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Our company is closing our local office so we all get to be full time remote instead of 2 days in office. I already was fully remote but I'm glad for the move.

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/classic-90s-space-sim-star-wars-x-wing-had-one-mission-that-was-so-brutally-hard-a-fan-cut-up-his-floppy-disks-and-mailed-them-back-to-lucasarts/ Knew what mission it was just from the headline.

I had an interesting quest in Wartales. I was chasing after a tracker who in turn was chasing after a grave robbing scholar. I found them in an undead village. The mechanic with undead villages is you need to minimize your noise rating and maximize your willpower. So typically I'd take a team of lightly armored but decently willfull warriors with me into the town, plus a locksmith (who unfortunately is a lumbering oaf with a big sword. We find the two arguing in the ruins, and sure enough, they trigger an undead attack. Undead attacks put you in a large room with a bunch of potential doors and windows. Your goal is to block them with your people but also look for an exit. You can't kill all the undead, they will keep coming. My first attempt was tough. My lightly armored folks were bitten and clawed at, and when I finally escaped, both of the NPC's were dead. But I survived and I was like, 'that was a cool fight.' Then I thought about it a bit more, and realized that noise doesn't really matter if they NPC's trigger the undead attack no matter what. I went back in with a full noisy team and got them out safely. But it was still more rewarding to do it the other way.

Patron was never a graphic showcase, especially if you do the photomode zoom in close up views/textures, ew. But it has improved visually a bit, I think animations and some added details. Although, straight-down to try and show a whole huge area just looks like every other grid-based Banished clone. Tons of houses. >.> Apparently it takes a lot to "feed, clothe, and luxuriate" ... 300 adults/youth/children - with some excess to sell. There's more farms not in pic. When I zoomed into a town one winter, I noticed someone built a snowman. Some Xmas trees around here and there too, heh.

---When you can sleep thru the night all of a sudden, you may sleep for 12 hours one time and totally ruin your sleep/wake schedule again for a while. eg, "oh look, it's dawn again." ---Me: "It just hit me that all your (heavy, cotton, short sleeve) t-shirts are grey/it's all you wear (nearly entire closet is grey). When did that happen, you used to have blues and beiges too at least." ---Hubby: "They fit like I want and it's only color they came in. I ordered some more this week too." ---Me: "Oh - I figured you were color coordinating, y'know, the grey hair." *runs away*

Joys of turning off a process that takes two hours to restart by accident. Fun day

Ok I haven't made my gaming updater in a while, and I am sure you are all dying to know of my gaming habits. Dragon's Dogma I am commiting to finishing this one as my highest priority. I pushed beyond opening and the game became quite playable. There is originality to it, I appreciate, but so far I am still not convinced it is a "good game". I think it was a cult classic for a reason. But perhaps, it will get better as it goes on. I find quest design frustratingly uneven. So far they seem like excuses to get you our into the wild more than anything else, but them seem to range from handholdy to frustratingly obtuse. So far it more seems like uneven standard an inconsistant design, rather than intentional creative choice. More importantly, I am not sold on combat, and overal systems. UI is horrendous, that the first thing. But to me the game seems to land in the awkard spot for action-RPG where it is neither decent action game nor an RPG. I am not seeing much possible variation in builds so far, and gameplay seems to revolve around spamming attack and abilities with final result mostly coming down to stats (do I do enough damage and stagger, and can enemy kill me in a single chain of attacks). Of course, the most novel and interesting bit so far are enemy weaknesses - but while capturing imagination, I wasn't particularly blown away gameplay wise. So far it seems simply that certain enemies need to be attacked certain way to made the encounter more managable, but that's about all the depth it has. You either know or you don't. Climbing enemies is cool, though, at least from visual perspective. Still, games like Dark Souls also had optional limb removal/weak spots mechanics, and overall I think their system is far more competent and intricate in both halfs of action-RPG genre. I like thought, that it is an action-RPG focused on a party - but again, without controlling the party members it's not particularly deep experience. Edit. Oh, unprofeshional, out of tune singing in the main menu really, really irritates me /edit Prince of Persia: Lost Crown It's good, but I wasn't blown away by it. Being done by same devs as excellent latest Rayman games platforming is great. Combat is also more complex than your usual metroidvania experience (a bit of side scrolling DMC there), but I also wasn't particularly impressed by it. Yes, there are more attacks, and you can create basic combos, but I just didn't think the combat was deliberate enough to be rewarding. Yes, Hollownight had very basic attacks, but all upgrades, modifiers and player in combat decisions felt very impactful. Not so much in Prince of Persia, and in spite of fairly decent enemy variety, I didn't find enemies particularly memorable. Bosses were fairly challenging, but in what I found to be rather annoying way. In a dark souls fashion, you kinda need to memorise their moves and timing. At least on highest difficulty parrying and dodging isn't very forgiving, so reacting on what you see isn't really possible in my opinion. It's all about dying few times, learning of proper timings and responses to each attack sequence. As for the motroidvania bit - it felt quite handholdy. It took the game a long time before it actually allowed you to explore a bit, but every area felt to be designed more like a Dark Souls level - a maze that you explore in linear fashion and unlock shortcut, rather than genuine exploration. I was surprised, as with game giving you new ways of marking the map (with in game screenshots) and option at the start between guided and non-guided experience, I expected something a bit more freeform. Most things you need to get back to, are collectibles that you can see but can't get to due to power X, Y and Z being missing (think Arkham series) but personally I find this design more frustrating that rewarding. Still, overall a good game, though it feels a bit derivativede. It mostly just seems to adapt well tested designsed (a lot of Hollow Knight in there), which I think is a bit of a shame - I would prefer if there was more Prince of Persia in there. Diablo 4 Not much to say. With it coming to GamePass I gave it ago, played for two evenings and got bored. It's not really a criticism of the title, that's how my adventure ends with all hack'n slashes so far. Numbers going up just doesn't excite me much, which is good considering the state of my bank account. Street Fighter 6 150h in and still going. I exhausted single player content, and am deep in online play and getting my butt kicked, and occasionally kicking butt of even bigger noob. I am getting better, but the progress is gradually slowing. Looking at skill ranking I am still a below average player (and by a fair margin). I am still enjoying myself, though, and that's what's important. So yeah, after years of dipping into fighting games I can recommend SF6 for its onboarding experience. Lengthy singleplayer campaign is a good way of familiarising one self with controls, roster and various mechanics. There is also a fairly gentle transition into online play, where game keeps you in the noob section for a while, before allowing you to get pummeled. I double down on my commitment by buying an arcade stick in an impulse purchase: For one, I am a bit angry at myself that I bought it instead of a Flight Stick, as it would be a more versatile purchase. I am also not sure of how good of a purchase it was, but I am getting around to it. I am still getting proficient with it, and I had to dose my playtime as between it and violin playing I started to strain my wrist. By either my hand got stronger, or spring weaker, and I didn't encounter any issues lately. I am also getting more and more competent with using it, with less wrong imputs and quicker response time. It's this funny thing, where a stick definitely didn't make me a better player, but the game makes more intuitive sense. Chaining command inputs is far easier for me to wrap my head around, than with buttons. It being a Capcom game, one also needs to mention monatization. Game has been very stingy with cosmetics costing extra and new character not being earnable in game - now, the game isn't designed as annoyingly as other titles. Shop button is decreet enough, and the game doesn't bombard you with microtransactions like other games do. But the truth is, everything extra will cost you. Unfortuantely, that means that game will be pricey to continue playing as further character passes are released. It's definitely a financial commitment.

In Brisbane, the F-18 Super Hornets and C-17 Globemasters still buzz the buildings in the CBD every year during the "River Fire" festival... I never get tired of seeing it up close. Something about seeing those jets at such low altitude cruising through the city (following the path of the river) and then pull up just before the bridge

Technically an archlich...

I didn't like Aloy. Not 'cause she was a bad character but 'cause I bought the game to fight robot dinosaurs and her cut scenes were the stuff that happened in between the fighting robot dinosaurs.

I decide to take an ox cart from Melve to Vernworth. I hit the doze off button, but about a third of the way through the trip I get woken up by an attack. Saurians, not a big deal, I hop out of the cart and help kill the Saurians. No sooner do I get back in the cart than I see goblins up the road. Gotta kill them too. While I'm fighting the goblins a griffon decides to join the party, absolutely massacres the ox cart, then goes to work on my party and what's left of the ox cart's security detail. I had a long, thrilling, and challenging fight with the griffon and then had to hoof it the rest of the way to Vernworth. So much for fast travel.

I'll do it. The one I can get is the director's cut I think, it's about half an hour longer than the US release. I'd tentatively reccomend it to you, compared to a lot of films today it's not quite as outrageous as when it dropped. Like I said it wasn't what I went in expecting and frankly turned out to be a much better film because of it. I'd also be curious to see your take on Lair of the White Worm and how it relates to Altered States. They're very different (hallucinogenic fantasy vs horror) but the hallucinations scenes felt like they could be transplanted.

Hmm, I must say, I don’t remember H:ZD story to be much more than serviceable. I cool visual design though. Alloy was likeable, if a bit too one note. I am tempted to pick it up at some point. While Open World checklist simulators aren’t my cup of tea, Sony ones (Spiderman, Horizon) have been fairly pleasant time wasters, when I wasn’t in a mood to play anything demanding attention.

Happy Easter

Got signed out 4 times in a row in the span of an hour.

Easily the think I have been looking forward most since Suicide Squad release

https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-news-04-02-2024-9bdf66771b62af37d85a2800f71c0e6c Guess they mentioned hummus and that triggered the IDF.

I think the thing that really strikes me with The Boy Friend is that there's really no reason for a silly 1920s matinee show quasi-musical to seem deranged whatsoever, especially when the stated goal of the filmmaker was just to make it sweet and innocent, and yet I could feel a nuclear meltdown starting in my brain about a third of the way through as I tried to make sense of the choices that the director was making, and it didn't really ever stop. There was a distinct sensation of fire and smoldering in the top left part of my brain even after the film had finished. I'd definitely appreciate someone else's take on it to determine whether or not maybe I'm just cracked for reasons unrelated to the film - perhaps it was just all the characters staring with the full whites of their eyes straight into the camera for what felt like half the film that did me in. I should probably watch The Devils sometime, it is rather infamous. Probably a little outside my wheelhouse, but that's exactly how I got into this mess in the first place.

Recently got the news that a former friend of the family was found dead by her son. Her son used to be a friend of mine until the end of school caused us to lose contact. Say what you will of the perils of mobile phones and social media, one thing they certainly made a lot easier is keeping in contact with each other. The only people from school I still have contact with were those from the vocational high school I went to - and that only because we all had instant messaging (anyone remember the then ubiquitous ICQ?) and mobile phones. Friends and acquaintences from before, like the aforementioned son? No, not really. Anyway, apparently she already had two heart attacks and was diabetic, and her health issues caught up with her. She also went through a lot of mental health issues, some ages ago, some years ago, some recently, like when she had an affair with a married man and did not take it too well that he would not leave his wife for her. She also had two sisters, and both commited suicide, one of them as a little girl, the other as adult. The other sister was a former teacher of mine - sort of, she gave me (private) physics lessons when my school's physics education was, well, let's say, a little lacking in depth and focus. She had a stroke a couple of years ago, then fought tooth and nail to get enough control of her body back so she could end her life on her own terms. Wee, that post became a little bleaker than intended.