This has been a weird week, I don’t quite know why, but I think it has something to do with the healing work in my feet. They are almost good now, it’s not hurting anymore, and I walk without a limp again, still a bit sore, but way better than it was. I even braved myself out on a bit of a walk this saturday, nothing too far or too fast, just a couple of hours of walking and feeling nature around me again, which was really really nice. It’s been almost two weeks since the last time, and I’ve really missed that.

Books

I’m still working on Green Mars and it’s still kind of a hard nut, at least now I think stuff has been mostly set into motion, and things will keep up at least a bit of momentum, but it’s kind of a hard one to trudge through, something about the writing makes it hard to read, it’s kind of dry, and it doesn’t really feel like emotions are well written, which is something that I think is holding me back. There are also a lot of sciency words where they aren’t really needed, and while I understand them mostly without looking them up, it’s some times stretching my context awareness more than I feel neccessary.

I’m a bit over half way through though, and while I gripe about it quite a lot I do feel compelled enough to see it through, it’s not great in the moment to moment, but some times it has some fun stuff. I think it will be a bit before I start on the last one in the series though, I really need a break before I go on with this kind of writing.

Games

It’s been a weird week for games this week, I’ve been having fun with discussions about games, but not really enjoying games themselves much, apart from really simple games. I’ve kind of lost my steam with things that I’m playing, and probably it’s another mood shift coming on, and it’s time to figure out what I feel like playing again.

I played quite a bit of apotris which is a really cool version of tetris that also has a Game boy Advance rom, it’s really nice for playing a more modern feeling tetris on my emulation handheld. In addition to that I was also playing quite a bit of tetris 3 on one of the days, it’s a Super Nintendo game that is basically just tetris, it has other modes, but I’m not that much of a fan of that, but the classic tetris mode is pretty nice.

After some progress in Zelda oracle of Ages it kind of halted there as well, and I got stuck again, it seems like the thing that usually gets me stuck are longer sequences of fights, and the multi room puzzles, it’s hard to see where I will have to do something that effects multiple rooms, and since some of them reset, and others don’t I kind of find it hard to see where I can do something that persists, where I make some progress, and what will be reset. I defeated the midboss, and have mapped out most of the rest of the dungeon, and now basically am at a place where I’m trying to get the boss key to get there. I probably will continue on, but as always, there might be a bit of a break, which I’ve said every other time as well, but then still come back to it. We’ll see, I still enjoy the game quite a bit in the places where I’m not stuck though, it’s really amazing how much capcom managed to get of the really restricted gameboy color hardware.

I almost didn’t touch Core keeper, I’ve gotten some tin stuff, but still feel kind of weak when running around, and where there is tin there are also enemies that I struggle with, I’ve found that I’m mostly kiting them with ranged stuff, and while that mostly works, when there are more enemies it gets kind of difficult to not be overwhelmed and killed, this is another one that will probably go onto the back burner for a bit.

My mood is kind of leaning towards metroidvanias, I kind of want to play them and started Afterimage again, but the exploration kind of makes me feel frustrated, and I don’t really know why, it’s a fun game though, so maybe it was just my mood over the weekend, I don’t know.

I spent some times playing some bullet heavens that I had on my computer as well, but it kind of feels like I’m at a grind wall by all of them, and while I enjoy them I couldn’t really bring myself to really feeling like they are fun, even though there is something nice about the mindless going at it, it’s just not where my mood is at.

Media

I’m almost through the whole backlog of Videogame Podtimism now, just two episodes left and I’m up to date with all of the ~287 episodes that they have released to date, it’s been a lot of fun, and really enjoyable, I enjoy the friendship and shenanigans of Chase and David, and the positive look on games is something that is nice, it’s something that keeps the “worst garbage” podcasts in a nice place for me, they tend to be having good vibe, and focus on the good parts of even mediocre things which is fun, it also helps in keeping a more positive outlook myself, I enjoy that.

Looking for something to replace the backlog listening to VGP when I’m through it all I found Press Start which marks itself as a “Gen-Z Video games podcast”, I’m not quite up on this generation thing that the Americans tends to go on about, but in effect it’s a videogame podcast from people who are a bit younger than me, and it’s interesting to see how their views differ from mine, and what they enjoy. I’m not completely sure about them yet, but I have put them into my rotation for now, and it might be that they will become another podcast to listen to.

All in all it’s been kind of a weird week, where I’ve been mostly enjoyed it moment to moment, and then at the same time kind of felt tired of it, I don’t know, but I’m moving foreward, still waiting for it to get a bit warmer, it’s still really quite cold, and I’m wanting to go out without a jacket again, it won’t be long before I will be wishing I was back to this temeperature thoug, so I’ll just have to enjoy it now that I have it.