Lowest bar: Cleared

Remember back in April when I was all like “Holy crap people watched my YouTube garbage for eight whole hours last month!”? Yeah, Spooktober 2022 was good to me, and thanks mostly to that Pokémon video I posted last month, the momentum hasn’t dropped off quite yet.

My official stance is still that I don’t actually give a damn if anybody watches the videos that I post, but man… it feels kinda nice to see those numbers go up.

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: November 2022

~ Game Over ~

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA) – What? Halloween season is over? Sure, but Castlevania is appropriate at any time of the year. Plus, this is my favourite ‘Vania, so there’s that. Is it still good almost 20 years later? Yeah! A little creaky in some ways, but still solid. Got the good ending and 100% map completion, but I had no interest in grinding for 100% soul completion.

ElecHead (Switch) – A very fun retro-style puzzle-platformer. Charge up platforms with your body and see what happens! Throw your head to charge up far away platforms! Fall and die on spikes many times! You know the type.

The Turing Test (PC) – Sweet first-person-puzzler that is highly reminiscent of Portal and The Talos Principle. Sadly, it’s rather short, and maybe even a wee bit too easy. I suppose it’s a good thing, though, when a game leaves you wanting more.

Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: November 2022

ActRaiser Renaissance and Why I Shouldn’t Have Played It (So Much)

The Wii’s Virtual Console was a pretty incredible thing, and one of the reasons why: it introduced me to a fair number of classic games that I never would have experienced otherwise. ActRaiser for SNES being one of them, if you hadn’t already sussed that out from the post title. I can vaguely remember reading about ActRaiser (or perhaps its sequel?) in Nintendo Power, very specifically while with my family at the drive-in theatre, waiting for a movie to start. But I never actually played it until many, many years later when it was released on the VC. And you know what? It’s a pretty cool game! Part action-platformer, part SimCity Lite, it’s got surprisingly few imitators to this day despite how well-received it was and how fondly remembered it seems to be.

Square-Enix surprised the world last year by releasing a remake of the game, called ActRaiser Renaissance. I feel a little bad about waiting over a year to play it, but there are simply too many games, you know? But I have played it now, and I thought that it was very good! It’s a very faithful remake, as it brings back literally everything I remember about the original and polishes up the presentation with fancy new graphics and a rearranged soundtrack by the composer of the original, Yuzo Koshiro. And that’s all great! There are also a ton of new features, like being able to level up your character and get power-ups in the action stages, and a new tower-defense mode for the simulation stages. There’s also an absolute buttload of extra dialogue, which, having read it all, is pretty safe to skip entirely.

Where things go wrong, however, are in the trophies (or achievements, if you prefer). While most of the trophies are awarded for beating bosses, at least half of them are awarded for what amounts to grinding levels and farming monsters.

Continue reading ActRaiser Renaissance and Why I Shouldn’t Have Played It (So Much)

Grand Re-Re-Re-Opening

So, my WordPress theme, “Weaver II”, has been woefully outdated for some time now. I don’t much like the idea of installing a new theme and having to tweak everything to get it back to the way I like it, but such is life.

That said, I have (clearly) installed a new theme, and so things are going to look a little wonky around here for a bit. I’m not the most proactive guy around, so no guarantees that things will improve quickly. You’re just going to have to appreciate “Twenty Fifteen”‘s out-of-the-box look for a while.

Migraine Watch: Nov 14, 2022

I thought I might die yesterday. It seems that all the migraines that I haven’t had over the last two and a half years have joined together to inflict upon me a Super Migraine.

I woke up with a sharp pain behind my right eye. This is kind of the usual post-migraine pain for me, so I assumed that the migraine had come and gone while I was asleep (it’s happened before!) and I just had to put up with the fallout. Not so bad! So I started going about my day as usual.

Around 10:30, though, the pain started to worsen, and I decided to write off the rest of the morning and nap until the afternoon. At noon, my vision began to degrade, and I knew things were only just beginning. A while later, the aura subsided and the true pain began. My brain felt like it was being stabbed repeatedly. My right eye felt like it was trying to pop. My ear felt as though someone had jammed an icepick into it, and I developed a massive toothache on the right side of my mouth. As if all that pain weren’t enough, I had full-body chills and felt like I could throw up at any moment for the rest of the day.

So, I ended up spending almost the entire day trying to sleep on the couch with a mixing bowl by my side. It was so bad, in fact, that I texted my parents to bring me some ibuprofen on their way home from work. Normally, I can get through a migraine without any medication, but this one was like nothing I’ve felt before. I’ve never had one that’s lasted the entire day before, either. It’s usually just a few hours at worst. Like I said, Super Migraine.

I’d wager that this one was likely brought on by stress from the previous day. But I didn’t think I had been that stressed out? I mean, I definitely was, but it was for a short while and easily resolved, and I ended up perfectly content. In any case, it was self-inflicted and royally stupid, so I don’t want to talk about it.

The good news is that I feel completely back to normal today. Hooray!

TV in short form

I’ve watched a few new shows this year! But I haven’t ever really found the drive to press any words about them. So today, rather than anything that tries to be insightful or whatever, here are some random thoughts about a few of them. Think of it as a Month End TV Show Wrap-Up, only it’s for all of 2022 so far, and this is probably the only one that’s going to happen.

Midnight Mass

Horror mini-series on Netflix. Midnight Mass opens with a fella returning to his island home after having been in prison for years. Then you meet pretty much everyone who lives on said island (the ensemble cast is huge!) and follow their Christianity-themed adventures. But of course I told you this is a horror series, so certain elements may not be as they initially seem!

And speaking of things that aren’t exactly what they seem… well, I don’t want to spoil anything, but the villain! You’ll spend a long time waffling over who you think the villain is in this one. There are a lot of red herrings, and thankfully they’re all written in ways that make sense. But also… Maybe there are multiple villains! Or maybe I’m just trying to trick you and there are no villains! The only way to find out is to watch the show!

Definitely dug this one, but it doesn’t really get going until the end of episode five, so it’s going to seem like a struggle for a while. The payoff is well worth it, though! The last two episodes are great! I’d actually like to say more about it, but I watched it in April or something, so most of the finer details have slipped my mind. And also, I want to avoid the spoilers. Telling you pretty much anything about this one is a spoiler.

Continue reading TV in short form

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.

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Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: October 2022

~ Game Over ~

Shovel Knight Dig (Switch) – A roguelite prequel to Shovel Knight, it’s not what I would have asked Yacht Club for, but it’s what we got. Looks great, sounds great, but unfortunately… roguelite. Somehow, I managed a winning run after only about two hours of gameplay, so that was a nice surprise. It’s got a few creepy enemies, but I wouldn’t call it even slightly spooky.

Resident Evil 2 (PC) – Played this many times, actually! Leon A (easy), Claire A (randomizer), Leon A (normal), and finally, the Kendo’s Cut mod. I wanted to get at least one B story run in, but just ran out of time. Needless to say, ’tis a fairly spooky game.

Power Wash Simulator (PC) – Finally loaded it up to play the last few stages added to the official release. Such a nice, satisfying way to waste time. Not at all spooky, though.

Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: October 2022