Keyrock

Unfortunately, everything these days has to be a franchise or part of a cinematic universe because money. There are lots of movies that work really well as a single self-contained story but fall apart once you try to extend the story for the sake of sequels. The Matrix certainly fits that bill IMHO. Heck, even some movies with good sequels fit into this category. I have a couple of examples that coincidentally both are tied to James Cameron. The Terminator should have just been a single movie. T2 already began the process of jumping the shark, but it worked because it's such a fantastic action movie and ends with an absolutely perfect ending to the story. If only it ended there... Alien was a perfect standalone slasher movie in space. Then we got Aliens which continued a story that warranted no continuation, but it worked out because it's a very good movie. If only it had ended there...

The latest test units/dev kits:

Well, muh Boys won, so that's good. I don't feel good about our offense, though. We're just not running the ball. I'm not expecting a 1:1 pass to run ratio, nobody has done that in over a decade, but when we were kicking ass earlier in the year we had about as balanced an attack as anyone these days. We had more than double the amount of passes than runs in last night's win and this has been a trend lately. Even in the 4th quarter when we were up by 10 we were still airing it out and barely running. Just pound the ball and run the clock out, what are we doing? We got away with it because Taysom Hill kept throwing picks.

I finally got around to watching Denis Villaneuve's Dune. This is one of those movies that I recognize is a good movie but that I didn't particularly enjoy. I mean, I didn't dislike it, I walked away from it not feeling much of anything. I rewatched the David Lynch Dune a couple of years ago and as flawed as that movie is, I enjoyed it more than this one, despite the fact that Denis Villeneuve's version is both a better adaptation of the book (half of it, anyway) and a better movie. You can't really compare a movie from 2021 to one from 1984 visually, but the 2021 movie looks spectacular. The 2021 movie also conveys the story much better. But it just left me flat, I dunno. The 1984 movie is so weird (par for the course for David Lynch) and I really love that about it. I love how grotesque Baron Harkonnen is. I love the ludicrous giant slug navigators. I even like the hilarious looking shields. The new movie just doesn't have anything delightfully weird like that.

Only 20%?

Cade Altair is humanity's only hope!

Just wait until we get to MumbleCOVID.

I'm starting to get some of my all-time favorite MegaTen demons. Exhibit A: Alice: I love how pure evil her presentation is and she has some great voice lines. My favorite is "Just die already." She says it with such weariness and contempt, it's *chef kiss*. She may have a spot on my team all the way to the end (not necessarily on the active team most of the time) due to having very strong dark magic and no weaknesses. It depends on how good her stat progression is going forward. Speaking of demons I'll still be using in the endgame, I also fused Idun: She's got a spot on my team going forward, even if she spends time on the bench, for the Golden Apple skill alone. It's a unique skill, thus I can't transfer it to anyone else, it costs a ton of mana, but it's so freakin' good. She has an extremely high magic stat, +4 healing affinity (which I boosted to +5 with a sutra), and I put Heal Pleroma on her to boot. All that adds up to her being one of the absolute best healers available. Once I unlock the last skill slot I'll put Bowl of Hygieia on her and at some point probably ditch one of the attack skills (most likely Zanma) in favor of Boon Boost. Have her cast Bowl of Hygieia then Golden Apple once her turn comes back around. Now all team members have boosted stats for 4 rounds and HP well beyond their normal max. Good times! As for my boy Beefstik, I've been putting Dracostrikes on him: They are physical attacks, and thus use strength as a damage modifier and can critical (which happens a decent amount because of my fairly good luck stat and the Bloody Glee skill), but they are considered elemental in terms of affinity. Great for a physical build. Looks like I have a hot date with Surt in the near future:

Steam Deck FAQ

You know things have completely gone to **** when COVID strains are being named after David Cage games. I am reminded of the ancient prophecy that foretold of an indigo strain.

On the bright side, it's not losing nearly as much money as the Epic Games Store.

Sebastien Loeb's still got it! I probably should have gone with a Swedish rally driver, I'm sure there are plenty, but Loeb is the only rally driver I can name off the top of my head.

I defeated the final boss of the Shinagawa area in SMT V. It's pretty obvious who it is but I'll spoiler tag it anyway. It's a lengthy, multi-stage battle, so if you can avoid using chakra drops earlier in the game and save them, they will come in handy here. Given that I'm lev 39 and MegaTen games tend to finish between levels 70 and 80, I'm guessing I'm roughly halfway through the game and there are 2 more areas to explore. As an aside, I've not yet been tempted to drop the difficulty down from hard. The game certainly hasn't been easy, I have died many many deaths, but there hasn't been that Matador in SMT 3 moment where I encounter a main story boss that stomps me into the ground so hard that I'm at a loss as to how I will get past them. No BRUTAL difficulty spike like that in SMT V so far, it seems very well tuned.

Meanwhile, every member of muh Boys is taking turns getting COVID.

Not Tom Hiddleston. 0/10 Would not cast in a Disney+ series.

It's my favorite of the reboot trilogy. It's the least shooty and the most climby and jumpy of the 3 games. I scooped up Deadly Premonition 2 at 50% off. It's a Swery game, I'm sure it's janky and terrible and that I will love it.

Christmas shopping = done

I'm sure I've posted this before, but I don't care because Technoviking is timeless: https://youtu.be/UjCdB5p2v0Y

I'm at the point now in SMT V where I'm starting to plan out future demons in advance, since I'm encountering demons with skills I'll still want later in the game. Here's an example of what I mean. I have Jatayu, a mediocre force user. He has +4 force affinity, which is pretty good for this stage of the game, but he also has a really crappy magic stat, which offsets the pretty good affinity. However, he gets the force pleroma skill at lev 35, it's the last skill he learns. The pleroma skills are passives that increases effectiveness of that type of magic, much like affinity does. Once Jatayu learns that skill he becomes a somewhat good, but not great force user, not only because of his crappy magic stat, but also because his only force attack is an AoE, which I'm not keen on (unless it's almighty). When you fuse demons in MegaTen games they can inherit skills from their "parents". So the plan is to eventually fuse Muu Shuwuu using Jatuyu, passing force pleroma to her. She has a single target force skill (as well as AoE) and +3 affinity, which is lower than Jatuyu, but her magic stat is very high, which more than makes up for 1 less affinity (and gives her more MP to boot). Force pleroma on her turns her into a monstrous force damage dealer for that stage of the game, plus she can pass the skill along to a stronger force user later. There's a whole recruiting & fusion game within a game in MegaTen. It's like SUPER ADVANCED Pokemon.

I had already given up on that after last week.

Had a scrap with this mythical Irish hunter: He whooped my ass the first time. The roles were reversed once I retooled my team. Turns out it was all a misunderstanding, we could have avoided clashing swords with a few words. I was excited when I found out that I could fuse one of my favorite mid-game demons: Thoth has strong light magic, but, more importantly, he has Megido +1, an AoE almighty spell. I generally shy away from AoE and random target attacks past the early game because you tend to run into demons with more resistances and mixed groups, thus AoE spells are a quick way to end your turn prematurely. The one exception is almighty spells, since they can't be resisted. I LOVE AoE almighty spells. Anyway, here's my current party: