This has been a wet week, lots of rain, and it’s been pretty nice, as long as I’m mostly working it doesn’t really matter that much to me, and now that it’s not that cold anymore it doesn’t really become a problem, other than wet feet of course, but that’s just how it is.

Books

Finished out To Err is Azrin and it was a fun story, it was what it needed to be, enjoyable and just some fun stories with established characters, and some times that just is nice. I also finished the short story that was in the collection of the first four of the black ocean series, and it was fun too, bringing in a bit of the pre story of a couple of the characters.

I then started and finished Shadows of stardust by Leigh Miller and really enjoyed it, it felt kind of nice reading a book about a gameshow that isn’t just another rethread of battle royale, sure I read and enjoyed that book, but it was a book released in 1999 so we don’t need another rethread without bringing at least something new in. This one is a dating show with the characters that are coming together being kind of enemies as a start and slowly getting to working together, and though everything felt a bit contrived it was a fun well written story that I enjoyed reading.

At the end of the week then I’ve also started reading Absolute Zero By Nicola Claire, I quite enjoyed the first series that I read of hers, the sector fleet, and this one is a new one that is continuing on a couple of generations later, I’ve only read the beginning so far, but this one feels way less like romance and more like just space opera action, we’ll have to see how it does continuing on, so far I’m not quite sure about it.

Games

I’m still plugging my way through Bravely Default I have gotten to chapter 3 now, and there has been some Epic battles, and I’m not even that far in I think, I’m unsure, but it doesn’t really feel like I’m that far, I finally went in and beat one of the first enemies that I met on the map that has been a thorn in my side since I started out, it is kind of a funny joke though placing a character with 50 000 health right near the starter village, that a full level 40 team even struggled a bit with bringing down. I think I’m still kind of being overlevelled, since I’ve heard that many people struggle a lot with the game, and well, the bosses have been a challenge for me, but not as bad as people have been claiming. Still plugging on in this thing, and hope that I won’t lose steam as there are more beautiful places and fun interactions to see.

I also continued on a bit with Shapez 2 which is a fun factory game that feels more like programming than many of the ones that I’ve seen, it’s fun how you create your own building blocks that you use on the other level, some times having to tweak them a bit to fit into a new situation, and combining pieces that you’ve built to create something that can deal with the new situation, it’s kind of fun creating something flexible that you can adapt to new challenges, even though some times it gets a bit too close to work.

So the whole Eurovision song contest was on again this weekend, but since I’m boycotting this year I spent some time playing some rhythm games.

First out was Yunyun Syndrome Which is kind of a weird story based rhythm game, It’s a really weird story about a Hikkokimori which is basically being Q on social media while having a psycotic break having imagined conversations with an imaginary version of an idol, the story is kind of meh, but I was hoping that the game would be fun, but it just felt off for me, even when doing a full combo of a song and having runs of perfect, the sounds and timing always felt off, so it felt like I was doing horribly to me but ending up with S ranks on the songs, and the feel is something that has to be there in a rhythm game or else you’re basically not getting into that nice flow stage, but just being low key annoyed the whole time.

So I went back to Rift of the Necrodancer Which is an awesome game, it has some great tracks, and really fun charts that really can be a challenge, even after having met the same enemies 100s of times it can be hard to intuit how they interact in the new setting they are in, and it feels so nice when you figure it out, or intuit it with the rhythm and you get awarded with both figuring out the pattern and how it clicked in with the music. I really enjoy this game, and it’s starting to but up to taiko no tatsujin in being one of my favourite rhythm games of late.

Media

I’m still kind of feeling the hole of Knowledge fight in my podcast rotation, but it’s how it is, and it’s better that it stopped when they were up there than petering out, I’ve been trying out some new podcasts, without having found any great stand outs yet, and listening to some more backlog episodes of Into the aether so far I haven’t been enjoying it as much as I enjoyed the podtimism retro episodes, it feels like the start was a bit more rocky with this one, but I hope we’re getting out of the time where they were focusing more time on bigger games and into the rhythm that they now have, which I’m enjoying more.