As I’ve decided to combine my blogs, I’m still kind of trying to decide if I should combine my occasional, “What I’ve been Playing” and “What I’ve Been Doing” posts. Or if I should do one post for each. I post them irregularly anyway, so it doesn’t really matter that much in the end.
Gaming
Let’s go with Updates on what I’ve been playing, from my usual suspects, for now.
Infinity Nikki
I’m not sure where to even start here. I still WANT to play Infinity Nikki, I still WANT to enjoy the game, but something just feels… off… with the recent update. I have seen a lot of complaints about it, and I agree with some of them, but I also have been trying to just, keep an open mind and form y own opinion.
They added this new Intro/Social zone, the Sea of Stars, it’s… very boring, and a lot of lame. The mechanics behind everything there just feel so tedious. The extra set of daily tasks, the daily gathering of star things for the new Heart of Infinity Tree. I basically just avoid this zone completely.
But there is also a new Piecy Zone, and new actual lore, and I’m down for that. The Piecies are kind of super light hearted and funny and endearing, while sitting under the craziest dark as fuck lore where their entire zone is just a war torn mess from some disaster ages ago and they are basically immortal, sentient pieces of cloth that are clinging to these happy memories from before when they were clothes and curtains and blankets and had people around to fulfill their purpose in life with, and before everything went to crap.
The new Lore kind of follow this history a bit deeper.
Anyway, between what amounts to two new zones, and a couple of mini events layered on top of each other, I feel like there is a bit too much going on at once. It doesn’t help that half the time I try to launch the game it just… doesn’t. I’m not sure what is going on there at all.
Overwatch
I am not a huge fan of the new Arena Mode, mostly because it feels way too, not casual, for my tastes. I like the idea, but I’m not into Comp Play at all, and I really don’t have the patience to go round trying to find some perfect build META bull shit. I just want to screw around and play the game. This is also why, by a massive margin, Mystery Heroes is my favorite mode. It’s basically no stakes,
I finished the pass, but I don’t really have the desire to spend money on actually buying it. I have enough free OW Tokens to buy it, but I wan tot wait and see what the next pass has in it before I choose. If the next pass looks better, I’ll save my coins and get it, if not I’ll just get this one. I think the current “Magical Girl” theme is kind of neat in concept, but I’m not sure I really like any of the skins and such in practice. I’m especially rubbed that half the actual “Heroine Magical Girl Skins” are paid skins, and not just in the pass.
Fortnite
I’m actually writing this in advance, but the current Star Wars Season ended today. I’m hoping I managed to play it during he live event, and maybe I’ll come back and add a blurb for it here. (I did)
I always enjoy the Star Wars seasons. Fortnite does Star Wars surprisingly well. The light-sabers are fun to use, the POIs on the map this round were super great. The TIE Fighter and X-Wing are fun to use. It’s just… very fun to play.
The Battle Pass was pretty good too. Everything int he line up was good except for that god awful Wookie Team Leader skin. I archived that almost immediately. It just looks so cursed. I’ve never been a big fan of the goofy “Team Leader” skins in general anyway, I know Cuddle Team Leader is “important” to the lore or something though. Maybe. Fortnite seems to have given up on Lore.
The event was pretty amazing, especially considering how shit the last… fuck I don’t even remember how many, events were. I think the last good end of chapter event was like, the end of Chapter 3. Where you pilot the big mecha.
Anyway, the plot for the event. You are part of a squad infiltrating the Death Star, which is going to blow up the island. You get disguised and sneak through the place disabling some thing before meeting up with Jonsey and Hope (Basically the two main NPC heroes of Fortnite). After disabling the turbo lasers, Blue Squadron outside makes a trench run against the Death Star.
Your team also gets discovered, there is a shootout with some stormtroopers through the halls as you try to run to the hanger to escape before Blue Squadron blows the place up. In the hanger, Palpatine shows up and basically starts murdering everyone as an omnipotent unkillable boss. At the last minute Hope shows up and uses one of the Rift Teleport things and drops everyone into the atmosphere of the island.
As you fall, Blue Squad completes is mission and the Death Star is destroyed. A large energized chunk falls to the island.
Cut to your character laying on the ground seemingly dead before some electricity cackles (next season is super powers themed, this seems to imply new super powers), then it pans out and Superman is watching.
Pokemon
I’ve been hitting up Pokemon pretty heavily again. I have been trying a bit to actually do some fo the Dynamax/Gigantamax stuff in Pokemon Go, I’ve almost completed all of my long term research tasks too. I’m still only Level 40, mostly because of the ridiculous experience requirements needed to go up levels between 40 and 50.
I’ve been enjoying ti though. I like the idea of Dynamax, one thing I’ve disliked in PoGo was that there is no real Battle Mechanic. Dynamax adds that. They are slightly more complicated than regular raids which are just sort of, “tap tap tap tap.”
Also Gigantamax raids are fucking bull shit. Look at this crap. This was like 20 people and some 60+ Pokemon.
I’ve also been making my way through Pokemon Yellow. I have a whole slew of Pokemon Games on my 3DS from before the shop closed. I actually started playing some of them recently during a Power outage that lasted a few days. I’ve been trying to go with Pokemon I wouldn’t normally pick for my team. I’ve made my way through Brock and Mt Moon, and now Misty is kicking my ass.
I kind of hate how grindy the game feels, but it doesn’t help that I’m trying to level up that Magikarp you get early on into Gyarados. It’s at level 15 now so it at least knows Tackle and can actually fight. I don’t have to start every battle with it and swap it out, essentially losing a round every fight.
Animal Crossing Pocket Camp
I lucked out a bit. I started playing Animal Crossing Pocket Camp a while ago when it first launched but kind of got tired of it. Mostly because, well, it’s a live services game, with all the time gatekeeping and whatnot that entails. Somehwere along the line, Nintendo converted it to be, just a game, and rereleased it as Animal Crossing Picket Camp Complete, for a one time purchase.
i had intended to pick it up at some point, then forgot ti was a thing. I randomly decided to look into the game again and found out I had like 2 weeks if I wanted to keep my original progress. So I ended up picking it up using some Play Credit to help with the somewhat hefy $20 price.
It’s still kind of a mobile gam, and not overly complex, but at least now it also dumps resources on you in mass, so it’s easy to just get items and customize everything all you want. which is the core fun of these sort of games.
Toys
For a variety of reasons I’m not going into, I’ve been pretty broke this year, at least for “fun money spending”. What little I’m still putting into that is currently being saved so I can afford my remaining Pre Orders later this year (I really want that Omega Supreme if I can avoid canceling it). I’ve had to cancel… a LOT of other pre orders, and skipped on a lot else.
One thing I have been doing though is pulling out a lot of stuff I already have. Especially Transformers.
It’s become very clear that I just love Combining as a gimmick. Facebook has been showing me reels lately of people transforming Sentai model kits and combining them and it’s probably a good thing I’m broke because I’d be trying to order them all. Instead, I’m just turning to my own Transformers.
For example, I’ve always really thought the Power Core Combiners were pretty neat. I kind of wish the articulation was better, but the basic idea is slick. One thing I keep telling myself I want to do is to just do a “Figure of the Day” style post. I sort of did this briefly many years ago but then fell behind and dumped it.
Music
I feel like I’ve kind of stagnated on music listening lately, I’m not sure why really, I just have not really felt like listening to much lately. I have noticed that I’ve been listening to more Taylor Swift for whatever reason. And it’s unrelated to the recent deal with her getting her album rights back. I was doing it before that happened. I think it’s more that she is just a good fallback artist to go to.
I also got together with my parents last week to go to the first of some bi-weekly free shows at the local Conservation district. They do these every summer, we went to a few last year, It’s just some musician on a trailer stage in a little park. This week we saw a one man Blues singer named Devon C. Williams. He was pretty good. Had a few different interesting guitars he played too, this funky custom 3 string Cigar Box Guitar and fancy Resonator Guitar
Also, new Dodie Track, which is pretty good. Also, yes, I’m fine. Everything is fine. This is fine. 🔥🔥🐶🔥🔥
Movies and TV
My movie watching hasn’t been a lot lately either, but the TV watching has been up. The main limitation on TV is that I almost only watch TV with my wife, and she has been working later at the shop, which cuts intot hat time a bit. I’m not complaining, I just, prefer to do other things when I have the option.
We did watch through Andor, which was very good, and then of course followed up with Rogue One, which was still great, but also felt a little rushed after the slow build of Andor. The second season also felt a little weird because of the odd “3 episode” arcs it was doing. Basically, every 3 episodes, it made a 1 year jump in time. The first season, meanwhile, was kind of one big chunk. Without going into too much spoiler detail, I know they can’t really continue the Andor series, but I kind of wish they would do more around all of the supporting cast. They could do a show following the Rebellion after the Battle of Yavin and before Hoth maybe. Or maybe there is a book or a comic that covers some of that. I don’t know.
Watching Andor kind of made me want to actually watch Rebels though.
We’ve also been watching Law & Order: Organized Crime. It’s a spin off of SVU, following Stabler after his return to New York. In the grand Scheme of things, I’m a big fan of the original Law & Order where they would just wander around interviewing people then have a trial. I liked Criminal Intent, because Gorn is such an interesting character. My wife loves SVU, I’m kind of luke-warm on it, though it’s certainly the most popular show of the line up. The endless stream of rape victims gets a little old after a while.
Organized Crime leans a lot more into over arching plot lines, as many modern shows do, which is part of why I find it appealing. Though I’m not really loving the current arc where we are, with Dennis Leary playing a crooked cop and Stabler working with him to, I’m not sure what, find out whats going on I guess? The initial arc in Season 1 was good, the arc with Stabler undercover as the arsonist was good, this one feels off. I think we’re about to wrap it up though. Hopefully the later plot lines are better.
