It's May 2021 and COVID-19 is still with us as ever. India is currently, and literally, going through whatever constitutes Hell right now. With over 400,000 new cases being reported on just Friday, April 30th, and over 3,500 reported deaths, and to put that into some context, the United States peaked at 300,669 reported cases on January 8th, 2021 with 3,347 dying on January 14th. Mass shootings continue to happen all across the United States because 'Murica's Come And Take It attitude towards guns. Sure I support the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution, but for Hell's sake have some common sense about gun ownership. Lastly, and possibly out of context, just because you were able to make it through tough/difficult/hard times in your life, doesn't mean that everyone else is capable of the same because not everyone is in the same situation with the same life-tools and for bloody damn sake, not everyone should have to suffer just because you suffered too (this is referencing the type of people who complain about the existence of social services because they were able to pay off their student debt with summer jobs so why should someone else's student debt be forgiven!? I never received $300 a month per child so why should someone else's life be made easier!? Social Services are bankrupting our country but we definitely need to increase the Defense Budget for 2020 by nearly 10% to $750,000,000,000).
Fuck.
But hey, where are our animation fans at!? Yeah, still working on those transitions.
The fourth (and final!?) season of Castlevania is coming out on Netflix on May 13th, for which I am very excited. I've watched the Season 4 trailer about four times now and I love everything about it, except that it heralds the end of this series. I do really hope though that something similar will be created for Simon Belmont, but I could understand why it would not continue being a similar argument about the repetitive narrative in the Castlevania series. Dracula gets resurrected, Belmont comes to stop Dracula and maybe meets some friends along the way. Repeat. The concept definitely works better as a video game series, but I absolutely love how the Castlevania series has been treated these last four years.
On May 4th, The Bad Batch being a spin-off of the first arc in Season 7 of The Clone Wars follows a bunch of characters that I cared nothing for. I am actually pretty excited for this series though, but really only see this rag-tag group of Clone misfits as an avenue to experience the Galaxy immediately following the events in Revenge of the Sith and how Clones fit into this new Empire. And you know, even after watching The Clone Wars on three separate occasions, I cannot for the life of me recall when Echo was captured. So I guess that just makes me a bad fan for not remembering his supposed death then.
Gaming-wise, played through a number of #IndieSelect games the last two months and I am hoping that another will be coming my way in the next day or two (if it hasn't already by the time this article goes to print). I am still playing through Final Fantasy XII for which I feel like I am pretty far into the story, maybe past the halfway mark but have only just cleared 40 hours. My first time through on the PS2 I spent roughly 125 hours, although this time around on the Switch, I have used the 2x and 4x speed increase and I am thinking that that does not affect the in-game clock. I am not sure but I will have to look into that. I am also fumbling my way through The Kid's story in the Little Nightmares DLC chapters, having significantly more problems with where I need to go and what I need to do and oh I totally did not see that tunnel in the back wall that was obscured by ALL THE DARKNESS. I finished Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace for which I am working on a three-part article, not because I feel that the game really deserves three articles worth of writing, but I just have so much to say about different aspects of the game that I could not cohesively get it all whittled down to one or two, so three it is.
I am finally plugging away at The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks which has become my least favorite of all the LoZ games that I have played. There will 100% be an article about this game, probably later in the month that may or may not just be a rant-fest. There are some things about the game I like, but that is going to be overshadowed by how much I actually do not like the game. And this is one of those games that you read about in headlines or questionnaires asking "Have You Ever Felt the Need to Finish a Game You Do Not Enjoy?" Because right now, this is that game.
I am also, maybe, close to finishing Metro 2033 Redux as I am thankfully through the section of the Library that is crawling with Librarians. I feel like I have kind of lost the plot though as I seem to recall needing whatshisname (Artyom) to get to Polis to deliver information about a group of paranormal mutants (Dark Ones?) and I have arrived, now we are infiltrating a Library for military records because the governing body at Polis refuses to help. I am still failing to see how this was ever categorized as a survival horror because even on standard/medium difficulty, I am frequently able to find enough ammunition so I do not have to panic every 10 minutes. It is a fun first-person shooter that can be pretty stressful, especially when you are going up against human enemies. . . well, any enemies really because monsters are quick and sometimes difficult to hit and human enemies tend to shoot back. That is video games for ya!
I also decided to reinstall The Elder Scrolls Online, which I have not played in just over three years because my last laptop kept crashing every 5-10 minutes making questing with Conklederp nearly impossible. I have also reinstalled Fallout New Vegas because my run-through of that game abruptly stopped when I upgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 10 (again on my last laptop); I was only 15-16 hours in but Steam says I had played for 21, so I that probably tracks. I think there is an article in this, or at least there is one starting to germinate so look forward to another rambling post about playing older games on either older laptops or laptops that were not 100% intended to run semi-high end video games that were developed more than five years ago. Maybe I should try out The Evil Within Demo again?
Oh, and I get my second vaccine shot in just over a week, so yay for vaccines!
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
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