Keyrock

The view from my seat at the famous Greensboro Coliseum: More pictures incoming...

I'm completely burned out on superhero movies. The fact that Sam Rami is directing this is the only reason I have any interest in it at all. My biggest concern is how much was he allowed to make a Sam Rami movie (yay!) and how much was he forced to make a Marvel movie (*snore*).

I decided to take a crack at Shiva in SMT V, since that's the only thing standing between me and the final push for the true neutral ending. Going into the battle blind, I had no idea whether I would be strong enough to take on the base game's strongest boss (Spoilers: I wasn't). The team I had built up was so strong that lately I had been steamrolling bosses even when several levels lower than them. Then I ran into Shiva. The Hindu destroyer and re-creator of the world turned out to be 9 levels higher than my boy Beefstik and 8-14 levels higher than most of my crew. That's a gap too big for even my team of super strong demons to make up. I did put up a decent fight, though. I got Shiva below 50% HP, but eventually buckled under the weight of his ridiculous damage output. I need to close the level gap a bit before attempting the battle again.

I can only do so much.

I'm not ready to start God Eater 3 yet, I need to finish SMT V first, but I wanted to check out the character creator. I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed, I guess Code Vein and its glorious character creator has spoiled me. It's by no means the worst character creator, but it's somewhat limited. There are no sliders, it's all presets. They do give you a fairly decent amount of presets for everything, but there's no bald hairstyle and no body options. The one body type, and this goes for both male and female, is the thinnest, most anorexic looking, zero ass having character model I have seen in a long time. On the plus side, there are 20 voice options each for male and female.

I scooped up God Eater 3 on Switch. I've not played any of the previous games, but I've been told that it's essentially Monster Hunter but even more Japanese.

The celebration of Festivus begins with the airing of grievances. I have a lot of problems with you people! On a serious note, Merry Christmas or whatever you celebrate, everyone. I'm technically Christian, but I'm not going to preach nor push a Bible in anyone's face. I just like spending time with family at this time of year. I'll leave you with the best Christmas song ever:

I'm wrapping up presents today and tomorrow. I'm also pushing myself to somewhat flip my schedule in preparation for the drive to southern Florida. Wednesday evening I'm driving 2 hours northeast to the Greensboro Coliseum for the All Elite Wrestling Holiday Bash event. As a longtime rasslin fan, a big show at the Greensboro Coliseum is a bucket list item. I'll probably get home Thursday early morning around 2 am and the plan is to stay up until at least 7 am, then crash, wake up late afternoon/evening, then start the roughly 11 hour drive at 10 pm-ish.

And that's the nerfed castle, supposedly the force launcer puzzles were harder before. I'm the opposite, I'm sad I didn't get to play the pre-1.02 patch nerf castle. I'm at the point in the game that I could probably go to the end were I doing any of the paths except the one I'm doing. I have to complete a couple more side quests before the final push for the true neutral ending.

Plot twist: There was no party, it was all in your head.

I really like Zeus' design in this game: I was 3 levels lower than Zeus when I fought him and I beat him first try. Hard difficulty my ass! Seriously, though, I almost feel guilty for using Cleopatra and Mother Harlot, they are so ludicrously strong. Speaking of which: Mother Harlot best girl.

Yeah, we can still get the #1 seed mathematically, but realistically it ain't gonna happen. Seeds #2 thru #4 are effectively identical, not different enough to make it worth tryharding for the #2 seed if you have banged up players, which is every NFL team at this point of the season.

Muh Boys are now 10-4. I'm not completely sure if we've mathematically won the division yet, but neither the Iggles nor the Skins are getting to 10 wins and the Giants flat out can't. The division is ours and the #1 seed is all but out of the question, making our remaining 3 games meaningless. Time to start resting any banged up players.

2.371 Metric Imagination Units (MIUs)

What happens when we run out of Greek letters? I'm hoping for Sanskrit.

I'm headed down to southern Florida for roughly a week for maximum Omicron exposure.

I've essentially cleared out the Taito area in SMT V except for the 3 (presumably) boss battles to get the 3 keys. I got all 200 Miman, I think every glory container, and every treasure chest. I'm level 68 and I still haven't used a single gospel. I have 15 of them and I plan to start using them once I hit level 70. I don't plan to use all of them at once, probably 8 to go up to lev 78. I'm going to save a few for the final push in the high 80s and low 90s, since I have to beat Shiva to get the true neutral ending and Shiva is the hardest enemy in the base game (Demi-Fiend is reportedly stronger but that's DLC content).

I'm noticing a trend in games aiming for realistic graphics, such as the Matrix Awakens and this: They are landing squarely in the uncanny valley, and I find it rather unsettling. I generally prefer stylized over realistic graphics anyway, but I'm going to be flat out avoiding realistic looking games until we get out of the uncanny valley.

I beat and then fused Mother Harlot in SMT V. She's not in the base game, she's part of the Return of the True Demon DLC. Because I'm a sucker for MegaTen and just a sucker in general I bought all the content DLCs except the Artemis one, since it was the most expensive of the single demon DLCs and thus the worst value. Mother Harlot is the last of the 8 fiends you get to fight and then fuse, if you so wish, before getting to square off with the Demi-Fiend of SMT III fame. By all accounts, the Demi-Fiend is the single hardest enemy in the game, as he should be. He's the Emerald Weapon of SMT V, if you will. I won't be fighting him any time soon (I will eventually), but I'm super happy to have Mother Harlot on my team. She is so freakin' strong. I'm surprised she's only level 64 in this game. I consider Mother Harlot to be a S+ Rank demon, right up there with Metatron, Lucifer, Asherah, Brahma(n), and such. She has a very high magic stat, extremely strong skills, including the ludicrously powerful Babylon Goblet, her only weakness is force (which I already addressed via essence fusion with Null Force), and, most importantly, she reflects physical damage. Hitting a resist no longer costs an extra turn like it did in some previous games. Hitting a null does cost an extra turn. Hitting a reflect or a drain IMMEDIATELY ends your round, regardless of how many turns you had left. I've only had Mother Harlot on my team a short while and I've already run out of fingers to count how many times enemies have ended their round prematurely by foolishly physically attacking Mother Harlot. Needless to say, Mother Harlot is a keeper for the rest of the game and more often than not on my active team. I cannot overstate how insanely strong she is.

My phone is a low to mid tier Android from a little over 2 years ago. I'm not a power user on Phones, I just use them to make calls, send texts, take halfassed pictures, listen to Pandora, and occasionally watch a video. My impetus to upgrade is generally when the battery starts to lose charge and it's still hanging in there pretty well, so I have no need nor desire to get a new phone any time soon.

Who knew something could get cancelled faster than Cowboy Bebop?

Good riddance.

Quick, someone post some Football Manager or OotP Baseball screenies.

This might be my final end-game SMT V build in terms of skills: I would love to put Retaliate on my boy Beefstik, it's an awesome skill on high strength characters, Critical Zealot would be great too. But then I'd have to drop something to open up a slot. The only skills I would even entertain dropping are Kannabi Veil and Yabusame Shot. Kannabi Veil has saved my bacon many times and it's so cheap. Yabusame Shot doesn't do much damage but it always criticals, which is great for getting extra turns. With my high luck and Murderous Glee I naturally critical fairly often with Murakumo and normal attacks, but it's really nice having a GUARANTEED critical attack. *sigh* There are never enough skill slots.

Horsfield's Tarsier: They are primates that are entirely nocturnal and carnivorous. Pleasant dreams.