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I’m gonna be straight up here. I just have not really been much in the mood for writing and blogging lately.

In addition to just being busy lately, the latest news developments are just, very very depressing, to put it mildly.

Fortnite

I have not been really playing a lot of variety lately either. I have no interest in Fortnite OG 2, I didn’t care for OG1 either. The Music pass was… Weirdly easy to complete, because they changed how you gain pass tiers. I finished it in days and barely played. I didn’t get premium. I am not real big on Snoop or rap/hip hop. This also kind of killed any interest in playing because all of the featured tracks are basically 7+ difficulty on vocals and 1-2 difficulty on every other part.

I don’t like playing vocals.

Beatstar

I am also rapidly losing interest in Beatstar, the other rhythm game I have been playing on my phone. Its still enjoyable, but the replayability of tracks is kind of meh. I also can basically Gold most normal tracks in one play through. Platinum is less easy, and I have no double platinum tracks. Both of those feel like blind luck though. There isn’t really a good strategy for increasing how many Perfect+ vs Perfect hits you get.

Or the songs fall to the other end of the spectrum, which currently is 3 tracks for my 100 or so songs available. They are “Extreme” tier and I lose it randomly on stage 2 somewhere, usually because it doesn’t properly register a swipe arrow.

More irritating is that all of my unlocks now require like, 50 cards per genre. And card cases have 2-4 cards in them. This drip feed of content is excruciatingly annoying. They added in some ways to unlock more by watching ads but I have too many layers of blocking going on the ad mechanism barely works even after I opened a few pinholes for it.

The mobile ads are horrifically awful and weird too. And they are just for more games centered around shoving ads at you. How does this model even fucking work?

I would give them money to try to get some songs I want but the only way to get songs is a slot machine pull and I have no real interest in that crap.

Pokemon TCG Pocket

Though speaking of slot machine pulls, I decided to give the new Pokemon TCG Pocket a go. I can already tell its not going to last. Between in game tasks and general new game push, it really showers you with things early on. I have mostly been playing the vs AI battles, but not really playing a lot. Mostly just collecting up the cards.

I feel like I am pretty close to having the set despite not spending a dime, but also, I know this is how this crap works. That last basic Golbat card will have a .0000000005% chance of dropping ever. That sort of nonsense. You think its the fancy colored ones with strong legendary Pokemon, but its not. They give you those to keep the dopamine hits flowing while you chase the completionism of every trash Pokemon.

Pokemon Sleep

On a Pokemon Note, I also have spun up Pokemon Sleep again. It added support for 3rd party watches (Fitbit) and well, it works, but I really do not get the point of this thing. I may have already uninstalled it.

Throne and Liberty

Look at that, I said I had not been playing things and here I am, not even touching on what I have been playing yet. I have made it to the max level, I have started running some dungeons. I still have not tried all of the dungeons yet. Almost every boss has some point where they have a 1 hit KO mechanic. I have only played some of the easier to manage bosses, and even then I still die half the time.

I have gotten some good gear though. Though I need to figure out a better way to beef up my stamina/MP. I keep running out.

Just recently I also started doing some open world dungeons. I have all this weird currency and it keeps telling me “X currency is full so these new ones have been destroyed”. One of these currencies affects drops in open world dungeons. So I figured it was time to use some of it.

On regular currency though, I finally went broke. I kept feeling super rich, but recently found where to craft upgrade books for my high level gear. And I blew through several million in regular gold using up my crafting mats.

Easy come easy go I guess.

What I’ve Been Playing

Lets mix things up a bit here shall we?

Beatstar

So, Beatstar is a mobile rhythm game. Its not new, there have been like 40 some odd seasons of its pass which seem to last around a month or so. So, some 3+ years, at least.

Thats not important, its new to me.

I have made no secret that I enjoy music and rhythm games, and so I have been really enjoying this one. Its a bit different in feel than DDR or Fortnite Festival. There are only 3 lanes, so you can play with your thumbs. You also can’t miss a note, or you fail the song.

Its hard to take screen shots for a rhythm game in action…

I don’t super mind this, except there is a “pay to continue” mechanic that is annoying. I have managed to sprt of train myself to just “tap tap tap” down the countdown timer as soon as I fail. Its almost never worth spending gems to continue with one exception. There are these occasional events where you earn special points for prizes. You only get the points if you actually finish the song, so if you are doing well, and near the end especially, its worth paying the gems. You are basically spending nothing in gems to potentially unlock more tracks. On the scale of spending for songs, its literally the best value possible.

And the game does really try to get you to spend for songs. Its possibly going to be my downfall with this one. I like playing ot, but I am around level 10 (out of 27) and I am increasingly hitting slowdowns and roadblocks on new content.

Basically, I am going to get bored of this and playing the same songs over and over.

I have like 70 songs now, and I did spend a bit of money (one song pack and the current season pass).

You still get a lot of songs for free though just by playing. As you play you unlock cards through various means, collect enough cards in a particular genre and you unlock a song of that genre. The problem is, the more you unlock, the more cards you need. Initially it took like, 5 cards to unlock a box. Now, in some cases, it takes like 40.

The pass seems to work the same way, which is super discouraging for buying anymore passes, because I am not sure I can complete it and unlock all 10 songs. Tier 1 was like 10 Pass Points, I am currently at I think 50 needed.

Anyway, for the game itself I am pretty good, which is to be expected a bit. A lot of my common song fails seem to come from the occasional input lag, especially on swipe notes. And the songs I score low at are ones with a lot of dense notes. Hitting the notes is not the problem, but I find I start to slowly move up in temp during dense clumps, which leads to early hits which breaks the score multiplier combo.

Throne and Liberty

I started a new MMO, and its new to everyone, not just me. Someone I know was playing it. I actually have some potential posts about it written up but I am not sure I want to bother.

A lot of what has drawn me to this one is just how nice the visuals are. Its really nice looking and everything runs incredibly smoothly. It kind of reminds me a bit of Black Desert in that aspect. I have only been vaguely following the storyline, something about some sort of purple energy and an evil lady with a giant evil knight dude.

I am enjoying it so far, though having read into it a bit more it sounds like end game is a bit more PVP focused than I would care for so I am not sure I will go much beyond running through the main storyline and finishing out the base world.

Mirrors Egde

I mostly want to mention this one because its not the first time I tried to play it, and I really really WANT to like this game, but there is just something that keeps me from getting into it.

Super Mario Special

I found out about this game that I never knew existed recently, and decided to play it, via ROM hack. Apparently there was a sprt of, PC version of Super Mario Brothers put out by Hudson Soft in the 80s. It was on various platforms.

Its basically just, SMB with similar but different levels and some new enemies (well, old crab and fly enemies from Mario Bros) and power ups. Turns out the P Wing in Super Mario Brothers 3, was not the first time Mario had flying wings as a power up.

Sky: Children of the Light

I already wrote about the new season. I mostly wanted to mention that I apparently get a fair amount of search traffic related to this game and so I have started gathering some notes to maybe update some of those old guide posts I made a while back.