Monthly Update: March, 2025

 

And somehow, we're already in March.  Or just 17% of the way through the year, or if we really want to get snarky, only 4.4% of the way until our current scenario either is upgraded to the non-shitty version, or we sink deeper into this experiment in white christian nationalism and fascist oligarchy we currently call the United States; I don't expect you to watch all 65 minutes right now, but I highly recommend it if you havne't already watched it.  And major kudos to Volodomyr Zelinsky for rebuking Russian State Media talking points that came out of the mouths of Trump and Vance.

And then there's the bullshit in the SAVE Act reintroduced as a proposed bill by Chip Joy which would bar people from voting and registering to vote if the name on their birth certificate differs from that of their "legal name" (e.g. the name on their driver's license, hunting licenses, passport, school ID, etc).  And while the wording in the current "wording" of the SAVE act allows people that this would affect to "provide additional documentation," there was no specific definition as to what that documentation would be.  This means if this travesty passes, it could be left up to the states/counties, which means a return to Jim Crow-era voting laws all over again.  One state/county could require that a woman who changed her name after getting married to only supply her current government-issued ID and a copy of her marriage certificate, while another state/county could require the following:

• Copy of Government Issued ID:
• Only passports, state driver's licenses, and hunting permits accepted.
• College IDs, High School IDs, not accepted.
• Copy of long-form birth certificate.
• Copy of marriage certificate.
• Signed affidavit from an official notary that all of the documents are legal and present at the time of signing.
• All of the above are required every time a ballot is requested.
• Likely forbidden from using mail in, or absentee ballots.

Yes, I'm getting into nothing but speculation here. The only people that's not good for are the same ass-hats who want to try and enact these kinds of laws, decrying that it's all part of a nationwide mandate when Trump was elected by an overwhelming majority; Trump received 49.8% of the popular vote, which if we're going to be pedantic, is not the definition of "majority" in the context of the voting population of the United States. Still, yes, Trump won both the popular vote and the electoral vote, so I don't think I'm trying to engage in election denialsim.

And Musk is trash, too, while we're at it, mainly because he's a nazi sympathizer, but less damaging and still related to his character is his acquisition of attempted gaming cred.

Now that we've successfully transitioned to gaming culture, we can now continue with our regularly scheduled program.

Unintentionally, despite the last 8 months or so, there've been a lot of Game EXP articles from games I've received.  I had thought this well was drying up, but then there was an uptick on the YouTube side of things, and that just makes me look more attractive to indie publishers.  Maybe.  There'll likely be a continued slough of Game EXP articles for the next coming weeks, at least through the middle of March and then I'm going to let things slow down a bit so I can play more of the games that I've actually paid money for: Fallout 4, Triangle Strategy, The Elder Scrolls Online, Wolfenstein II: The New Collosus, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Dragon's Dogma, and that list of crowdfunded games I said I would get to back in my January 17th article.  And all of the games in my Ultimate Spreadsheet Database.

Movie-wise, nothing.  New TV show-wise, nothing.  I did start Hand of Fire, the final book in the Shandril's Saga trilogy by Ed Greenwood, which continues my chronological journey through the novels in the Forgotten Realms setting; which if you're just joining us, I began because the D&D module, Rime of the Frost Maiden said that it used several older D&D novels and source books as inspiration and reference materials for this and I hadn't read those yet, so now I'm in the middle of 1357DR, although several hard-to-find books happen earlier that I've yet to read.  And I'm still reading House of Leaves, and I couldn't tell you how many pages I've read in that book because of all of the jumping around in the text.

Lastly, all this week we'll be releasing a series of playthrough videos for an interesting visual novel and immersive typing sim, S4U: CityPunk 2011 and Love Punch, along with playlists for The Voidness, Goldenheart, Death Omen, and Ashen Arrows, so stay tuned for those as we progress/survive through this month of March.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Mistä voimme täällä elää?

 

Monthly Update: March, 2024

 

God damn.  I don't know where to start.  I'm upset about Nex Benedict being murdered.  I'm flabbergasted about Alabama's ruling on extrauterine children regarding IVF procedures.  I'm horrified by the innocent people who have been kidnapped and those killed in retaliation.  And here too.  Pretty much everywhere.  And then more idiots who are still yelling about fabricated anythings just because their fabricated cultural policies don't seem to be favored by the majority of the US.

This has been my venting space, where some of the shit that just sits and boils, then gets edited down into bite-sized chunks because I can't do this all day and I'm sitting here comfortably in an office looking out a crows in a tree and a small coffee shack-on-wheels where people are buying $4 cold brews; that's actually not a bad price for a large 16 oz cold brew.  I'm in a literal seat of luxury, although our previous HR guy had tried to get me to replace my chair for upwards of two years.

[Insert Meaningful Transition Here]

You may've noticed that over the past couple of weeks, we've been posting exclusively Demo Time articles on Mondays and Fridays.  That was all in thanks to Steam's Next Fest (Is it Next Fest or NextFest?) that happened last month from the 5th through the 12th where publishers/developers would share demos for their upcoming games.  During a previous Next Fest in October, there were a couple of games I played and had planned on writing about, but at the end of the week, the pictures I had taken while playing on the Steam Deck were no longer accessible because the demos had been delisted.  This time I played more than one demo a night for the duration of Next Fest, which resulted in 17 games, and one No Man's Sky, which released a demo to coincide with their Omega expansion/DLC/Update.  Since I was playing everything on the Steam Deck and most of these were games that were officially untested, several games didn't work that I have piled into a compilation article rather than giving an entire article to "Yup, the exact same thing that happened here is what happened with REDACTED.  Nothing more to add."  I had thought about posting them more frequently, but then I found that I was still putting in a fair amount of time even though some demos only lasted me 10 minutes.  All of that is to say that it's likely that a lot, if not most of March will be filled with the remainder of the Demo Time articles that I didn't get to last month.  

And speaking of demos, kind of, we have an announcement to make:

[It's actually coming March 11th]

The impetus behind this A24-level trailer for written articles was brought about because of Keymailer, a third-party company that connects content creators (primarily YouTube and Twitch streamers) to game publishers to have their games advertised by giving out game codes in exchange for playing their games.  Yes, it's kind of like selling myself to play games, but I'm okay with that.  The problem though is that a lot of companies won't just give out codes to random schmoes, but only to "accredited" people which means having a certain number of Twitch subscribers, YouTube subscribers/views, etc, or your own website and not one powered by Blogspot, WordPress, or likely Tumblr.  So while I do have a Twitch account and have had a couple of streams there (three in the last 5+ years), I do have an active YouTube channel, but our primary focus is here, with occasionally decently written words strung together in a semi-cohesive and understandable manner.

But what if we had videos for our articles?  I'm not talking about video essays because no one here has the time or financial resources to start up that nonsense; and I also perform horribly on camera.  I'm talking about the occasional (as in whenever we receive review codes for games that actually interest us and see ¶5 Sentence 1) video with royalty-free music (see ¶5 Sentence 1) that uses screenshots (until I figure out this whole video capture from a Steam Deck business) I take during regular play.  The video editing software I'm using also doesn't have a save function unless I pay for the Premium edition (see ¶5 Sentence 1) so don't expect Oppenheimer any time ever.

So that's what we've been up to and what we're going to be up to for the next 30 days.

Don't forget to share, subscribe, and smash that LIKE button.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

You Are Here To Devour

Monthly Update: March, 2023

 

Content warning:  The first four paragraphs are COVID-19 related and my thoughts about the last three years.  If you want to skip that part and just read about video games, skip down to the paragraph that starts: "Most importantly..."

Well, it's now been three years since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, or at least it will be on Saturday, March 11th.  It is a strange thing to think about.  Three years ago at this time we already knew that this virus was spreading at an alarming rate in China and Italy, and beginning to gain traction in the United States.  Conklederp and I flew down to Northern California to go to our friend's wedding in San Francisco and I remember seeing a woman being pulled aside at the airport and asked to remove her mask by security and genuinely wondering if we should be traveling with masks, but we had brought Clorox wipes in a ziplock bag to wipe down our seatbelts and trays on the plane and I am sure we got looks as we cleaned our seats.  We were actually supposed to go to the wedding with both DK and his wife (who earned her PhD. in immunology) but their oldest had just come down with a cold and his wife was starting to not feel well so she stayed behind.  We also later realized that "that" ship was just off the San Francisco coast, visible from our drive to/from the Bay Area.   It is crazy thinking that three days after we got back from California, on Wednesday, March 11th, the WHO would declare COVID-19 a global pandemic.  As of Thursday, March 2nd, a reported 6.8 million (6,859,093) people have died, and still, in the United States, a weekly average of 469 people are still dying from COVID-19 and COVID-19-related infections every day.  At least we are not back in January 2021 when the average daily death count was in the 3,000+ in the US alone.

I know that we are in a significantly different place right now. I personally have received my COVID-19 vaccines and all available boosters.  I still practice social distancing.  I still wear a mask when I go inside grocery stores.  A couple weeks ago Conklederp, Himo, Folly, and I did our first escape room since February 1, 2020.  We still have not gone out to see a movie in a theatre since February 24th, but part of that is also that we would need to have a babysitter for The Squire, and I think both Conklederp and I are still not comfortable with going into an enclosed space the size of a movie theatre.  And for all of the precautions that we have taken these last three years.  How during the start I would wear both a mask and gloves when going inside any place that was not our house.  How, after I had to go back into our office in July 2020, which also had me going inside a couple of businesses for my job, I would strip out of my clothes in our kitchen, just inside our front door, and immediately throw those clothes in the washing machine before greeting Conklederp; similar to the precautions I took when I was working at an assisted living facility and we had a Norovirus outbreak for about a month.  Both Conklederp nor I have not yet had a positive test for COVID-19, although we both acknowledge that we could have contracted it and just been asymptomatic at some point.  We have gotten colds though, each of us 2-3 times since July 2022, and each time we have tested negative multiple times.

I bring all of this up for a couple of reasons. First, again because it has now been three years since March 2020.  I have reread articles I wrote during 2020 and rewatched a couple YouTube videos put out in that first handful of months, just thinking about, well, literally everything.  There were the countless videos of people cheering hospital staff as they finished their shifts.  There were the videos of people performing music from the isolation of their own homes for their neighbors.  There was that guy who told everyone to repackage, wash all their groceries, and to leave their food outside for like a day or two (ignoring the fact that ice cream and milk existed apparently).  There were the instructional videos on how to properly don and doff your mask.  Thinking back on all of the reasons for this media being made at that specific time feel a bit like a fever dream, that if I do not think too hard that a lot feels the same as it did in March 2019.  And then I put on my mask to go into a grocery store.

I do get a little emotional thinking about this, about all of the uncertainties regarding transmission and how best to keep ourselves and the people around us safe.  Secondly, Conklederp and I are doing paperwork to have The Squire attend preschool in the fall and are coming to terms with him coming into contact with a lot of kids (~16/day) on a couple-days-a-week basis.  I know that "kids get sick" as I have worked in preschools and elementary schools before, often getting sick my first week that school started.  It is just that the last three years have changed the way that both Conklederp and I approach things now, especially with our soon-to-be three-year-old attending preschool later this year.

This was not originally the Monthly Update I had planned on posting as there is stuff related to video games that I had wanted to write about, but then I fell into an introspective rabbit hole and this is what came out.  But apart from COVID, there is some game-related content.

Most importantly is that the 3DS and Wii U eShops are closing on Monday, March 27th.  We have talked about it here although at the time a final closing date had not been set.  But the big footnote to "closing" is that it is the last day you can make purchases but not the last day you can download games you have already purchased.  So for the 3DS, if you are waiting for that 1 TB mini SD card to arrive from Newegg and it is delivered on the 28th, you can still load up the memory on your 3DS and respective memory card "for the foreseeable future" with games you have already purchased.  I have heard at least one sale from Thunderful (Steamworld and Hello Kitty games in the EU) will go live next week, and that a near month-long sale for the Japan eShop from Atlus was canceled for speculative reasons.  I am still checking my 3DS and Wii U respective eShops every couple of days but maybe now that we are in March and heading into the final stretch there will be something more substantial than shovelware.

On the Switch, after finishing Bayonetta 3, I decided to play LIVE A LIVE (however you pronounce LIVE) while Conklederp is awake so she can follow along, and when she's asleep or streaming a show I will play Theatrhythm Final Bar Line (First Impressions incoming) and have been having fun with this new iteration of the series.  I will likely be writing a Game EXP article for LIVE A LIVE by the end of the month.

And speaking of the end of the month, this month will be the final group of games from Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1, the series I started back in October at the time March felt so far away, but now feels like I only started a short while ago.  I could imagine doing something similar with the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection, but I would need to invest more than 10 minutes per game, especially with Crystalis which would probably be closer to 15 hours for me because of how slow I tend to play games.  I do like the idea of going through a collection of games though and the Atari Collection was a fun way of going about it.  I may only have time to do one large collection per year with the amount of time required for each game and article, so maybe this next October I will have something new that I spent the summer working on (apart from actual work).

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
The Wine of Venus, The Essence of Our Hope

Monthly Update: March 2022

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

Monthly Update: March, 2021

 

It's March.

I knew this would happen and not just because February has fewer days in it than the last February.  March is going to be a strange month for a couple of reasons.  First, this will be the one-year anniversary of our state going into lockdown mode of which we were brought out of it too soon.  A year since Conklederp and I decided that it would be safer for me to work from home, which I was thankfully able to do, but ended up being called back to the office in July as they were able to enforce social distancing between desks and put up a sign that at least says that masks are required even if not everyone who enters the office is wearing one [as I type this mine is actually dangling from my headphones cord because I was just finishing eating my lunch and drinking (more) coffee].  I will also be celebrating my second birthday of the pandemic.  It is now more than a year since either Conklederp or myself have been bouldering (the last time was Friday, February 21, 2020).  And it will have been a year since Breanna Taylor was shot and killed in her own apartment for perceived drug and drug-related money possession for people who did not even live at that residence (and who was currently already in prison) after her boyfriend fired at the intruders who broke into her apartment (the boyfriend said the Police busted in unannounced, the Police say announced themselves).  And Elijah McClain is still dead because he was Black in Aurora, CO and that was apparently offensive to the police there. And to date, more than 500,000 people have died from COVID-19 since March of last year which is a mind-boggling amount of people when you stack it up like that.

How do you work around all of this?  I mean that rhetorically, figuratively, and directly.  How are you handling all of this?  I've actually been pretty fortunate really.  I have a wonderful family (both in my house and all my friends I consider family who don't live in our house), and I have an amazing support network of people I can reach out to (although I don't really because that's just the way I am, but knowing that they're there is comforting as all hell).

Oh, and Former President Trump incited an attempted take-over of the US Capitol back in January by declaring for months that the election would be rigged if he lost and that there was no way that he could possibly lose and did you see how many people voted for him in November which was more than the number that voted for him in 2016 and how could he lose with those numbers and the Republican branch of the United States Senate were too worried about their 2022 re-election bids to do anything about it.  I know that was almost two months ago but it's still something that bugs the shit out of me if I think about it too much.  I should probably close that tab in my browser that I've had up for over a month.

Okay, moving on.

How about that Nintendo Direct huh? I mean, there were some announcements that I do not particularly care about (so I'm not bringing them up here), but I was kind of surprised by Nintendo HDing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword considering how much of a demand I have seen (particularly) on Twitter for there to be HD updates of Twilight Princess, Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, or Majora's Mask be ported to the Switch.  I know a lot of people complained about the controls on Skyward Sword and I appreciate that Nintendo has given the player the option on how they want to play the game, otherwise they would be alienating their entire Switch Lite base.  I am also pretty stoked for Mario Golf Super Rush because as I have said a number of times before, is that I love me some non-realistic golf games and I do recall really enjoying Mario Golf on the N64, which this looks to be a supped up version of that.  I do not see myself getting too involved in the competitive online aspect of it as it feels like it could be very ripe for cheating and I really do not have any drive (eh!?) to play competitively, golf is already an aggravating enough sport to play with randos online halfway across the globe.  I just finished the demo for Project Triangle Strategy [sorry, project: TRIANGLE STRATEGY™ (working title) Debut Demo] and there will be an article for that either this week or next, but I have a lot of thoughts about that.  Surprisingly, I do not know how to feel about the DLC for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity even though I love the game.  I think the idea of paying for access to extra characters and a few more areas (and weapons and clothing I think too) is not that appealing to me?  But I am only 27ish hours in and not even halfway through, so that thought may change the closer I get to finishing the main campaign (and all side quests).  As for the ports being ported to the Switch, I will probably give Fall Guys a go because unlike Among Us, I do not really enjoy engaging in online communications, and I am pretty excited about The Outer Wilds.  I am also (not surprisingly so, but maybe just a little) excited for the HD release of Legend of Mana even though I have only played two games in the series (Final Fantasy Adventure and Secret of Mana) and completed zero of them.  Maybe I should get on that?

And closing out February, I jumped on two #IndieSelect Games from Brazillian publisher QUByte Interactive, GEMiNi, and Spooky Chase.  At the moment I am planning on having #IndieSelect articles out on Tuesday and Thursday, which could mean that we'll have articles every day this week, but we'll have to wait and see. Because looking at my writing queue, I kind of surprised myself (a lot of that going on recently it seems) as I have a number of articles started, both games and gaming related.  So now I just need to pace myself and like everything else in life, find the time to get them started, proofed, and finished.

Stay safe out there people.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

Mid-March Update, 2020

So this month has turned into something weird, and strange, and new but far from the great kind of new like a new digital expansion to Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition, or a newly announced video game IP from Nintendo.  No, this new is something that a lot of us have never lived through before and here in North America, we are getting our first taste of what China, South Korea, and Italy are already knee-deep in.  Processing all of the events that have happened and continue to happen is going to take some time, and since the situation is developing day-by-day, being able to make these necessary adjustments is exhausting on a physical, mental and emotional level.  

Last Monday (March 9th) there had not been a lot of major declarations about COVID-19 (Coronavirus) in the United States and as recently as February the President of the United States was referring to the outbreak of the virus as "their [the Democrats in Washington DC) new hoax" (yes I realize that he was not referring to the virus itself as a hoax, although at times his rhetoric would seem otherwise, but that the response was from Democrats' outrage that the information being handling by the White House is akin to the Mueller Investigation and the Impeachment inquiry/hearings/trial).  Within a week (Monday, March 16th), all public schools (K/12 through university) in our state are now closed, California has declared that all bars, nightclubs, wineries be closed and that anyone aged 65+ should self-isolate (looking at you Mümer & Püper), the CDC has recommended that any public gatherings be limited to fewer than 50 (uninfected) people [scratch that, make it 10 or fewer], and even Washington State has ordered that all restaurants close their on-site dining facilities but can remain open to delivery and drive-through options, while gyms and movie theaters are also to close.  Then this weekend we found out that our climbing gym and our favorite escape room company are closing at least through the end of March, possibly longer.  And just now (while at work), was told that at least one bank (most likely more) are closed to the public while ATMs and drive-through windows are still open; I realize that these are updates only from west coast states, but it's just so hard to keep up-to-date with all of the state laws/regulations/advisories with this pandemic that I am limiting my references to information that I am aware of, which not coincidentally, is from the states that mostly surround me.

I am trying not to make light of the situation just because I fall into the category or low risk because of my age and that I have no underlying health conditions, but the thought of being quarantined or even carrying the virus and passing it along to someone who is at higher risk  [like my Grandma who is 90 and my parents who are both over 65) is occasionally a terrifying thought.  And last Friday on The Daily podcast, a very important distinction in how illness from COVID-19 is categorized was brought to light in the distinctions between mild, severe, and critical cases.

And in the time it took for me to write that last paragraph and writing this one, a few hours, Oregon has now followed suit with Washington and will be closing bars, restaurants and the like for the next four weeks.  This is an ever-evolving situation that is pretty unnerving.  The morbid part of me wants to rewatch Contagion, Outbreak, 12 Monkeys, and play Pandemic, but I recognize that that might be too much too soon.  I am all about escapism in times of stress and there are plenty of other avenues to take, especially if you are either self-quarantining voluntarily, mandated by your local/state government, or if you have tested positive for COVID-19.

I really have no idea.  I apologize for being all over the place with this.

I got the idea to write today's article about current events from The Kid's Instagram story about keeping a journal during this time and I thought, "Well, I already have a diary of sorts in the form of this site that Dr. Potts and I write for, might as well just write down some thoughts here and post them because we're human too."  And I thought it would be a disservice to write on as normal, ignoring everything that is going on in the world.  Wednesdays will still have their MIDI Week Single articles and we will try to keep as up-to-date as possible with our postings as for the time being, I am still having to go into work.  At least for now.

Please stay healthy and safe out there.  If you can stay home during this time, please do, and remember to check in with friends and family.



~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian
Instrumental


tl;dr
Times are weird, and neither Conklederp, myself, Dr. Potts or Jane have contracted COVID-19.

Monthly Update: March 2020

Well, March is now upon us and the only left to do is come up with something snarky for the opening sentence of this thing that Dr. Potts and I have been doing for nigh on eight years.  But this all started so that we could keep in communication with each other and the rest of you are just along for the ride.

Yeah, you're right, that's too rude.  If you're reading this, then I'm glad you're here.  February was a helluva month, especially in terms of workload.  I work for an accounting, bookkeeping, payroll, HR company and because businesses are required to have their taxes from the previous year submitted to the IRS by March 15th (March 16th this year because the 15th falls on The Lord's Day), unless an extension is filed, our office and specifically my caseload has been slammed.  Conklederp and The Kid can attest to the number of times I've stayed late at the office, sometimes until 8:30pm, which means a lot of the time I would spend either playing games to write about or finding time to write articles has been significantly less of late.

But we are not here to hear me kvetch, so let's get down to copper brads then.

I feel that the majority of my Switch time in February was spent playing just a handful of games, some related to #IndieSelect titles both past and present, but also titles that I have been wanting to start and finish.  So all games I guess?  I finished The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (through GOG's Galaxy Client) at the beginning of the month and I will be posting my article on that on Friday, but immediately after finishing the game, I started up The Witcher III: Wild Hunt (which was on the Switch).  At present (and I do not apologize if we lose any of our reader base), but after 25 hours, I have played the in-game card game Gwent all of four times.  I am also having some issues with the combat in the game, specifically determining distances when attacking, and I am still getting used to the new mechanics to the series like jumping, equipment durability, having Roche at your beck-and-call, and SO.MANY.SIDE.QUESTS.  But more on that when the First Impressions article comes out, possibly next week.

I am also in the process of finishing up Outlast 2, which may or may not be finished within the week.  Believe it or not, I am still playing Fortnite a little bit each day, usually two to three games just to complete a couple of challenges before calling it, and I have been playing the hell out of Pic-a-Pix Pieces, which was a previous #IndieXmas title.  I sadly have not found a lot of time to play Wolfenstein: The New Order, again because of lack of at-home-computer-time and if it is a question of playing a game or writing an article (or researching for one), I am probably going to write that article like I am doing right now.  I also picked up DOOM (1993), and DOOM II (Classic) for the Switch as they were both on sale (along with DOOM 3) on the Switch for $1.49 and I thought maybe trying DII on a smaller mobile screen might help with the FPS.  The sale by Bethesda in anticipation of the March 20th release of Doom Eternal, which also has given me a hankering to replay the 2016 reboot of DOOM; although this time around I think I will play it on Easy (I'm Too Young To Die) as I already beat the game on Normal (Hurt Me Plenty) with the exception of the Cyberdemon fight, which I had to turn down the difficulty on the second part of that boss fight after a great number of attempts.

Lastly, I did pick up Neverwinter Nights 2 Complete over on GOG for a couple of reasons.  First and foremost, the game was on sale for fewer than $5, I really like Obsidian as a developer, I loved the first game (although never finishing the Hordes of the Underdark expansion), and it is a Dungeons & Dragons game and figured it would be a good way to pass the time when I was able to boot it up on my laptop.

Moving on to other media, The Clone Wars over on Disney+ has started its long-awaited seventh and final season after being canceled after season five back in 2014.  We are currently two episodes into the final season, and about half or two-thirds of the way through the current arc, so I am going to wait until the entire season is finished before talking about it more.  I will say that with The Bad Batch, I know that they were a planned part of the show when it was canceled, but to wrap of loose ends from the series after it was canceled, it seems like an odd choice to introduce an entirely new batch of Clones, even with part of the story surrounding Clones that we met back in season 1.  I am also fully introducing Conklederp to The Clone Wars series, which is growing more-and-more on her as the series progresses; we just finished The Second Battle of Geonosis arc; I still submit that "Landing at Point Rain" has some of the best camera work from the entire series.

And our D&D venturing into Ravenloft is continuing nicely.  My Halfling Wild Mage Sorcerer Lurien is currently level 5, with bright blue-tinged skin (due to a wild magic surge), recently cured of lycanthrope, and is leaning towards being some mix of a pyromaniac and pyro-mage.  Time will tell. But first, we need to loot the bodies of the druids we just killed (they took over a winery and attacked us before we could ask any questions).

I think that might be about it really.  I plan on finishing Outlast 2, continuing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Pic-a-Pix Pieces, and I did in fact restart DOOM because why the hell not!?

~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian

And Constantly Working for Peace

Monthly Update: March 2019

I would like to think that I was semi productive in taking a few swipes at my queue of games on the Switch that I have started and needed/wanted to finish.  Now, I am not the kind of person that feels obligated to finish every single game that I start as I have tastes and not every game is going to fit within those predetermined tastes.  I will give each game I try an honest to Odin try, but when a game starts to feel hard for the sake of being hard, possibly in order to pad out the time required to beat a game, then I will play until I feel like I can stop without any self imposed shame.  That is why partly I stopped playing InkSplosion and Midnight: Deluxe.  I felt that I had gotten all that I wanted/needed out of those games, although my actual reason for stopping varies.  

But the point that I am trying to make is that in February, I finished four games, some of which I had started some time ago: Runner3, The Way Remastered, Flood of Light, and Earthworms.  My plan, at least for the moment, is to have Game EXP articles for each of these games before the end of March.  I think that that would be doable.  Then there is the Trials Rising Open Beta on the Switch, and the open/closed beta for Pandemic Express by TALLBOYS, and tinyBuild, but I think Pandemic Express will more than likely turn into "Can My Computer Handle It And Live?"  That is, if I am able to find time to play as the designated start time, 17:00 UTC happens to be 9 AM here on the Pacific Coast.  Maybe Saturday then?

Looking over this last month too, I realized I did not play/review any games in Indie Gamer Chick's #IndieSelect.  This was probably due to not as many games being put up for the Switch, but also because I ended up being busier than I had originally planned.  But again, I did finish four games in February, which is nice.

In the realm of board games, I ended up canceling D&D during the one weekend where we had snow and icy roads, coupled with the fact that both Conklederp and I were in the midst of a mucus filled cold.  But when The Kid came up a few weeks back we did manage to play two games of Fireball Island: The Curse of Vul-Kar, both of which The Kid one.  And now this makes the fourth time we have played the game, and none of those times did we ever play with all of the rules in tact.  And we still have not figured out what the souvenir coin is for and how it is awarded; although I just looked up some information over on BoardGameGeek and was able to figure out some additional rules that we had not been playing with, and not for lack of reading the rules mind you.  Maybe fifth time is a charm?

Lastly, let us briefly talk about movies, because I do not know if Conklederp and I have even been to the movies this year to see a new movie.  Yeah, we went to our local science and industry museum a short while ago and saw Princess Mononoke, but that's a 22 year old movie (not knocking it mind you).  There just has not been anything that has driven us from our abode on Tuesdays to see a movie at a discounted price.  Maybe Captain Marvel coming out in a week will be the end of that slump, as Us is then coming out on the 22nd; there is probably more but I have not yet looked that far ahead; aside from Avengers: End Game and Star Wars Episode IX.

As for March, which is hypothetically why y'all're'll here, I am not 100% sure what this month will be.  I do not know if I will be finishing Darkest Dungeon, especially if my party keeps dying on quests that are level appropriate; maybe I just need to level EVERYTHING up before sending them out, even if they are three levels higher that what the quest recommends.  Stupid Hag.  I also played a bit of Fortnite this last season and in the final two weeks, was able to earn a free Season 8 Battle Pass, so I might be playing a bit over the next 10 weeks, if only to get move V-Bucks to buy another Battle Pass if I want to continue in some future season.  And I have Octopath Traveler that would like to continue because I love the overall look and the music, although I think I am now understanding some of the negative reviews, in that the characters do not seem to interact, or have connecting stories as was the case with games in the Final Fantasy franchise.  Plus whatever game I end up deciding to pull for the #DiscoverIndies this upcoming weekend.

So let us end it there?  Maybe?



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Who Wants To Come With Me?

Monthly Update: March 2018

And just like that it's March.  Completely bypassed Smarch this time around.  Lucked out there.

I'll be here all night folks.

Well, I feel like February inadvertently turned into a month long post about my coming up with, developing, writing, further developing, deleting, and more writing of a Dungeons & Dragons quest that I came up with earlier in the month.  And if you're not tired of hearing me ramble on, I have at least one more article, but will probably end up being two more.

With any luck then, I might actually get to writing my Game Review article for DOOM for the Switch, which I finished this last weekend.  I've told Conklederp that that game was a magnificent combination of being a stressful shitfest and an exhilarating ride through the exploding burning offal remains of half a dozen demons.  And the music, which we covered in a MIDI Week Single earlier in the year, was a great addition to the game that made me both dread strolling into large open areas, and at by the end of the ensuing massacre, made me feel super excited to be playing this ported game. 

I have also being working my way through The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and the other night I managed to make my way to/through a second Divine Beast.  I should probably talk more about this game but I feel like it's already made a few headlines here and there, so I may just talk about periodic updates during Monthly Update articles.  That being said (or not), I can see why this game is getting the heaps of recognition it has over the last year.

In other Switch news, I started Perception up earlier in the week.  The game has an interesting premise in that it is a first person exploration horror game, where the woman you play is blind.  Yup.  The mechanic, so far is pretty well explained and I am enjoying (being frightened) the first couple of hours and if I ever manage to write my way out of my own brain D&D storytelling habits, I might actually be able to talk about this.  Well, Perception and Bayonetta, which I also picked up (because who doesn't enjoy a $22 discount* on a two pack of fairly well received games?  After playing the first stage/area, I will say that while I am enjoying the tongue-in-cheekiness of the game, I am finding the voice actor for Enzo a little annoying with his Joe Pesci impression.  BUT, I do love the fact that Dave Fennoy is (currently) playing a prominent role in the game.

And just so y'all don't think that I'd forgotten, I am still playing Heroes of the Monkey Tavern, although I seem to have hit a wall where I am not sure how to proceed without killing off a number of my characters, one of which has a resurrection spell.  But it is still a very fund game that happens to be causing me a bit of stress.  But it's a good stress, or so the game is trying to tell me.

And I feel like that has been kind of it for gaming in February.  I am hoping to get the group together again for some D&D action in our current month.  I am a little sadly amused at how I have mentally put away my 3DS after the B-Button debacle occurred back in December, and I have still yet to attempt to fix the thing.  I also have not been playing much in the way of PC games, partly because in the last few weeks I have found that I have less and less time spend on my PC, which really speaks to the awesomeness of the portability of the Switch.  Speaking of which, I am going to close this up and either try to find that damned treasure that some punk-ass Goron kid left hiding somewhere, or just turn in a bunch of my spirit orbs.

See y'all on Monday.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental

*The discount came about from Amazon's 20% off new game purchase, plus we still had a 10% off "moving" discount from when we moved back in November.

Monthly Update: March 2017

Looking over the notes I have for February and what I'm looking at towards Smarch and all its lousy weatheriness, there appears to be quite a lot.

In the physical games front, D&D has been happening on its regular basis since the beginning of the year, and again, the current quest has taken a lot longer than originally anticipated.  The group is actually meeting up tomorrow to officially finish the current story and then do a one-off quest so that people don't leave after the first hour or two.  Plus we may not be meeting up again until April so I want to make our monthly meet up count.  We have also decided to focus on more single one-off quests that do not necessarily require all seven PCs to be present.  Chreekat has even expressed interest in DMing a western/Fallout world type campaign that would still have all of the same rules, just the setting is different.

And last weekend, Conklederp and I were able to play a round of Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition with D&D regulars Himo and Folly at their place.  That was the second time that we had played MoM2 with people other than ourselves and it was so much fun to play.  The only thing that I think I would have done differently, was forcing people to solve people on their own, although that would be hard to do since we were using the application through Steam.  Now if there were a way to force people to use a mobile app in order to solve puzzles. . .actually that might be more difficult to implement and possibly increase the overall cost of an already expensive game.

In the PC game market, I have had a resurgence in playing The Witcher through GOG's Galaxy client.  I think I had hit a wall where I was under the impression that I would be unable to learn a spell that I had missed in the previous chapter, which I had read was the most useful spell in the game.  After a fair amount of Google searching, I used some FAQs, found the spell, and dove head long into Chapter 3.  43 hours in now and I am thoroughly enjoying this fictional world again.  

I've plodded a bit more in I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, although I hit a story wall that I am not sure how to break through.  I guess I could just "kill" my character and start over, which is sort of how that game works, but I feel that I have progressed too far in this particular story to quit now.

I also cannot believe that I have yet to talk about the Mega Man inspired game Nefarious. a game that I pledged on Kickstarter back in Fall 2014.  I am about 2/3rds of the way through the game and for the most part, I think playing as the bag guy in a Mega Man inspired game is a pretty brilliant idea and the game is mostly well executed, with only a couple of gripes on my part, but I will get into that later in the month after I have beaten the game since I feel I am too far for a First Impressions article.

On the 3DS, I am still emotionally working through Chrono Trigger, which I anticipate I will be finishing in the coming weeks.  And in flurried bits, I am playing Ultimate NES Remix, which is a nice frustrating diversion from the the longer games on other systems; also the fact that asshats still insist on buying out and overcharging for the Nintendo Classic Mini five months after its original limited release; but hey, you can still buy the official carrying case for $19.

In the mobile game arena, I had been playing (up until my phone went stolen) a lot of Fire Emblem Heroes, Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius, and Pokemon GO on the ocassions that I left my house and was within swiping distance of a Pokestop.  However, since my mobile playing/calling device is no longer in  my posession, an article about the first two games will have to wait, if only because I feel that both of those games deserve to have pictures posted with their respective articles; as free to play games, they are pretty damn good looking.

In the TV realm, Conklederp and I finished powering through Penny Dreadful, which ended its third and final season, which ended in kind of a disappointing way.  The short of it is, is that it is an amazing series with Eva Green doing an Emmy worthy performance as Vanessa Ives (although never nominated specifically for an Emmy, she was recognized by other award groups), as well as brilliant acting by both Josh Hartnett and Timothy Dalton that actually made me like them more than anything else they had previously done.  If you have not seen the show, think of it like a mix between The Monster Squad, Castlevania, but heavily character driven and without a lot of camp that could have easily been instilled by someone who thought they knew better. We also just finished the most recently released season of Bates Motel, and now we are waiting for the fifth and final season to be released either later this year or early next year.  And I recently started watching The Expanse, which I am enjoying a lot, even if I have a hard time tracking all of the characters' names; something I acknowledge is a weakness of mine when it comes to large ensemble shows.

Regarding movies, both Conklederp and I have been kind of lite as far as going out to see them.  We did see A Cure for Wellness which was as good a movie as we were expecting based on the trailers.  And as Dr. Potts pointed out, Get Out and Logan also look like they are both right up our ally, although I might end up seeing Logan by myself as it Conklederp is not one for comic book movies.  And now that I think about it, I do not think that I have seen an X-Men movie since the atrocity that was X-Men: The Last Stand.  Maybe that movie will not hinge itself on not having seen any of the other Wolverine or X-Men movies?

In the books frontier, I recently finished Critical Failures: Caverns & Creatures Book 1 and will have a Book Review article later in the month.  I am still trudging through Ship of Theseus, which sounds a lot more negative that intended.  I love the concept of the book, but finding time and a safe place to read the book can be challenging sometimes.  I also just started reading Elizabethan Demonolgy by Thomas Alfred Spalding, which is not as evil as it sounds.  It is a book that attempts to put into context devils, demons, and other forms of evil by looking at how they have been utilized throughout history; at least up until the book was published in 1880.  At about 43% of the way through, it is an amazing read that uses myth, biblical citations, Shakespeare (spelled "Shakespere" throughout, which apparently a common enough way to spell his name at that time), and Sir Walter Scot as sources cited throughout the entire book.  As someone who loves history and finding out contextual evidence for things being the way they are, I could not recommend this book enough.

Oh, and apparently the Nintendo Switch was released today, which most gaming and like-minded sites are probably talking about.  So you will just have to wait until one is acquired by either Dr. Potts or myself for us to make any informed comments about the system and games.  Nope, that FedEx truck that just drove by was not meant to drop of a Switch at our place. . .unless they flip back around. . .

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

The Gods of War are Called