| /now: | |
|---|---|
| Book | - |
| Audiobook | Amber Series |
| Game | - |
| Project | Tic80 Game, **Learn Music**, bit of Godot, maybe |
| State | Desperately crawling toward winter holidays |
With a little too much time on my hands I decided to finally give Tokyo Ghoul (main series plus :re) a read. I remembered enjoying the first season of anime 1000 years ago, but recall that the second season didn't hold my attention at all -- but as they always say: "the manga was better".
I just finished the last chapter of Innocent & Innocent Rouge. I was craving some grown-up-oriented manga and settled on this. It was certainly something.
After another back injury I found myself bedridden once again. I decided it was time to finally get through Disco Elysium.
It's a game I've struggled to play for a while now. One that felt like it was very much catering to everything I could want in a game, but frustrated me at every attempt to play.
I was looking for my next book after reading Chain-Gang All-Stars and saw a random post on Mastodon about a novel called Someone You Can Build a Nest In, which pitched itself as a horror fantasy romance novel. The rest of my to-read list looked a bit daunting so I dove in.
It was a fun short read. The protagonist is a shape-shifting monster who falls for a human, and the rest of the story surrounds the resolution of their differences (and the fact that the protagonist's new girlfriend's family are monster hunters).
While I've been trying to finish all the games I start, sometimes I just don't have the energy or a particular game just doesn't hit right and I put it down early. As a result I don't get around to writing about them, which is a shame because I frequently refer to my own blogposts as a refresher on what I did or didn't like about a given game or book.
So, for future me's reference, here's a handful of recent games I didn't quite make it through:
(Drilldozer, Pokemon Unbound, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, A Space for the Unbound, Cocoon)
A friend of mine recently recommended Chain-Gang All-Stars and I thought it was a really cheesy title for a book, but gave it a shot anyways.
After finishing the audiobook version of the novel, I'd just like to say: Holy shit.
I've wanted to read a bit of philosophy-of-the-mind for some time now, but never really got around to it. After a discussion on consciousness with a friend a bit back, I was recommended the works by Douglas Hofstadter. His big-dick book "G.E.B" was a little intimidating, but the title of his more recent work "I Am a Strange Loop" resonated with me (my own online identity being tied to my loop-like spiral logo), and I've just finished the audio version!
Firstly, a bit of praise: I'm a philosophy noob, and the author's heavy use of allegory and analogy made digesting the book's core ideas approachable and entertaining. I've managed to grind my attention span into dust and was concerned the general dryness of philosophy texts would have me reaching for other things to read -- but while it wasn't a particularly gripping read, it absolutely held my attention the whole way through.
I've just finished playing The Forgotten City; a first-person mystery game I bought after perusing a random forum thread.
The game's in the same vein as something like The Outer Wilds in that there's a looping mechanism that has you replaying a short segment of time over and over as you eke out secrets.
Where The Outer Wilds has you flying through space alone, The Forgotten City is a much more social take on the concept, and has you spending most of your time in conversations with ancient Romans.
It was honestly great! There's a couple places (especially at the start) where the dialogue was painfully awkward, and the character models sometimes take you for an uncomfortable trip to uncanny valley, but those are minor nitpicks when stacked up to the fun I had getting to know the characters and figuring out what was going on.
At 6-ish hours to get the "real" ending, it's not a particularly long game, but as of late I've definitely taken a liking to games I can beat in 1-2 weekend evenings.
In 2018 I traveled to China to meet my partner's parents for the first time. I was nervous; China gets a pretty bad rap and has several travel advisories tied to it. I was also nervous to meet my future in-laws, but that was just the anxiety-cherry on top.
We had time to do some additional traveling, so we picked some destinations of interest that aligned with our travel plans: We'd enter via Hong Kong and leave via Shanghai. We had to go to Harbin for the parental meeting, but we had a little bit of time in the middle to add an extra destination. I voted for Chongqing.
I had only recently learned of the existence of the city after eating Chongqing Xiaomian (literally "Chongqing small noodle") which is a very spicy and very numbing regional noodle dish. A little bit of digging revealed that Chongqing wasn't just some small city that served spicy noodles, but a monstrous tourist destination in china with a population of 30 million. Also, it's the birthplace of hotpot. Hell yes we were going to Chongqing.
Warning: several large photos after the break.
I've just hit the 1000XResist credit sequence roughly one week after going into the game completely blind, having knee-jerk purchased it after 10 seconds of game trailer.
I regret nothing - the game was fantastic. I spent most of the week horizontal with a back injury, and couldn't have asked for a more engaging distraction as I healed.
This title won't be for everyone. It's a very linear visual-novel-esq game consisting almost exclusively of talking to NPCs and listening to monologues in small exploreable areas. You mostly watch the story unfold. But what a story!
This is games as art. This is a story that explores a lot of concepts via its bizarre post-apocalyptic setting. Humanity's been wiped out by an alien-borne virus that causes people to cry themselves to death. Only you and your clone sisters remain, dutifully serving the ALLMOTHER.
Warning: Massive spoilers after the jump.