This week, I’m tired.
I’ve been filling all of my days off with trying to catch up with cleaning that’s been building up, and unfortunately I’ve been having little success making a dent. On the up side Terraria had an update.
I haven’t gotten to play much, but as far as I’m aware, there’s new accessories for summoners, and a rework of all of the early game gem staffs.
What’s everyone else doing?
Girls und Panzer Episode 10 is titled Classmates! Several meanings are loaded into that word. Two tanks and two new tank crews are added, even though we’re going into the last battle of the series. Miho talks about her attachment to Oarai and her friends, which emphasizes her disconnection from Kuromorimine. This has been a primary theme throughout the series; the divergence from expectations and planned outcomes to fulfill goals. This is Japan, of course; so the writing keeps this idea confined…don’t want to upset the apple cart too much. BUT…several subplots converge in this episode to reinforce this main idea. A secondary concept, that Miho rejects individualism and pride in favor of befriending her “enemies” is also pointed at. Sure, “befriending” enemies is something of an anime and manga trope by itself, but Girls und Panzer doesn’t use it that way. They try to actually make a point. There’s even a discussion about the idea late in the episode that doesn’t easily translate to English very well. But we’ll get to that later.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Girls und Panzer: Classmates!”
The Nintendo Wii was lightning in a bottle. I remember it was a hard to find, in demand gift for Christmas one year and then suddenly every household I went to seemed to have one. I have an aunt and uncle who are very staunch Christians that adhere to a mostly closed-off rural lifestyle. They had dial-up internet until the mid 2010s. They’ve never had cable. Yet, they had a flatscreen, a Nintendo Wii, and several games for it.
It was a weird time. Video games went from a begrudgingly accepted, but mildly frowned upon hobby, to something the whole family could get in on. Everyone from grandma to the toddlers could swing the stick around. Needless to say, the barrier for entry was near non-existent. It was a way to bring the family together over something new and fun. I, specifically, have a very fond memory of everyone getting together to play Wii Sports and Guitar Hero 3 one Christmas.
The wii, for all intents and purposes, was an unmitigated success. I should have been in the peak of video game bliss. Only problem was that I hated the Wii’s motion controls. They were imprecise and laggy. Everyone else was having fun waving their hands around and hoping for the best, while I got pissed off because “these games aren’t even hard, the controls just suck.” In fairness to myself here, I wasn’t wrong. Prior to the release of the Motion+ release the system was very hit and miss on its tracking. Also, the Wii didn’t exactly have a long list of heavy-hitting titles for the less casual gamer. There were several rail shooters that were great. I still look back finally at Twilight Princess and Smash Bros. Brawl. But, other than that, the wii games frustrated me more than entertained me. So, I was more than happy to turn my nose up when I noticed just how much shovelware got poured onto the market. Soooooo many minigame collections.
What this all boiled down to is an angsty teenage me refusing to engage with what I considered to be beneath me. Instead of embracing the fun despite the limitations, I chose to be superior. This is something I’ve come to regret. I miss the times where people actually took an interest in one of my hobbies of choice. Sure, I’ve had a taste of that feeling again with VR, but it’s far harder to convince people to take a turn when just starting a game means reconfiguring things for each person who wants to play. Throw on the need I have to avoid Meta’s store like the plague, and you have me lugging my PC back and forth just to maybe convince people to give it a try. It’s simply not the same.
With “Stage Tour” coming soon, I’m hoping that some of that spirit can be rekindled. I’m happy to schlep my PS5 places if it means I can spend an hour or two goofing around with my friends and family and playing what amounts to a complicated game of karaoke. Well, I can always hope anyway.
Please find 2007 me shredding a song on easy cool. It’s very important to him.
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Oh and if you were wondering where the post was last week, I was up to some devious shenanigans. True adventurous nonsense. Some real high stakes buffoonery.
I bought a new phone and forgot to verify that my apps properly transferred over… including my 2FA apps. I had a 3 day anxiety attack while trying to pull things together and took the week off.
This week I finally started playing The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth.
I’ve been meaning to play this for years, but I’ve just not been able to get past playing two stages and thinking it was fun, but there’s not much going on. But unsurprisingly, just like Enter the Gungeon, it gets more interesting as you play.
I have been enjoying it, despite it’s rather gross aesthetic, and it’s concerningly large quantity of achievements.
I am posting this a bit late and writing this last minute. I’ve been spending most of my free time helping clean a friends house, so I stayed a bit late because I wanted to pet their orange cat Rolo. I think Rolo is such a sweet cat, but I swear that his brain cells might actually neutrinos because I don’t think he could find his way out of a room that was all doors.
So how’s everyone else doing?
This week I played some Endacopia.
Endacopia is point and click adventure game that is just bazar. I played the demo for it a few years ago on itch.io and was fascinated, but at the time it was just a demo with no release date. But having released late last month I got to play some.
It’s definitely one of the more surreal games I’ve played, with some horror elements mixed with a little bit of Pajama Sam silliness. Every screen feels like a different idea that got stitched together at the end, not in a haphazard way, but in a trying to make every screen interesting and fresh, which appeals to me.
I also very much enjoy the casual switch between 2D pixel art and 3D modals.
I feel a bit bad not talking about anything that happens in the game, but I wouldn’t want to spoilers it, and I don’t even fully understand what’s happening in the first place.
How’s everyone else doing this week?
Episode 9 of Girls und Panzer: Last ditch effort! starts with a flashback: the Japanese Ministry of Education and a bunch of other stuff, Bureau of School Ships, has decided to consolidate schools to save money.
The bureaucrat meeting with the Oarai School Council tells them the Ministry is starting with schools that have no notable achievements or programs. “Oarai used to have an accomplished Sensha-do team, but that’s been gone for a while…” which prompts Anzu to respond, “Oh! So we’ll restart the Tankery program! You wouldn’t shut down the school with the winning team!”
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Girls und Panzer: Last ditch effort!”
In addition to Dark Souls and Dave the Diver I’ve been playing All The Mods 10, the Minecraft modpack. I have probably thousands of hours of Minecraft experience but I’ve never worked through a big modpack like ATM10 until now. Recently I had a realization, though. I had spent dozens of hours in this pack optimizing and automating my way to being incredibly overpowered without doing much exploring. I can now wander around one-shotting basically everything. There’s no challenge anymore. I’m bored.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Masculine Urge to Ruin My Own Playthroughs”
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