal of FFT is being able to customize you unit’s jobs and skills, and that’s something that very few other TRPGs have done in a way that really satisfies me. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance might be the only other one.

Two Kay

With these words, I have published 2,000 WordPress posts.

Well, it would be more than 2,000 if you counted all the articles that I haven’t moved over from the Angelfire site yet. And I have 28 partially-written things still sitting in draft form, some of which are actually done and I don’t know why they were never published. But whatever!

I wish I had something more exciting prepared, or, anything prepared. But honestly I didn’t even realize this milestone was coming up. Here’s a link to a random article I wrote in 2004 that I have a strong sentimental attachment to, and I even think it’s actually kind of funny. At least, it made me laugh when I was re-reading it after a couple drinks the other night.

Anyways! Congratulations to me, I guess, for having voided so many of my inconsequential thoughts onto the internet.

Please note that December of this year will mark TE’s 20th anniversary. If I stop writing until 2023, that’s 100 posts per year (8.3333333333 per month). Sounds kind of appealing…

I’ll do something better for 3,000. (No promises.)

The Sinking City

Do you know Cthulhu? I’m sure that you probably do. He’s a very popular figure in nerd culture. But here’s the real question: do you know much else about the works of H.P. Lovecraft? Seems less likely, as while Lovecraft’s greater oeuvre is also popular with nerds, it’s not quite as ubiquitous as ol’ squid-head himself.

I’m no exception to that assumption. I have a giant tome of the collected works of H.P. Lovecraft, but I haven’t actually read a page of it. However! I do appreciate the mythos he created, and I’ve spent plenty of time engaging with other media that is based on said mythos. The most direct source would be the time I’ve spent falling down the rabbit hole that is the Lovecraft Wiki. But also people like to make video games that are strongly influenced by Lovecraft’s stories! Video games like The Sinking City!

Another U-logy

Last week, I wrote a couple of blog posts that were spurred on by the news that Nintendo will be closing up the 3DS eShop. What I hadn’t mentioned was that the Wii U’s eShop is closing as well. It’s… less of a big deal. I think that I bought every game I wanted on Wii U while it was still Nintendo’s active platform. It’s not like there were a whole lot of them.

What I’m getting to here, is that there was also a statistics thingy for Wii U games on Nintendo’s website. Look at mine!

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: February 2022

~ Game Over ~

Vampire Survivors (PC) – This game is still in Steam Early Access, so it’s likely not really over, but I’ve won a few rounds and unlocked everything, so… yeah. You can read more of my words about it here.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus (Switch) – A complete revamp like this is exactly what the kinda-sorta stale Pokémon franchise needed. It’s a little rough around the edges, but it’s still so much fun and I hope that Game Freak makes another one in this style, but with just a little more polish. I was going to write a full review, but then wrote about potatoes instead.

Horror Adventure (PS4) – So bad that my PS5 refused to run it. Quite possibly the worst $2 I’ve spent on an indie horror game, and I feel like that’s saying a lot! The gravest sin it commits is having terrible controls: your character doesn’t always move in the direction you press the stick, and the turning speed is atrociously slow and cannot be changed. At least it only took 20 minutes to play through.

Banjo-Kazooie (N64) – I haven’t played this game since it was released on Xbox 360 back in 2008, and it was nice to re-visit. For the most part, it holds up pretty well, but some camera improvements would be appreciated.

The Sinking City (PS4) – Many words ~~coming soon~~.

Donkey Kong Land 2 (GB) – Perusing my 3DS library after the notice that the 3DS eShop is going to be shut down, I decided to finally play this. It’s the only Donkey Kong game by Rare that I’ve never played before. It sticks a lot closer to DKC2 than Donkey Kong Land did to the original DKC.

~ Progress Notes ~

Cyberpunk 2077 (PC) – Side-jobbin’.

Potatoes… but not as you know them

There are a lot of things to say about the newest game in the Pokémon series, Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Alas, those things will likely have to be said by others, because I only want to talk about one very tiny aspect of the game today.

In this game, there is a character named Beni. He runs the Jubilife Village’s restaurant, and apparently makes a mean potato mochi. His potato mochi is so mean, in fact, that every time you complete a task in the story, your character and their friends go to the restaurant to celebrate and stuff themselves with it.

Being an uncultured North American hermit, I was completely unfamiliar with the concept of mochi before I started playing this game. I’d heard the word before, and I knew it was something you eat, but I didn’t really know what it was. I didn’t have a clue if it was traditionally made with potato, or if the potato variety was special. It was all a big mystery to me.

The image above is what sweet potato mochi is supposed to look like.

The image below is how my sweet potato mochi ended up looking.

Nintendo 3DS by the Hours

Following yesterday’s remembrances of the Nintendo 3DS, I decided to open up the records app and take a good, long look at all of the games I played on the system throughout its lifetime. I definitely could transcribe the entire list of 254 games, but I settled on just listing any game or app that I used for over ten hours. That’s still 74 different pieces of software!

Sunset of the Dual Screen

For each year that passes, I become more and baffled that this website still exists. Like, I have immense difficulty focusing on anything for more than about 10 minutes at a time, and a list of unfinished projects that could wrap around the Earth. How am I still doing this???

I don’t have an answer to that question. But Nintendo recently asked themselves a similar question, in relation to keeping the ol’ 3DS family of systems relevant. Their response was “We’re not.” and earlier this week, it was announced that the 3DS eShop will be shutting down in March of next year. To be more specific, you’ll no longer be able to make purchases at that point. Presumably, the shop will still exist so that people can still download all the games they’ve paid for. Presumably.

TE Video Presents: Batman Pizza

Last year, I made it my mission to upload three videos every week. And I mostly held to that! Kinda fell apart in December, but you know how it is. Work was insane, I was spending what little creative energy I had on the 24 Days of Desire, holiday things were eating up a lot of free time.

I made no such promises to myself in 2022. Trying to create and edit that many videos was… a lot. Even when most of said videos were video game let’s plays and as such, overlapped with things I’d have been doing anyway. Moving forward, I’m just going to create video content when I feel like it. No more forcing myself to meet an imaginary quota and suck the fun out of it.

And so of course, what could possibly more video-worthy than a Batman-themed pizza?

Banjo-Revelationie

I’ve played Banjo-Kazooie, I don’t know, four or five times since it released in 1998. Or at least, I’ve played it that many times to completion. If you count all the times I played through Spiral Mountain on the demo kiosk at Toys ‘R’ Us, the number would quickly become astronomical.

Anyway, Banjo-Kazooie is a pretty open-ended game. Much like Super Mario 64, there is an intended order that you’re supposed to visit the game’s different worlds, but as long as you’ve got enough macguffins to unlock the right doors, you can play the worlds in whatever order you like. Unlike its sequel, Banjo-Tooie, Banjo-Kazooie’s world are pretty well self-contained. Rare is the instance when you have to leave a world because there’s a challenge that you cannot complete without a move learned in a later world.