Keyrock

I thoroughly enjoyed Paradise Killer. It's not perfect, by any means, but it's one of the few detective games that doesn't hold your hand and allows you to do actual detective work. The tradeoff is a lot of running back and forth across the map, but that's a trade I'll make any day for a game allowing me to deduce things on my own and potentially make my own mistakes. I particularly liked that the game allows you to accuse anyone, and even get them convicted if you are convincing enough, whether they are guilty or not.

We're less than a month away from my favorite month of the year, October. I don't know how it is where you are, but here in Cackalacky October is AMAZING, as is November to a lesser degree. I don't need to run AC, I don't need to run heat, heck, I don't need a fan most of the time.

There have been so many The Three Musketeers movies over the years, how come nobody ever follows it up with Twenty Years After? The only movie made from the second D'Artagnan novel that I'm aware of was a Russian movie in the 90s that I've not seen. I guess The Return of the Musketeers is LOOSELY based on Twenty Years After. I cannot possibly ALL CAPS, bold, or underline "loosely" enough.

A rather disappointing amount of robot waifu customization. Better than nothing, I guess, though it would be nice if they dropped in a few more options for the full release this Thursday.

Maybe this is where I'll finally give the game a spin?

Where does creamed corn fit into the workings of the universe?

I'm a big fan of noir detective stories and many of its tropes (e.g. the femme fatale, two-faced characters playing each other) thus many of David Lynch's works are right up my alley. The surrealist nonsense is icing on the cake, the weirder the better. Obviously, Twin Peaks is completely my jam.

I'm making my way through Soul Hackers 2 on very hard difficulty. I'm at level 16 now, past the trash starter demons stage of a MegaTen game, but not quite into halfway decent demons territory (that tends to be around level 25 or 30). Progress is slow; I have to be very careful and there is quite a bit of save scumming. Still, I'm determined not to lower the difficulty, I wouldn't be able to handle the shame of being labeled a faux grognard. Luckily, the game allows you to save at any time, except in the middle of a battle, which makes save scumming less painful than if I had to save at waypoints. The inability to use items during battle is really crippling, though. In other MegaTen titles I would often run with just 1 healer until late game, but without being able to fall back on items, having only 1 healer is extremely risky, even in early game. This also makes status resistance skills much more important (again, because I can't use items) and combination skills (e.g. heal+ remove status effect) even more valuable, given that each party member have limited skill slots. The good combo skills generally don't show up until at least the mid game, it's going to be tough sledding until I get there.

I do love me some Lost Highway.

Blue Velvet is peak David Lynch, I put it above everything else he's done.

Even Blue Velvet?

Bone marrow crostinis sound amazing.

Are you going to Tokyo Drift it?

Ground beef taco with monterey jack cheese, lettuce, red onion, avocado, tomatillo, and cilantro lime salsa. Corn on the cob and merlot to accompany it.

There are people out there that don't like the works of David Lynch?

I'm borrowing a DVD set from my sister that just has the original 2 seasons. One way or another I'll watch Fire Walk With Me and the 3rd season, but I have a lot of episodes to get through before I get there. When I get to roughly the halfway point of season 2 I'll start searching around streaming services to figure out how I'll watch them. If it comes down to it, I'll buy a blu-ray or DVD, but I'm still a ways from having to cross that bridge.

Francisco Scaramanga best Christopher Lee.

I'm rewatching the original run of Twin Peaks from Mark Frost and delightful weirdo David Lynch. I haven't watched this since it initially ran on TV 3 decades ago. I'm happy to report that it 100% holds up to my memories. If anything, I actually undersold the show in my own mind, it's even better than I remember. It's like a baguette with brie cheese.

I'm predicting that by the time they get to either the D (Druid?) or E (Elementalist?) generation, Intel will be pretty close to on par with AMD and Nvidia, at least in terms of hardware capability. Drivers, on the other hand...

While I am overall enjoying Soul Hackers 2 so far, I do have one big gripe. Loading screens. SO. MANY. LOADING. SCREENS. I feel like I'm playing a game from 15 years ago in that regard, it's been so long since I've seen a game with this many loading screens. It's not the end of the world since the xXxBOxXx has fairly quick load times, but I pity anyone playing this on a last gen console. I mean, I get it, it's not an open world game, they can't use streaming tech, there are going to be loading screens. Some of them could easily be eliminated, though. For example, when I want to heal up I go back to the safehouse and rest. Let's say I'm in a Soul Matrix dungeon and I want to heal up. Here's the process: 1) Go back to the entrance of the dungeon (there are fast travel waypoints that make this fairly quick) 2) Exit the dungeon to the main Soul Matrix hub *LOADING SCREEN* 3) Exit the hub to the main Axis screen *LOADING SCREEN* 4) Exit the Axis to the map 5) Go to the safehouse *LOADING SCREEN* 6) Rest Then you do the same process in reverse to get back to the dungeon, loading screens included. I wish Atlus just put an area at the entrance of every dungeon that allowed you to rest. Better yet, just let me rest at any fast travel waypoint. It would give me no tactical advantage but it would be a HUMONGOUS quality of life upgrade. Maybe there is an ability I get later on that lets me do that? Even if that's the case, that ability should be available right away.

I suspect that I didn't use enough yeast and my first attempt is low ABV. I don't have a hydrometer, nor any other tool to help test ABV, and I didn't drink enough to give an estimate off how buzzed I got, but it wouldn't surprise me if my mead is only 3% or 4%, given how sweet and easy to drink it was with hardly any time to mellow. I'll probably double the amount of yeast per volume on my next attempt as my target is around 10% ABV. I went back and forth on whether to use ale yeast or wine yeast and decided to go with ale. Technically, any yeast will get you fermentation and produce alcohol, even baker's yeast, but I figure either ale yeast or wine yeast will produce the best taste. In the future I may try to brew beer, but I started with mead because it's fairly straightforward; only 3 ingredients in its simplest form (water, honey, yeast).

The most scientifically stringent method of determining the best snack food:

I decided to try my hand at making mead: It's my first attempt so I made a small portion (that's a 3 gallon carboy and it's less than half full). It spent nearly a week fermenting and today I transferred it into another container. I took a sip just to get a baseline and it wasn't nearly as harsh as I expected, very drinkable. Still, I'm going to give it at least a month to mellow. Side note: I added mint & lemongrass in addition to the honey, water, and (ale) yeast.