Well, Omicron and the rest of the COVID Bros are now down at a reported infection level lower than when Omicron burst onto the scene back in... checks calendar...November 24, 2021. Has it really only been exactly 100 days!? And the US is still averaging just over 2,000 people dying from COVID and COVID-related symptoms. But oddly as these statistics are, there is a growing feeling of something that is closer to whatever we are supposed to be feeling after a pandemic going on three years.
And then Vladimir Putin decided that Ukraine was full of Nazis and the Nazification and Nazifying of what was, according to him, the birthplace of Mother Russia's Mother, being what is now present-day Ukraine, needed to be invaded to protect against the genocide of Russian culture from a country that apparently has no real culture of its own all the while killing 2,000+ Ukrainian civilians. Everything from an unarmed woman trying to give armed Russian soldiers sunflower seeds so that they will grow out of their corpses and cursing them in the process, to Ukrainian border agents telling a Russian warship to, and I quote (translated into English), "Go fuck yourself," to NICU nurses caring for babies recently born in a hospital basement-turned-bomb-shelter in Dnipro (in Eastern Ukraine). Like the last two full years of a global pandemic wasn't enough that Putin thought that this would make a great transition into 2022? Fucking hell.
And the three racist pieces of trash I can legally refer to as racist pieces of shit now because all three were found guilty of violating Ahmaud Abery's civil rights (to be a living Black man in America) in the federal hate crime trial that concluded in late February. And the criminal case for the ex-Louiseville cop who recklessly fired into Breonna Taylor's apartment, being the only person in the entire department charged with anything. Because what does it say not about our justice system, but our society that the only person charged with police wrongly breaking into a citizen's apartment and killing both people was the guy who shot into another apartment endangering others?
And gods-forbid if you are Trans or do not identify with the genitals you were born with and have supportive parents while living in Texas, because fuck you too right!? More like to hell with Greg Abbott and everyone who voted for and supports him and his decision to criminalize parents who take an active role in supporting their children who identify as Trans and/or on the gender fluid spectrum. And to say nothing about their restrictive abortion access ban that was clearly written by people who have never had a uterus and think that ectopic pregnancies are as easy as pulling their finger out of their ass and plopping it in their mouth.
And here I am in my first world country, looking up at a grey, albeit clear from foreign military aircraft sky, drinking a cup of coffee at my laptop while my phone, Nintendo Switch, and Oculus Quest 2 (Meta Quest) charge nearby while my main worry is that there will be a loud noise (like the shouting of hypocritical white evangelicals decrying religious and white-persecution (Hail Satan?) outside our house that will end up waking Goblino up who Conklederp just recently got down for his afternoon nap. But hey, it is only 46 degrees (7.78 Celcius) and I do have to go (drive my electric car) to the grocery store because we're almost out of milk, but at least there's a sale on half-gallons of milk for $0.97 each for the first four half-gallons you buy and at least 79.47% of the people will be wearing their masks correctly while inside the grocery store.
Because right now, if you're about to tell me to stick to talking about video games and nerd culture and cut that shit out with the political/social justice/woke-culture nonsense, then I am just going to ignore you because this has been what was on my mind and this is how I process. And think about all of the bad guys in most of the video games you play. They're not some kid who is trying again access to health care, it's not a family taking care of each other trying to not catch an infectious virus, it's not the guy who is stabbed to death while trying to distract someone yelling racial and cultural slurs at a passerby. The villains are people who are trying to consolidate power for their own benefit and to the detriment of others. They are the people who try to convince other people that a marginalized group of society is the cause of all of their problems. They are the people who feel that they can do what they want because they have powerful (wealthy, political, social, etc) friends and that they are immune to consequences.
Fuck.
[Insert meaningful transition here that you'd think I would have been able to nail down after the last 24 months]
Looking back at the games I was playing in February and my likelihood of completing/beating/finishing them, I think I was spot on with all of my predictions. I did end up beating both Virtual Virtual Reality (Game EXP article coming soon) and got as far as I wanted to in Fortnite, which looks like it will move into Season 3 Chapter 2 on March 19th. At the moment I am leaning towards sitting out the next season, but that is because I have not seen what the skins are going to be and the two primary reasons why I even decided to join this last season was because Fortnite was moving into a new season and a new island, and Spiderman was one of the Battle Pass skins. Yeah, that was it. Maybe if Isaac Clarke is brought on for Chapter 2 I'll throw down the 950 V Bucks (from the 1,600 that I earned this season coupled with the 550 leftover from the last season) and run around cutting off the limbs of all of the other players/bots. We will see though.
I guess you could use the list from February and move that over to the new list for March too, although you can add The Climb 2 on the Oculus Quest 2 / Meta Quest because that game is a blast. I already have talked a little bit about it last Friday, but I am debating if I want to write a follow-up article to touch on other aspects of the game that I experienced after being awed by the game. Some of what I want to talk about are the new ways (for me) that I have played that game and seeing how the competitiveness of the game strips it of all sense of danger and fun. Unfortunately part of that is tied to the online features and that has been down for over a week, so that article may have to wait.
That is really it. Because I probably won't be playing Fortnite on the Switch at least until the middle/end of March, I am not playing a new Switch game in its place, but I am focusing more time on Blasphemous and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD. I will have a First Impressions article up for LoZ next Friday as I have a post about The Legend of Zelda series in general planned for Monday's article, but I will give you a little bit of a spoiler here. One of the realizations I have had to force myself to have is to constantly think about how a lot of puzzles in the game were meant to be solved using motion controls and how bad I am at combat in this game. Even Fi has said that my combat skills against the Lizalfos' are piss-poor, to say the least; I wish I'd gotten a screenshot of that. And I (might?) have an article up for Blasphemous if I don't end up defeating Our Lady of the Charred Visage before it is written, so I may just end up writing a Game EXP article at that rate.
I did realize that I did not mention/re-mention? that I had been playing God of War: Ghost of Sparta on the PSP, but that was probably because I haven't picked up the game in over a month. It's not that the game isn't fun, it's just that I am not finding the story or the level design as captivating as Chains of Olympus in the way that there does not appear to be a believable sense of scale. I should probably just finish the game and write about it.
I am thinking I should probably also talk about The Legend of Zelda: Game & Watch as Nintendo did a lot of good with that release compared to the Super Mario Bros. Game & Watch, mainly that there are three separate games on the tiny, little system, not including the Zelda-ified version of Vermin compared to Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2 (the original Japan release). I really think that the original Legend of Zelda: Game & Watch should have been included too, that the clock should have had another skin aside from the original Legend of Zelda, and most egregiously, is that you should be able to have a timer longer than 10 minutes. Just a few of my thoughts, which I guess is the whole reason that Dr. Potts and I started this endeavor 10 years ago.
Because I rarely if ever seemed to talk about it while Conklederp and I were watching it, I think both of us enjoyed The Book of Boba Fett to different degrees and in different ways. For me, I was not interested in Boba becoming a crime boss story because mob stories do not generally interest me; I thought The Godfather was a decent film and in season 4 of Fargo, I found myself more interested in the storylines of people not associated with either crime family. It is just not my thing. But had I had seven episodes of Boba Fett bounding around with the Tuskens on Tatooine, that would have been much more interesting for me.
Lastly, why is it that a lot of articles about movie adaptations of video games never talk about Silent Hill? While not as lore-heavy as the games and lacking a lot of the in-game events as it took elements from the first three games and condensed them into a single 125-minute film. I still think it was one of the better video game adapted films. But bloody hell, stay away from Silent Hill: Revelations.
And that is where we are going to stop, otherwise this rambling could go on for a lot longer than it already has. But thank you so much for sticking with me while I process not just everything that happened in February, but also the last eight days which feels like its own month.
Woof.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
In a Frenzied Madness
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