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What I've Seen Recently: Mid July - Late October, 2023
hello again.
video games
- i didn't do another playthrough of it myself, but a youtuber i like uploaded a vod of off a month ago and i've been enjoying revisiting it. it helps that the youtuber is going through it completely blind so i get to enjoy it through fresh eyes, but there's still a lot of it that holds up even though it's 15 years old at this point (typing that makes me die inside like PLEASE don't tell me this game came out when i was 15...). this time around i noticed the saturated colors of the environment in comparison to the bright, dare i say "purified" sprites of the player characters. the Contrast... the Flavor... you guys understand what i'm putting down don't you.
btw this is a safe space so i can shamelessly admit i shipped batter/the elsens and uh... yeah still. apparently i never change. i just think the really high strung, unable to vibe dude crushing on alienmonstercreature who doesn't give a fuck about anything at all except his mission is tasty. like, because they're so high strung anxiety balls they see the batter's narrowminded, singular focus on purifying as a good thing because he has goals and drive and they're not really bout that life... an elsen can fix him. no one understands what the fuck i'm talking about that's fine.
- the off stuff kinda inspired me to go on a little RPGmaker kick... actually it's quite a big RPGmaker kick, haha, i have a LOT of games lined up to play. anyway i played pedestal and i liked it, sort of? (VGperson link) i'm surprised at how like impressively negative my opinion of aoi was haha. she's a very interesting protagonist, especially from a japanese game... but i didn't like her, and i LIKE that i didn't like her? i have absolutely no idea if i'm making sense lmfao. i thought her digging and digging and digging into a dead person she literally didn't even know was extremely distasteful and the blunt way she asked questions was just cringe inducing, like why on earth would you corner a dead person's sister in public and ask them about their sister's personal relationships... by the end of the game i really just wanted her to sit down and be like "you're living in a fantasy and if akari wasn't a yandere you would be totally fucked". but i still kinda liked that she wasn't very generic, she had a very defined personality, even if it was one i found personally to be grating.
the mechanics of the game were totally fine. i liked the puzzle mechanics (you'd get "puzzle pieces" you piece together to determine the proper answer"), they were cute. i DIDN'T like that the skip button and the "end investigation" button were the exact same. i fucked up so many times hitting the shift key accidentally when i meant to hit z/space (which advances the text) and there's no like fast talking or confirmation prompt, just a hard black screen skip to the next scene. and it's so sensitive too! in order to end investigation, you have to press and hold but even a gentle tap would skip the scene. so incredibly frustrating to play the same stuff over and over because one of my sausage fingers accidentally brushed shift. and it would've been such an easy fix if you made it press and hold shift to skip too or just added one extra "Are you sure?" prompt ugh SO frustrating
some spoiler talk here. the first paragraph is about the first half of the game, the second is about the second. at first i thought shiori was killed by a crony/hanger on, but as soon as sumikazu was introduced i was like "oh it's a lavender marriage huh." LMAO and my feelings on the matter just became more solidified when sumikazu told aoi and akane to stop investigating her and that he respected her, even if he didn't have romantic feelings for her. however i thought that it was a nice twist that he was asexual as opposed to being straight gay. if you play enough of these games you kinda get a feel for those kinda twists haha. i was also pleased with the resolution of her death and that it WAS an accident, not something done out of malice or discontent with her situation. shit like that happens, and sometimes the truth of the matter is everyone can do everything as respectfully as they can (i don't think that midori, miyuki, etc were homophobic, personally) and still have a situation go tits up. (fwiw for everyone reading this who might get excited, it's never textually confirmed shiori is a lesbian, but i'm very firmly convinced she is becuase her secret was "something that would trouble sakura, something she couldn't tell midori, and something sumikazu related to".
i liked the stuff with akari too. she is truly amoral, it's fascinating. i really really liked her and aoi's relationship, especially at the very end when she was still trying to protect aoi from the consequences of her own actions (that is being a pawn in someone else's game the entire time). like i don't know if akari LIKED aoi but she certainly loved her in her own bizarro way. the way the starting line was recontextualized at the end of the game was very tasty... aoi is such a massive hypocrite about it though like girl you'll only draw the line in the sand if she straight up decides to push someone to suicide? just makes me like-dislike her more. those two fucking deserve each other.
content warnings: if you play it yourself, big warning for animal death/murder (cats) and i also found the description of degenerative diseases like dementia a little bit sussy. but it was still fun, i enjoyed it!
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mobile games
- i'm mostly caught up on genshin impact's main story now! gotta say i loved the general beats of sumeru. i think the overall theme of knowledge, and the pursuit of knowledge is nothing without inspiration, wonder, and dreams behind it was very sweet and dare i say the w word... i especially ended up liking nahida. yeah that line about "flush your anxiety dookie away~" is awful but i think her struggle with being seen as a valid archon combined with her blunt naivete towards human emotions is really interesting as a combination, she definitely comes off as the most human of the archons so far. well raiden is deadass not trying to be a human anymore and zhongli is just 100% gap moe not from concentrate but you guys know what i mean!!
i did the 2nd interlude too. uhh that was fucking boring lmfao. i'm glad i wasn't really active when that content dropped because i would have hated going through three bland ass domains in a drip feed of "story" if you can call it that (is2g 70% of the text was "WHERE ARE WE"...) as opposed to just barreling through it. it definitely gave me a new appreciation for yanfei though. it was so fucking funny how everyone is shown dramatic/traumatic events that are meant to scare them and yanfei's is just "two randos arguing" and she's like "uhh yeah i hate it when people fight in front of me it's cringe" LMFAO... queen so fucking true. i also did like borascius and yelan's ancestor yaoi though that was good. and there was so much good xiaolumine content!!! taking care of him... calling out to him and him actually fcoming (!!)... lumine's "supporting each other is how people survive" line ESPECIALLY... uwahhhh so good...
couple of days after i wrote that i ALSO did chapter 3 part 6? the 3rd interlude? the 2.5nd interlude? the caribert one. horse saying man about that one. :( that's all i gotta say. well that and hope this means yandere kaeya in the future but y'all already knew that.
and a few more weeks after that i finished the jeht and jebrael questline... kinda mixed feelings about it tbh. i kinda hate it when genshin does stuff like this, it always feels kinda... bad to walk into a relatively isolated area and be like "everything is shit here" (i also disliked the tsurumi island stuff for the record and had the same take about it) and tonally imo it was all over the place. i did like that they did a really long questline drawn out through multiple quests though as opposed to aranara dumping it all in one place. don't get me wrong i loved aranyaka but it really needed to be split into multiple chapters. and jeht was a really well developed character imagine that so i really liked her. not much to say about the other overall plot beats though.
i explored a little bit of fontaine since it just dropped, but i'm going to hold off on it until the archon quest is closer to being finished like i normally do haha. i have plenty of stuff to do anyway, a lotta story quests mostly, and i want to make my characters not ENTIRELY shit, so i can get away with doing my usual thing.
- arknights' new event at the time of writing, where vernal winds will never blow, is really good!!!!!! i actually really like the sui siblings events, so this is no surprise. who is real is probably one of my favorite events in all of arknights and invitation to wine has a really strong beginning (but a kinda meh ending). i particularly liked the use of split screening and moving the text around to indicate emphasis and what the speaker cares about. it was a very cool effect; simple, but not something i've seen before in a gacha game like it.
seemed like there were a few more cgs this time than usual, although it's been steadily increasing since break the ice. i liked the cg of jieyun holding the sword, and of lin yuisha and the rat king defending the city the best. they looked so cool and were so meaningfully impactful... i really liked the overarching theme of this event too, it reflected who is real and even a bit of invitation to wine ie remaining in the past when things are dead and gone is never healthy. you can't get back the things you valued (or even hated), they aren't coming back, it's better to move forward. chongyue's speech where he explicitly defies ya and says "i cannot give you what you want, i don't have it, i'm not "sui" and i never will be" is just so good. like even a dragon can move on healthily and learn to love and embrace humanity... the older i get the more of a sucker i am for this kinda thing.
it wasn't all sunshine though, du yaoye really pissed me off. she basically got her uncle/OTHER father figure wtf is with this girl killed off for no reason, just by chewing him out at the worst possible moment?you couldn't have waited until AFTER the ancient cosmic dragon evil left before reading him the riot act? like yeah i get that he was basically trying to cause a coup because "wah i need to see if tey really NEED me" but brother. i didn't have the objective annoyance in invitation to wine i don't think, but yeah not my favorite by far. also i think it's funny that ling does so much in this event when in invitation to wine she's like "bro i'm just sitting here". i did end up liking her more because of it though. also deadass who the fuck is firewhistle? why is she the 5*? she didn't show up in the story at all! it should've been qiubai instead of making her another 6* to the bloated roster... arknights really doesn't know how to handle it's fucking npcs sometimes tbh.
these get longer and longer every time but i hope you enjoy them. see you next time.
video games
- i didn't do another playthrough of it myself, but a youtuber i like uploaded a vod of off a month ago and i've been enjoying revisiting it. it helps that the youtuber is going through it completely blind so i get to enjoy it through fresh eyes, but there's still a lot of it that holds up even though it's 15 years old at this point (typing that makes me die inside like PLEASE don't tell me this game came out when i was 15...). this time around i noticed the saturated colors of the environment in comparison to the bright, dare i say "purified" sprites of the player characters. the Contrast... the Flavor... you guys understand what i'm putting down don't you.
btw this is a safe space so i can shamelessly admit i shipped batter/the elsens and uh... yeah still. apparently i never change. i just think the really high strung, unable to vibe dude crushing on alienmonstercreature who doesn't give a fuck about anything at all except his mission is tasty. like, because they're so high strung anxiety balls they see the batter's narrowminded, singular focus on purifying as a good thing because he has goals and drive and they're not really bout that life... an elsen can fix him. no one understands what the fuck i'm talking about that's fine.
- the off stuff kinda inspired me to go on a little RPGmaker kick... actually it's quite a big RPGmaker kick, haha, i have a LOT of games lined up to play. anyway i played pedestal and i liked it, sort of? (VGperson link) i'm surprised at how like impressively negative my opinion of aoi was haha. she's a very interesting protagonist, especially from a japanese game... but i didn't like her, and i LIKE that i didn't like her? i have absolutely no idea if i'm making sense lmfao. i thought her digging and digging and digging into a dead person she literally didn't even know was extremely distasteful and the blunt way she asked questions was just cringe inducing, like why on earth would you corner a dead person's sister in public and ask them about their sister's personal relationships... by the end of the game i really just wanted her to sit down and be like "you're living in a fantasy and if akari wasn't a yandere you would be totally fucked". but i still kinda liked that she wasn't very generic, she had a very defined personality, even if it was one i found personally to be grating.
the mechanics of the game were totally fine. i liked the puzzle mechanics (you'd get "puzzle pieces" you piece together to determine the proper answer"), they were cute. i DIDN'T like that the skip button and the "end investigation" button were the exact same. i fucked up so many times hitting the shift key accidentally when i meant to hit z/space (which advances the text) and there's no like fast talking or confirmation prompt, just a hard black screen skip to the next scene. and it's so sensitive too! in order to end investigation, you have to press and hold but even a gentle tap would skip the scene. so incredibly frustrating to play the same stuff over and over because one of my sausage fingers accidentally brushed shift. and it would've been such an easy fix if you made it press and hold shift to skip too or just added one extra "Are you sure?" prompt ugh SO frustrating
some spoiler talk here. the first paragraph is about the first half of the game, the second is about the second. at first i thought shiori was killed by a crony/hanger on, but as soon as sumikazu was introduced i was like "oh it's a lavender marriage huh." LMAO and my feelings on the matter just became more solidified when sumikazu told aoi and akane to stop investigating her and that he respected her, even if he didn't have romantic feelings for her. however i thought that it was a nice twist that he was asexual as opposed to being straight gay. if you play enough of these games you kinda get a feel for those kinda twists haha. i was also pleased with the resolution of her death and that it WAS an accident, not something done out of malice or discontent with her situation. shit like that happens, and sometimes the truth of the matter is everyone can do everything as respectfully as they can (i don't think that midori, miyuki, etc were homophobic, personally) and still have a situation go tits up. (fwiw for everyone reading this who might get excited, it's never textually confirmed shiori is a lesbian, but i'm very firmly convinced she is becuase her secret was "something that would trouble sakura, something she couldn't tell midori, and something sumikazu related to".
i liked the stuff with akari too. she is truly amoral, it's fascinating. i really really liked her and aoi's relationship, especially at the very end when she was still trying to protect aoi from the consequences of her own actions (that is being a pawn in someone else's game the entire time). like i don't know if akari LIKED aoi but she certainly loved her in her own bizarro way. the way the starting line was recontextualized at the end of the game was very tasty... aoi is such a massive hypocrite about it though like girl you'll only draw the line in the sand if she straight up decides to push someone to suicide? just makes me like-dislike her more. those two fucking deserve each other.
content warnings: if you play it yourself, big warning for animal death/murder (cats) and i also found the description of degenerative diseases like dementia a little bit sussy. but it was still fun, i enjoyed it!
--
mobile games
- i'm mostly caught up on genshin impact's main story now! gotta say i loved the general beats of sumeru. i think the overall theme of knowledge, and the pursuit of knowledge is nothing without inspiration, wonder, and dreams behind it was very sweet and dare i say the w word... i especially ended up liking nahida. yeah that line about "flush your anxiety dookie away~" is awful but i think her struggle with being seen as a valid archon combined with her blunt naivete towards human emotions is really interesting as a combination, she definitely comes off as the most human of the archons so far. well raiden is deadass not trying to be a human anymore and zhongli is just 100% gap moe not from concentrate but you guys know what i mean!!
i did the 2nd interlude too. uhh that was fucking boring lmfao. i'm glad i wasn't really active when that content dropped because i would have hated going through three bland ass domains in a drip feed of "story" if you can call it that (is2g 70% of the text was "WHERE ARE WE"...) as opposed to just barreling through it. it definitely gave me a new appreciation for yanfei though. it was so fucking funny how everyone is shown dramatic/traumatic events that are meant to scare them and yanfei's is just "two randos arguing" and she's like "uhh yeah i hate it when people fight in front of me it's cringe" LMFAO... queen so fucking true. i also did like borascius and yelan's ancestor yaoi though that was good. and there was so much good xiaolumine content!!! taking care of him... calling out to him and him actually fcoming (!!)... lumine's "supporting each other is how people survive" line ESPECIALLY... uwahhhh so good...
couple of days after i wrote that i ALSO did chapter 3 part 6? the 3rd interlude? the 2.5nd interlude? the caribert one. horse saying man about that one. :( that's all i gotta say. well that and hope this means yandere kaeya in the future but y'all already knew that.
and a few more weeks after that i finished the jeht and jebrael questline... kinda mixed feelings about it tbh. i kinda hate it when genshin does stuff like this, it always feels kinda... bad to walk into a relatively isolated area and be like "everything is shit here" (i also disliked the tsurumi island stuff for the record and had the same take about it) and tonally imo it was all over the place. i did like that they did a really long questline drawn out through multiple quests though as opposed to aranara dumping it all in one place. don't get me wrong i loved aranyaka but it really needed to be split into multiple chapters. and jeht was a really well developed character imagine that so i really liked her. not much to say about the other overall plot beats though.
i explored a little bit of fontaine since it just dropped, but i'm going to hold off on it until the archon quest is closer to being finished like i normally do haha. i have plenty of stuff to do anyway, a lotta story quests mostly, and i want to make my characters not ENTIRELY shit, so i can get away with doing my usual thing.
- arknights' new event at the time of writing, where vernal winds will never blow, is really good!!!!!! i actually really like the sui siblings events, so this is no surprise. who is real is probably one of my favorite events in all of arknights and invitation to wine has a really strong beginning (but a kinda meh ending). i particularly liked the use of split screening and moving the text around to indicate emphasis and what the speaker cares about. it was a very cool effect; simple, but not something i've seen before in a gacha game like it.
seemed like there were a few more cgs this time than usual, although it's been steadily increasing since break the ice. i liked the cg of jieyun holding the sword, and of lin yuisha and the rat king defending the city the best. they looked so cool and were so meaningfully impactful... i really liked the overarching theme of this event too, it reflected who is real and even a bit of invitation to wine ie remaining in the past when things are dead and gone is never healthy. you can't get back the things you valued (or even hated), they aren't coming back, it's better to move forward. chongyue's speech where he explicitly defies ya and says "i cannot give you what you want, i don't have it, i'm not "sui" and i never will be" is just so good. like even a dragon can move on healthily and learn to love and embrace humanity... the older i get the more of a sucker i am for this kinda thing.
it wasn't all sunshine though, du yaoye really pissed me off. she basically got her uncle/OTHER father figure wtf is with this girl killed off for no reason, just by chewing him out at the worst possible moment?you couldn't have waited until AFTER the ancient cosmic dragon evil left before reading him the riot act? like yeah i get that he was basically trying to cause a coup because "wah i need to see if tey really NEED me" but brother. i didn't have the objective annoyance in invitation to wine i don't think, but yeah not my favorite by far. also i think it's funny that ling does so much in this event when in invitation to wine she's like "bro i'm just sitting here". i did end up liking her more because of it though. also deadass who the fuck is firewhistle? why is she the 5*? she didn't show up in the story at all! it should've been qiubai instead of making her another 6* to the bloated roster... arknights really doesn't know how to handle it's fucking npcs sometimes tbh.
these get longer and longer every time but i hope you enjoy them. see you next time.