Monthly Update: February, 2024

I'm not really sure what all to talk about in terms of January and February.

I'm actually playing a lot more games concurrently on the Steam Deck than I first realized.  There's Final Fantasy VII which I talked about last month, and then there's The Procession to Calvary, which I have not talked about, and Star Wars: Squadrons which I picked up while on vacation last month when it was on sale for $2; which I justified as being the same cost as a video game rental back in the day.  It's been a long while since I last played American Truck Simulator, and I'd like to play either Firewatch or The Enemy Within next.  Although I also have BAD END THEATRE already installed, so maybe I'll go with that after The Procession to Calvary.

Before this current attempt/playthrough of Final Fantasy VII, I'd been a bit cooler than lukewarm about the Final Fantasy VII remake series, but now I'm really interested in seeing how the game has been updated for the current generation, and again, makes me want to play through Crisis Core all over again.  Part of this also stems from Conklederp watching me play and explaining parts of the plot and Cloud being an unreliable narrator in the first third of the game, especially with his recounting of his time in SOLDIER and their mission in Nibelheim.  I'll tell you what though, a lot of the scenes in FF VII with Aerith's adoptive Mom (and likely with Barret and Marlene's backstory) hit a lot harder now that Conklederp and I have The Squire; and Uematsu's swelling music doesn't really help either.  I always kind of forget how linear FF VII is before you leave Midgar, and how a lot of the subsequent FF games have a similar approach to the linearness of the opening or the game as a whole (at least the ones that I've played).

I'm not going to say that I'm any closer to beating Tears of the Kingdom because I still haven't gotten any closer to doing any of the main quests in the Zora's Domain area.  I really should because I know that whatever ability I end up acquiring from having the Spirit of Sidon with me would be beneficial.  Plus whatever side quests I pick up there will likely not be secluded to the Lanayru and Akkala regions.  But I did explore most of the Gerudo Highlands except for a couple of quests, and my camera reel is sitting chock-full of pictures I need to turn in to a couple of stables, some koroks, and to Mr. & Mrs. Hudson (which did seem a little weird taking a picture of their seven-year-old daughter as she played with her friends in the streets of Gerudo Town).  I also feel a little bad about not having picked up Signalis in a while, I just get smacked hard with the bug to play TotK and if I'm not playing that, then it's something on Steam Deck.  I also started the Link's Awakening remake in late December, which The Squire was somewhat interested in, but if we're in the basement, he'd rather watch episodes of Star Wars Rebels, or more recently, the 1977 animated version of The Hobbit since I'm not showing him the live action until he's a bit older.

On the laptop games with The Squire front, I think I'm slowly moving him away from "Oops We Died" (aka Crumble) because he only wants me to play level 5-D which I can now do in around six minutes, but it's still a stressful six minutes that I would rather spend playing Runner 2, which we are still doing.  And "Old Horse Game" (aka Peggle Extreme).  But on my own time, I did start up the Heart of Winter expansion from the first Icewind Dale using my not-so-great-party, and I occasionally pick back up on Evoland II if I know I have an hour to play just because save spots are sometimes few and far between.  I think I also feel a little guilty about being less interested in this entry compared to the first game, even though I see what Shiro Games is doing with the different eras of video games being directly related to different eras in the story of the game.  And I guess I am still playing Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary as I booted it up during my lunch break earlier this week.  But that interest was re-sparked when I saw that Spec Ops: The Line was recently delisted, and I went to see if I could still download it (I can), and thought I should finish one first-person shooter before starting another one.

On the reading front, I'm still on "Evermeet: The Island of Elves" by Elaine Cunningham, which I started back in November after checking it out from our library.  I had the book for 21 days and made it about 15% of the way through, then turned off the WiFi on my Kindle when I would have had to return to the book so that I could keep reading it.  Then when the next person returned it, I checked it out again.  So now (as of Monday, January 29th) I am only 48% of the way through and I have eight days left before I have to either finish the book or turn off the WiFi again; the eBook is still returned to the library, it's just not "physically" removed from my Kindle, so it's not like I'm stealing a digital copy of the book; not really anyway.  And it's not likely that I'll finish it this time around either as I have only a couple of days left, and still 240+ pages left to read.

Hey, that all looks good from a 'writing about my life' standpoint, so let's leave it there for the time being.

Oh, and I'm looking forward to doing another escape room for Folly's birthday this weekend.  This'll be with a company that our escape room group hasn't done before, so it'll be fun to see another perspective and take on 'unlock this lock to access this key to another lock.'  I love escape rooms.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
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