Fitness

Punching in the New Year

It’s 2025! And honestly, it’s going to be a pretty big year for me. I’ve been granted a big ol’ promotion to management at work, and before long I will have my very own swabbies to command. It’s going to be neat!

But really, what I came here to write about is Fitness Boxing: Fist of the North Star. I’ve been playing it somewhat obsessively lately, and yet I still know basically nothing about the manga that it’s based on. This game came out in early 2023, and while I did buy it day one, I only played it a bit before dropping it completely in favour of… I don’t know, getting fat, I guess.

When I picked it back up in October 2024, I only had like 20 stamps, which means I loaded it up on 20 different days. That’s not a lot for a game that I’ve owned for over two years, and I don’t really know how long I played on any of those days. I actually wish I had some metrics to prove it, but I’m pretty sure that I’ve (at least) doubled my total playtime over the last two months.

The fun part is that I was actually gifted Fitness Boxing 3 for Xmas, but I haven’t even installed it yet because I’m still so wrapped up in Fist of the North Star. That has spurred me on to play even more, with the intent of unlocking everything so that I can move onto the next game. I’m at 69% (nice) of achievements unlocked, which really means nothing because the first 40% or so were handed out like candy on Halloween and now the rest will take a looong time to earn. But that’s fine! This is exactly the kind of game that I should be grinding for achievements.

At the end of the day, I’m really just happy that I’ve settled myself into a very consistent training groove. I’m at the point where I actually look forward to exercising most days, which is saying a lot, as someone who used to call exercise “socially acceptable self-harm.” Between this and the whole promotion thing, I’m actually quite proud of myself lately. That’s not something that I ever expected to be.

2025, I think, is going to be a pretty good year.

Month End Video Game Wrap-Up: December 2024

~ Game Over ~

DEAD OR SCHOOL (PC) – I bought it because the title made me laugh out loud. Much to my surprise, it turned out to be a pretty enjoyable little hack ‘n’ slash. Could use a bit more polish, but it’s just the right difficulty level and I had a fun time playing it.

Ring Fit Adventure (Switch) – I’ve been making time to play this for an hour or so every Sunday for a couple months now, and I’ve finally, finally beaten the game on New Game+ mode. Now to start New Game++! Hopefully I’ll stick with it better this time around and finish it within 2025.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Rita’s Rewind (Switch) – A brand-spankin’ new arcade-style brawler that came out of nowhere and I purchased immediately. I have no regrets. While it could have used a little more time in the oven, it’s exactly what I both expected and hoped for.

Words and Such

I haven’t really been in the writing mood too much as of late. I know, not a great business model for a blogger, but also… I do this for fun, not for glory.

In an effort to post something, here’s a point-form list of things that I maybe would have written more about in another timeline and that may be of moderate interest. I may still write about some of them at length, but probably not.

I’ve been playing the new Ys game in short bursts since it released a couple weeks ago. As you may know, I’m a big, big fan of the Ys series, and Ys X: Nordics is not disappointing so far. The first few chapters were a bit slow, but it’s taking off now, and I really like the two-member party system. It’s very unique, if a bit limited in options.
Work has been kind of insanely busy lately. Which is a good thing, because it helps to keep me on task. Also, it’s becoming more and more apparent to me how well-respected (and maybe even well-liked) I am within the organization. As someone who’s had low self-esteem for basically his whole life, it’s really quite nice to feel confident and dependable.
I bought a stupidly expensive alarm clock from Nintendo recently, and I don’t regret a penny of it. I never expected such a weird thing could bring me such joy. Will likely do more words about this at some point.
Went to see Venom: The Last Dance recently. I’m still not sure exactly how I feel about it or why (I haven’t given it all that much consideration), but I may have been kinda bored for most of the runtime? Definitely the least enjoyable of the trilogy, in my opinion, even though the climax and epilogue were satisfying.
After years of sleeping on the couch with the TV on just about every night, I’ve been sleeping in my bed like a normal-ass person over the last week. I’m not really sleeping much better (still waking up at least once a night), but I am feeling a little more well-rested, and my back is definitely thanking me.
A couple of co-workers have been singing the praises of the roguelike poker game, Balatro, so I decided to give it a whirl on their recommendations. I’m trying my best, but I don’t know if it’s right for me. Even the tutorial felt overwhelming. And here I was thinking that I was getting over my fear of roguelikes.
I was going to put a link to a relevant post in the paragraph above, but it turns out that I never published it. I guess that’s something I probably should do, seems silly to have written out a full 2000-plus-word post that’s just sitting in limbo. Actually, there are at least two of those…
Taking a more proactive role in managing both my eating and exercise regimens throughout the year has done wonders for my health, both physical and mental. It’s been a long road, but I’ve far surpassed my weight loss goal and I’ve been feeling fantastic. It would be nice to have someone, you know, notice, but oh well! External validation is for chumps, anyway.
I went on a short vacation with my family at the end of September. I don’t think I wrote a single word about it, but it was awesome. Nothing terribly exciting, but it was great to simply get away and be somewhere different for a while. And also to have that QT with the people who are closest to me, of course. That’s always good.

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: April 2023

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Ghost of Tsushima (PS5) – I wasn’t too sure about this one for the first few hours, but it really grew on me over time. An excellent game in most regards, though it does feel very repetitive, as open-world games usually do. My favourite parts by far were the side-stories of Jin’s allies. Folks who ignore side-quests in games would absolutely be missing out on the best parts of this game. Norio and Masako in particular were characters that I really liked adventuring with. Platinum trophy’d.

Super Mario Land 2 (GB) – Yes, again. But this time, the colourized romhack! It’s… the same game, but looks nicer. Also, you can be Luigi!

Resident Evil 4 (PS5) – Everything I could have hoped for. It’s generally a very faithful remake, but remixes a lot of the content in different ways to keep veterans of the original on their toes. That plus a whole bunch of new elements, and MUCH improved boss fights across the board. Basically exactly what a remake should be, in my opinion. It also fleshes out the story and characters way more than the original, which is definitely a nice-to-have. I’ll absolutely be playing this a few more times before the year is done.

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: March 2023

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Windbound (Switch) – I want to say nice things about this game, since it’s all about exploring and building a boat and sailing that boat to explore more. A very fun gameplay loop, in my opinion! However… there’s combat, and it’s slow and janky and not very fun. Also the game tended to crash at the end of each chapter in my playthrough and that’s… that’s really bad. You can watch me suffer here!

Kwaidan ~Azuma Manor Story~ (Switch) – A survival horror set in Meiji-era Japan, where you’re tasked with saving a mansion from being occupied by yokai (or yoki, as the game calls them). The controls are truly mind-boggling, but it’s otherwise a pretty good, if very short and small, game. Also, made by a single person!

Nintendo Stats – 2022 Edition

I’ve grown to really enjoy how Nintendo compiles your play history and presents it in statistical data for the year. And apparently Steam did it this year, too!

Alas, Nintendo’s offering for 2022 was weak, with much less data than the last couple of years. What I got was a list of the 21 Switch games I played the most this year, and how many hours of each. No graphs, no in-depth breakdowns, nothing else. So, here are the top three…

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 takes the cake for sure, and I still have a ton of game left to play there. I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s definitely going to rank high on my 2022 GOTY list. Monster Hunter Rise got second billing because the Sunbreak expansion came out this year and I spent a lot of time grinding away at that with my brother. Lastly, and just squeaking in there at the end of the year, is Pokémon Scarlet, which is even a few hours richer than what it says above, because I’ve played it a bunch since these stats were delivered. Also, the assertion that I only played Pokémon on 10 separate days cannot be right. It just can’t!

Desire: A Follow-up

You know that meme, “how it started/how it’s going”? I’m doing that today, but in text form!

Basically, I just want to take a quick look back at my “24 Days of Desire” feature and see how many of them have been fulfilled. It’s been almost a year now, I should have been able to get everything I wanted, right? Let’s see!

Day 1: Television – This was about me wanting to have cable, and if I recall correctly, it was specifically so I could watch the Chucky series. Well, I never got cable, because that would be stupid, and I still haven’t watched Chucky, because I don’t pirate TV shows or movies any more. Chucky is also on Paramount+, which has other things I want to watch, so I’m thinking about a subscription to that… But probably won’t bother.

Day 2: A better GPU – Ain’t got this. I’ve heard that prices are going down, but I haven’t bothered to look in many months. Besides, I only wanted it to beef up my Quest 2, so it’s right down at the bottom of my priority ladder.

Day 3: Star Wars sequels box set – I haven’t looked to see if this exists, and I don’t actually care enough to check. This was a filler episode, for sure.

Nintendo Direct 9.13.2022

Yep, it’s that time again. Time to read my knee-jerk reactions to all the games that appear in Nintendo’s newest hype commercial. Let’s-a go!

Fire Emblem Engage – I like the trailer, and it looks amazing, but I just don’t really care about Fire Emblem that much. However, there’s only room for Square-Enix TRPGs in my life.

It Takes Two – Released on every other platform last year, it was a big hit, but I just can’t be bothered. It’s a co-op game, after all, and I have no co with whom to op.

Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse: One day, I’ll get into the Fatal Frame series. I’ve always been very interested, but never made the time. Probably won’t happen in 2022, though. Fun Fact: My ex-wife who wasn’t really into video games had played more Fatal Frames than I have.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 DLC – A new Hero character, challenge battle mode, and… swimsuits… of course. Dammit, Japan. *smh*

24 Days of Desire (10): Abs

No, you didn’t read that wrong. Today’s topic is abs. As in “visibly tight abdominal muscles that women want to rub their faces up against.” Nobody ever said that this list was going to be exclusively for material objects what must be purchased.

Okay, to be fair, I don’t really want abs so much as I want for the abs-sence of my gut. It’s not even really that much of a gut, but it has re-inflated a little bit over the last year. I’ve been trying in vain to get it back down to 2020 levels, but I’ve developed some fairly bad eating habits this year that have been proving difficult to undo.

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: December 2020

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Paratopic (Switch) – I honestly have no idea what happened here. It’s roughly an hour of what I imagine a really low-key drug trip must be like. That said… I liked it. I played it a second time to see if there were different story paths, and you can diverge a bit to find some neat stuff, but it’s a really slow game, which made the replay very tedious.

Spec Ops: The Line (PC) – Pew-pew shootmans game wherein I recorded my playthrough. You can watch it here. (tldw: Game is v good, my recording framerate was v bad.)

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (Switch) – I think that this is an overall better game than the original Hyrule Warriors, though it just didn’t quite click with me in the same way. I liked it, I really did, but mostly it just made me want to play Breath of the Wild again.

A Knight’s Quest (Switch) – An adventure that was clearly inspired by Zelda, but also had a little Mario thrown in for flavour. Buggy as all heck, but still playable and mostly fun. Combat made a hard transition from mindless button mashing to intensely frustrating near the end, and between that and one atrocious boss fight, I just about gave up on the game. The soundtrack is way better than it has any right to be.

The Final Fantasy Legend (GB) – Retro RPG where nothing works the way you expect it to. It’s that way by design, though, because this is a spiritual successor to FF2 and the first game in the SaGa series, known mostly for its obtuse mechanics and punishing difficulty. Still fun, once you figure out how all the systems work. Little bit too grindy, though.

~ Progress Notes ~

DOOM Eternal (PS4) – On stage 6.

Fitness Boxing 2 (Switch) – Achievement collection at 26%.

Witch Hunt (PC) – Defeated the second “boss”.

Picross S4 (Switch) – Mostly done with the regular puzzles.

Robo Recall: Unplugged (Oculus) – Half-done Chapter 2.

SINoALICE (iOS) – Mostly grinding the Xmas event.