It's April 1st, 2022.
I have been admitted to the 42nd floor of life, or however you want to word that.
Putin's Russian forces are still pounding away at various parts (those parts being various combinations of military and a lot of civilian targets) of Ukraine displacing nearly 3,900,000 Ukranians from a country with a population of 41,167,336.
In the span of 10 seconds, Will Smith went from laughing at a potentially ill-conceived joke aimed at his wife Jada Pinkett Smith to walking up on stage and slapping Chris Rock who made the joke while he was hosting the Oscars at the time. I guess I'm in the camp of Chris Rock probably should not have made the joke and Will Smith should not have assaulted him. But what do I know? I'm just sitting here typing out words from the comfort of my middle-middle income lifestyle.
Ron Non-Indoctrinated DeSantis has signed into law his "Don'T TeAcH KiDS AbOUt THe [redacted] bECAusE It'LL tuRn THem [redacted]." Similarly, Ted Do-You-Know-Who-I-Am Cruz is so offended by the contents of a kid's book taken out of context (that we actually have and do read this book to Goblino) as well as being offended by the mere existence of people who are transgender, that he sees the need to complain about it during the confirmation hearing for Judge Gitanji Jackson. What was supposed to be a standard hearing to find out if Judge Jackson were qualified to sit on the supreme court, turned into a bunch of Republicans grandstanding to their respective bases.
Lastly, it's nice to see COVID-19 cases down an average of 11%, as well as a 42% drop in ICU beds filled and an over 35% drop in hospitalizations over the last two weeks. Seeing fewer than 1,000 people dying every day is also a nice cherry on this cake of often preventable death. It is a little disconcerting seeing some of those numbers start to creep up on the east coast with the rise of the BA.2 variant in European and Asian countries (currently it is accounting for 54.9% cases in the United States), but it is not often that in our lifetimes (as in the last 50 years) that we have seen a virus of this magnitude be reported on in nearly real time, seeing how it evolves and the public and political responses to that evolution. This is exhausting and I know a lot of us are all exhausted in one form or another, there are no if and or buts about it; yes I am a parent.
Now on to non-parenting things like playing video games and board games.
Through the generosity of Dr. Potts, I decided to pick up the 12-year-old board game, Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game. I will talk about it a bit in the actual article which I have planned for Monday, but if you know me and D&D, then you probably already know how much I love the Ravenloft campaign setting from 2nd Edition and kind of surprised myself in just now playing this game. I think what ultimately put me over the edge was that I saw that the game could be played by a single person and anywhere between 30-60 minutes, depending on the adventure. So I played the first adventure, which you can see pictures of over on our Instagram, or you can just wait until Monday to see how well trying to escape Strahd's crypt before he woke up worked out.
Speaking of Dungeons & Dragons, on the Switch I restarted with a new character in Neverwinter Nights after somewhat intentionally recreating my original Half-Elf Ranger from when I first played the game on PC 18 years ago. I decided that since I usually tend to play someone who actively helps characters, I would play a Half-Elven Paladin and hopefully find a henchman who can pick locks and disarm traps. Maybe cast a spell or two?
I am slowly progressing in Skyward Sword, although Link ended up running into a pit all on his own while in Larayru Desert, which can mean only one thing. That's right. Another case of Joy-Con drift. I have now calibrated the left Joy-Con twice now and while neither time was it horribly bad, it was noticeable, especially when pointing the joystick to the right and then having it 'snap' back. I give it another week or two before I send it off to Nintendo for another round of free either repairs or replacement. At least I have a back up pair of Joy-Cons while those are in the shop; hopefully it won't take as long or have the same issues that I had when I last sent them in back in 2020.
That being said, shortly after Link fell into a pit, I apparently thought it was a good time to give the final two bosses in Blasphemous a try, because who needs tight uncompromising controls in a 2D pixel-platformer Metroidvania meets Dark Souls set in an overly religious world inspired by the Spanish Inquisition? I will hopefully have an article up either in a week from now or sometime later in April. I think if I can separate my love of the setting with just talking about having fun with the game and not trying to analyze a very cryptic-lore heavy game, I could probably have the article ready in a week's time, otherwise, I might have it done by summer 2026. I'm not really sure what smaller game I am going to play after Blasphemous, which turned into a 29-hour game, not including a NG+ run which apparently has a fair amount of more content than the main game. While I am intrigued to see what else Cvstodia has to offer, looking back through some of the bosses and knowing that they become more difficult in NG+ gives me a bit of stress. Plus I haven't finished all of the side quests that I had wanted to, so maybe I will finish those first?
On the 3DS/DS side of things, I am still playing through Dragon Quest IX: Sentinel of the Starry Skies, although not as quickly as I would like. I think part of it is that I end up reading or planning/writing articles (like this) while on my breaks at work and I usually end up playing on the Switch while in bed. But I do like that I do not feel lost, even when coming back after not having played for a week or two.
In the virtual realm, I am playing a combination of rhythm games (Beat Saber, Ragnarock) to supplement my Google Fit steps counter with all of the arm swinging that goes on in those games. Yeah, I know it's kinda cheating, but it typically only ends up being a few thousand steps that I need to reach my 5,000/day goal. My work-life is pretty sedentary after all. But I've also been putting some time in The Climb 2, Rush, and Gadgeteer (which I have not yet talked about) when I need to wind down.
That is really it. I decided to not join in on Fortnite this season (Chapter 3 Season 2) despite the fact that Rahul Khouli voiced one of the characters this season. I just wasn't as inspired to join in this season (the last season I didn't play was way back in Chapter 1 Season 7). Maybe in the following season? Or maybe not at all? We'll see. I also have not picked back up God of War: Ghost of Sparta for some of the similar reasons above.
Let's just leave it at that for now. There will likely be updates throughout the month. Hopefully only good updates, because Eir knows we could all use those these days.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental
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