It's August. It's 2021. Over the last week or two, there has been an increase in the number of unvaccinated people in the United States contracting COVID-19, and how many of those new cases are the Delta variant is, at least of this writing, not entirely clear. I have been debating with myself when I would go back to our original Monthly Update banner up there at the top and I think I will take my cue from the WHO who apparently will say that the pandemic is over when "the worldwide spread of a disease is brought under control to a localized area, we can say that it is no longer a pandemic but, instead, an epidemic[.]" So there we go.
#ActiBlizzWalkout was a thing that happened this last Wednesday and as of this writing to show support from a lot of people in the video game industry in regards to the the victims of sexual harassment and discrimination as well as Activision/Blizzard's response to the initial filing of the lawsuit. Aside from the general accusations about there being a frat boy culture at Activision Blizzard and the general disregard for women in the workplace, I am not caught up on the specifics of the alligations so I will leave it at that and do some (more?) research. Oh except for the whole Cosby Suite thing which was a hotel room at BlizzCon "operated" by Blizzard developer Afrasiabi.
I feel I was somewhat productive over the last month considering (as of this writing) I remain unemployed but have a potential interview lined up for the week before this article comes out. I did manage to finish a handful of games such as Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (article coming on Friday), Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (article coming sometime not this Friday), The Unholy Society, and Doki Doki Literature Club! (not the new iteration that came out on June 30th) and Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (although some may say my prolific use of rewind/save states means that I am a n00b sucking piece of trash who should put down the controller and play an age appropriate game like Pinochle or Tiddliwinks). I am frequently impressed that I was even able to make it this far in the game when The Kid and I played through it the winter it was released; the frequency that I have used saved states and rewind is a bit embarrassing. Most of the time I will try to at least make it to the checkpoint before using rewind, but I do not have all the time in the world to hone my skills to the levels they were at when I was 15. And then I started up Call of Cthulhu on the Switch as well as replaying Amnesia: The Dark Descent since it has been eight-and-a-half years since I last played the game on Steam.
Big video game related news last month was that the semi-long running rumors about a Dead Space reboot/remake/HD remaster were finally confirmed during EA's big press event, which you can read more about that here. My biggest question though coming out of this announcement is if I will upgrade my laptop to something that can play the remake or just buy an Xbox X/S because I do want to play The Elder Scrolls VI because playing that game is going to be in a similar boat. Because then there is also The Callisto Protocol which has been announced but not if it is going to be an exclusive. And then there is Negative Atmosphere which I am still a little surprised has not been shut down by EA just because it looks so much like Dead Space even though it uses all originally created assets (at least from what I understand). We are a year or so out from TCP s release date and no word on NA, and TES VI is probably the furthest away from being released. So in the meantime, I reinstalled Dead Space 3 to pick that game up from where I left off when I apparently stopped playing two-and-a-half years back.
TV show-wise, Conklederp and I have been somewhat productive. We started and finished Lupin, a Netflix series made in France about a guy who grew up reading the Lupin novels. We also finished the first season of Loki on Disney+ and really enjoyed the show, although neither of us are hardcore MCU fans. It was interesting to see this iteration of Loki since this specific Loki was from right after the attack on New York, from the events in the first The Avengers movie, which was before the two Thor sequels, although those events were brought up in the show. The finale seemed to open up the next phase of the MCU and had an amazing performance by Jonathan Majors (who we loved in Lovecraft County). We are also finishing up The Bad Batch, the sequel to The Clone Wars animated series that I was initially unsure about based on the characterizations of Clone Force 99 in Season 7 of The Clone Wars. The biggest takeaway from the show is that I love seeing the Empire in the days/weeks/months/years following the end of The Clone Wars and the beginning days of the Empire. And all of these Star Wars series including The Mandalorian as well as the rest coming out on Disney+ really hopes that Disney will see the benefit of releasing all of these series on Blu ray, because I honestly do not see people only keeping their Disney+ subscriptions so that they can rewatch episodes of The Mandalorian. But I could very well be wrong.
Finally, the other month (June?) I finally admitted that my Kindle Paperwhite was nowhere to be seen in our house after looking for nearly five months, so I picked up a Kindle Fire 8 HD 2020 Edition during Amazon's Prime Day, so now I have access to digital library books, which is a wonderful feature. So I picked up and started reading Star Wars: Aftermath by Chuck Wendig, and at 13% complete, I am surprised by how well the book is written and just the overall setting so far. I must have had low expectations going into it because I have found myself looking forward to picking it up to read; the 21 day checkout period probably also has something to do with wanting/needing to read 5% every day, but I am genuinely engaged by the characters, some of which are dealing with PTSD following the Battle of Endor and the fall of the Empire, themes that I feel are not common in a lot of the movies and TV shows. There will probably be a Book Review article coming, but only after I finish the one I have going for The Witch-Cult in Western Europe.
So that is kind of where I am at right now, or at least where I am/was at the end of July leading into August. Wait! How did I miss that SkateBIRD has a potential release date of August 12th!?
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
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