Wandery Wednesday: "Vidja"

I'm tired of video games. Not because I don't enjoy them! I loved Dark Souls III. I love Darkest Dungeon. There are so so so many games that I love. I can't even begin to list them all. But equally, there are games that I don't enjoy. That aren't fun. And I'm sick of wasting time on them. Fallout 4. I love the Fallout series. I even enjoyed Fallout 4 for a while. But I tried returning to it the other day and...it's just...eh. I've been feeling that way about games a lot lately. The most fun I've had was playing Dark Souls III co-op with coworkers and friends. I guess the social aspect is more important than it used to be? I don't know. All I know is that all I do these days is eat dinner, watch TV, go to bed, watch YouTube until I fall asleep, rinse, repeat. I should read more. Or write. Or something. I'm just...tired. Anyway. I don't know where I'm going with this. Goodbyeeeeee!

Last Month's Games: "Decidedly Undecided"

Oh hey. Next month's reviews are going to be two games: Dark Souls III and Saints Row IV. Both great games in their own way. Really really loving Dark Souls III. Just beat the first Lord of Cinder, and pushing for the next one tonight. Ohhhhh yeah. Yeah. WOO. Let's talk about games.

Cool Stuff Sunday: "The Atrocity of Snyder"

Getting real sick of Bandai Namco's shenanigans with Dark Souls 3's release date. It's like they're trying to kill all the hype I keep building up. Still. Dark Souls 3. Anyway. Cool stuff. Online. On Sunday. 

Zack Snyder is adapting Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead for...reasons? 

Trading games don't understand how trade works. 

Rowan Zorilla is a pro skater now, and dropped a suitably sick part. 

Remember Zack Synder? He's awful, and he killed a beloved Superman character, one you probably didn't realize. 

The combat in Dark Souls is more realistic than most, but could still be better. 

Out-of-context D&D quotes are the best. 

This Batman short comic is excellent. 

Medieval armor is probably not what you think it was. 

Wanted posters if Voldemort had won. 

First Bandai Namco wants people to stream Dark Souls 3, now they don't. 

Reddit has deleted its warrant canary. That means that the government has requested access to Reddit's servers, up to and including the IP address of every post by every user.

A juicer that can't juice things? Why? 

Shadow of Mordor 2 is going to be a thing, which I am 100% down with. 

Zack Snyder is still awful. And Batman Vs Superman ticket sales dropped 65% from one weekend to the next. 

Cool Stuff Sunday: "Star Wars. And Some Other Stuff, I Guess."

I am writing this while asleep. Metaphorically. Literally. Wishfully. Something. Whatever. I should try automatic writing. Just put a pen in my hand and go to sleep. Wake up wondering why there's ink in my ear. 

Daisy Ridley has insider info about Star Wars: Episode VIII!

This dude's Starkiller cosplay is...killer. 

How to make your own lightsaber for cheap. 

These Star Wars posters are great. The first appearance of a Star Destroyer in every movie. 

Mark Hamill is vicious. 

The Knights of Ren are cool and I hope they're still cool when the movie is over. 

Apparently Deadpool is getting an X-rated cut. Apparently. 

Literary criticism of the Mr. Men books is a thing now, I guess? 

I always said Dark Souls was a Gothic series, and Miyazaki himself using Gothic/Romantic terminology to discuss the series only further proves I'm totes right. Seriously. "Sublime" is a key word for Romanticism and its Gothic offshoot. 

You can make music using only Windows XP and Winows 98 sounds. Why? No idea. 

I'm pretty sure Keanu Reeves is actually just John Wick in real life. 

Pirate skeletons under a school? Probably a sign you've got ghosts. 

Want to read about Celtic treasures? HERE. 

Is the next Battlefield game going to be set in World War I? Let's hope so. 

OverAnalyzed: Infinitely-Spawning Enemies In The Witcher

Games are a funny thing. There are some where it feels natural for enemies to respawn time after time, where mechanic and setting mesh perfectly. Take Dark Souls, a game I love to talk about because it’s so well-crafted. Within the setting, respawning enemies make sense on multiple levels—many are hollowed Undead, and thus have the same Lazarus effect as the player; in addition, the flow of time is distorted, which is essentially “Magic, I ain’t gotta explain nuffin” but is still an answer. There are other games, however, where such jack-in-the-box enemies don’t make sense at all. Two that spring to mind are Far Cry 2 and The Witcher. Both are great games. But both have enemy respawns that border on the nonsensical.

Wandery Wednesday: "I Went to My Work Job Today. I Did a Network Configure."

So over the weekend the phone system was upgraded at work. This involved me working Friday night and a chunk of Saturday to get all the phones hooked up. There were some issues, but nothing too major. 10 failures out of 175ish is pretty solid. I got to learn how to configure the phone network ports using command-line interface, which has been...a thing. I'm starting to see green lines of code running vertically down my vision... Think I should see a doctor. Anyway. It was fun. And most of the issues have settled down by this afternoon. Which is a huge relief. That said, could things have been better? Yes. We definitely need to clear out some ports on our server/switch racks. One floor has no ports for new phones. None. No places to plug new phones into. Nada. Which is worrying and will have to be dealt with. 

I spent the early evening trying to get my budget sorted. 401K withholding, grocery budget, allowance for buying video games and cool stuff, tithe to the crushing financial burden that accompanies being an English major, rent payment, lots of fun stuff. So I'm rewarding myself with pizza, rum, and video games.

Speaking of games, I've been playing Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, which is a fun bit of the old FPS genre. First-Person Stabbing, that is. It's a first-person online swordfighting battle simulating sort of jobber. It's actually quite enjoyable. There are bits I dislike (either have weapon/armor skins be purchasable, like in League of Legends, and make the game free OR make the game cost money and have everything be unlockable. I'm not a big fan of developers who go "let's make them pay for the game AND pay for cosmetic stuff!" CS:GO can get away with that. You can't. Also this was a long parenthetical...) but overall I'd say it's well worth the $6 I paid. Heck, I've put 15 hours in already, which is not something I usually do with multiplayer games. As soon as my pizza is finished, I'm going right back to playing. Woo!