terabient

Played some more Destiny today. I only have a vague idea of how everything works, but it hasn't been too hard to grasp the basics of character progression and how to advance the game. When Destiny was first released, people described it as Phantasy Star Online with Halo mechanics, a comparison that my sister agreed with and that seems apt from what I've played so far. There's the 3 races/3 classes setup, the Guardians are functionally the same as the Hunter's Guild in PSO, The Last City is Pioneer 2 and plot of both games is basically 'discover what destroyed the civilization here, uh oh wait looks like our activity has awakened something DARK and TERRIBLE.' Destiny's Hive even has the same 'sentient infection' vibe that PSO's Dark Force had. The way the social hubs and actual gameplay areas work seem identical to the way PSO2 is set up as well...I wonder if Destiny will add in 'My Room' personal spaces and player shops in the future? Haha, I wouldn't mind if they did.

The gameplay has been pretty enjoyable so far. Controlling your character is intuitive and tight--going from walk -> run -> jump -> double jump -> run -> slide is remarkably fluid and natural, and it's easy to traverse the landscape and position yourself in firefights. Enemies haven't been challenging but it's not like the beginning of the game is supposed to be tough anyway; I'm just glad the enemy AI isn't as limited as Borderlands, where it became painfully easy to predict what each enemy type would do because they had like...2 behaviors total. The weaponry, is already quite varied and easy to use with quality feedback--I can feel the difference between a successful shotgun blast and when I've missed the mark, not just discern it from the damage numbers that pop up on screen. I suppose its a bit strange to praise the basics of game mechanics like this, but it's something that Destiny does really well; it's hard to describe how comfortable it feels to play.

The environments (all two that I've seen) are gorgeous. The skies are particularly beautiful. I've spent a fair amount of time just watching the day/night progress so I can enjoy the different lighting effects and scenery.

As far as things that annoy me, WELL. As one might think from a game titled 'Destiny' the story and worldbuilding is not exactly brimming with originality. From what I've experienced in game: in the distant past, humanity traveled through space and inadvertently awoke some awful thing that tried to destroy everything; it didn't succeed but it wasn't exactly defeated, either, and now 'The Guardians' are protecting what's left of humanity/keeping the evil at bay. The plot has Guardians utilizing light energy for weaponry so when NPCs talking about 'driving back the darkness with your light!' they are talking metaphorically and literally which makes me laugh and laugh and laugh with how over the top it is. I also had to suffer through a cutscene in which an NPC who was clearly in the know about all of Destiny's backstory blathered on about how he could tell me all about the history everyone keeps alluding to vaguely...but then he didn't because of course those times are coming again so I will get to experience them first hand! I mean, why even bother including a 'story' cutscene like that, Bungie. It is a literal waste of time.

The other thing is that while the world is beautiful you mostly just look at it. It's a problem that plagues a lot of open-world games as of late; the game has meticulously rendered and detailed environments but you don't interact with them in any meaningful way. There are quests which send you here and there across the landscape, but you don't explore as much as you follow markers on your radar until you see a glowy thing and press a button to get a checkmark next to some meaningless task. It's pretty telling that about 5 hours into this game, I was being 'led' to new areas but instead of gawking at them my eyes were focused on the radar in the corner so I could finish a side quest. Oh well.

ahAHAHAHA i was making such a big deal over whether or not to get a next-gen console (well, I guess current gen by now...) last night, and then today...my parents went out Black Friday shopping, and around 10am my mom called me and said: "JANE. THERE IS AN XBOX THING HERE IT'S $300 AND HAS [asks salesperson a question]...GEARS OF WAR? DO YOU HAVE THIS XBOX. DO YOU WANT IT IF YOU DON'T???"

I waffled for a minute but then said, I did want this Xbox. So...now I have an Xbox. Which I've yet to play, because I've spent literal hours waiting for Destiny to download/install updates (SEVENTEEN POINT THREE GIGABYTES OF UPDATES, FFS BUNGEE). It literally has just finished installing so I am going to check it out for like, ten minutes before I go to bed for my 11 hour shift tomorrow.

Some other things I have been excited about:

★ I have two days off a week instead of one going into December. HOORAY \o/

★ My Persona OTP is MAKING A SNOWMAN even though one of them is pretty dead:



It's just (just?! screams my not-very-inner fangirl) an advertisement for a Persona event at a ski resort (where you can rent/buy Izanagi snowboards and Thanatos skis, from what I've gathered from Twitter) so, you know, promo image, but look, sometimes you get excited over fictional characters hanging out in art.

Today's post is once again about (mostly) men crying about something that doesn't matter: Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 isn't going to be released in Western territories, apparently because the criticism of the game's overt sexism (which, lbr, is what Dead or Alive is most known for) is scary and they don't want to deal with it. I think the underlying concern for Koei-Tecmo is that DOAX3 is going to sell abysmally no matter what they do (DOA5 has only sold 1.5 million copies worldwide over 4 multiplatform releases, and the DOAX games have always sold significantly worse than the main series) but they don't want to admit it, so it's easier to blame a vague, non-specific target.

Anyway, OF COURSE if you are in certain Gamer-Gatey circles this is UNEQUIVOCAL CENSORSHIP and a sign of how 'the SJWs' and their shadowy agenda of criticizing things will lead us to a world without fun. This USGamer article has a pretty excellent run-down of why KT's position seems to make no sense in light of DOA's long history of being called sexist and super embarrassing ever since it was released.

As for the cries of 'censorship': GG, you need a refresher course on what words mean and possibly on how the free market works! Censorship occurs when a group in a position of power edits or bans something from being distributed due to content it deems objectionable. People who criticize something as sexist (or as objectionable for any other reason) and thus refuse to purchase or support that thing are not censoring it; they're simply exercising their right to free speech and action.

Things get a little dicey when it comes to companies not releasing or altering product due to consumer backlash, real or perceived. Sometimes a company chooses to self-censorship because, after encountering criticism, they decide they don't want to be a company that supports whatever objectionable behavior they're accused of. More often, it's a financially-driven decision: the company determines that the negative attention and/or loss of sales from the people who criticize them is not worth the support from those who don't care or want the objectionable content. So in KT's case, they either

1. Don't want to be perceived by Western audiences as a company that releases softcore porn video games, or at least not as a company that releases softcore porn video games that have no other entertainment value;
2. Have no faith in the product in the first place and are trying to minimize costs and consolidate (pad, really...) sales numbers in a few regions, which would look much better on paper than abysmal numbers in many regions. :P

Given the state of DOA5: Last Round and their releases from the past few years, Option 1 seems unlikely. Option 2 is VERY possible, for a variety of reasons that...well, I planned to get into them in this post, but I have to work early tomorrow so I'll have to save that portion for later.

Anyway, regardless of what the reasons are for not releasing DOAX3 in the west, I think it's important to focus on what we, as an audience are missing: a shitty mini-game collection and polygon boobs bouncing in hilarious ways for the low, low price point of $90. Truly, a great work of art has been denied us.

It was my sister's birthday today, and she stopped over at the house before I left for work this morning. She brought her dog Byson, who is a a Cane Corso breed and kind of takes over any house he is in through sheer size and enthusiasm. He's well-behaved and so is Momo, but she gets rather upset when people coo over Byson instead of her. She spent the morning yipping and wriggling her way in between Byson and whoever was petting him, then hopping on the person's lap to...show Byson who the boss was, I suppose.

Sister liked the pajama set, but tonight when we went out for dinner she said the cloth eyemask that came with it had shrunk to the point of uselessness when she washed it. I guess we should have expected it, given that the eyemask looked like scrap fabrics stitched together.

On the subject of dinner, it was kind of disappointing. Sister wanted sushi, so we went to the closest sushi-serving restaurant, a Hibachi grill/modern 'Asian fusion' place that appears to be staffed primarily by white people. This was not especially weird since we happen to live in a place where 98% of the population is white (there are more confirmed opioid addicts than people of color here) but given that this restaurant advertised its authentic Japanese cuisine it was a bit odd. But it was also ~~modern~~ and ~~fusion~~ and ~~inspired~~ so we figured the food would be really good and unique, or...a trainwreck. In the end, it was neither of these things, although it was decidedly leaning towards 'trainwreck' and not unique. The beef negimaki was waaaaay overcooked, but the peanut sauce chicken wings were good; the sushi rolls looked like they had waaaaaaaaay too much going on but the one we ended up ordering turned out to be pretty nice, even though I couldn't tell you what was in it besides tuna, avocado, and tempura flakes. I only remember there were like, 3 different sauces and at least two other fish, and cucumber might have been in there??? Anyway, like I said, a lot going on. But it tasted alright. The entrees were literally forgettable, as in, my server packed up whatever I ordered and I didn't remember to take it with me and didn't realize it until I was halfway home. I didn't go back to pick it up; IIRC it was ginger orange duck? The duck was overcooked just like the negimaki, and the orange sauce was okay but there was way too much of it.

The pumpkin pie cocktail was pretty good though. I wasn't aware that pumpkin flavored vodka was a thing yet, but it is. Next year, I expect everything edible in America will be pumpkin infused from September to December.

and that's how the day went.

I spent the last two hours writing an entry on my ~~feels~~ about Cave's DoDonPachi series. I have finished about...one quarter of it. I have to get up for work by 7, so I should go to bed in fifteen minutes.

what I'm saying is: for tonight, I have to take a break. ^_^;; man, i haven't used this super-weeaboo smiley in ages look everyone it's the internet in the early 2000s This is essentially a placeholder so that the little DW calendar has all the days for November filled in.

SORRY, OBLIGATIONS. I can only meet you in a half-assed manner.

♥

I've been playing Mushihimesama for about an hour each evening. So far, I've cleared Novice Original and Novice Maniac without using a continue, gotten up to stage 5 in Novice Ultra before having to continue, and I credit fed my way through Arrange mode from Stage 4 onwards. I'm mostly pleased with my progress; it took me roughly a year to clear Deathsmiles--the first bullet hell I sunk significant time into--without continuing. Granted, I've only done so on the easiest difficulties so far, but progress is progress.

Anyway, rather than tackling Ultra or Arrange mode, I decided to learn how the scoring system works in Maniac mode and see if I could beat my high score--on the Steam leader boards, I'm...57, I think? Since that was from my first one-credit clear, I figured with some practice I would be able to beat that score quickly. The reality: I haven't come close to beating my original score. :( Part of me wants to keep practicing until I put together a really good run in Mushihimesama; part of me wants to change things up and work on some other Cave-developed shooter. Or maybe any shooter that isn't Mushihimesama. Or maybe...not play a shooter at all for a few days. Haha, this might be why my bullet hell skills are still solidly average after fairly frequent playing since 2010.

I didn't intend for NaBloPoMo to turn into 'exhaustive updates on personal progress in bullet hell games' month, but hey, here we are! I suppose I find the relative straightforward quality of the games to be intriguing; every game boils down to two goals: "shoot baddies,dodge bullets" and "get the highest score" --and yet, even within the strict confines of the design there is a remarkable amount of creativity and diversity within the genre.

...I really should start writing these entries sooner, before I'm ready to collapse into bed. There are a lot of things I've been mulling about wrt bullet hell game design, but right now I'm too tired to articulate them clearly. I imagine it can't be very intersting to read. Guess I'll try again tomorrow.

Yesterday, I got a notification from my office about new shifts opening up for those still looking for work. Thing is, they're for a client and a shift that I'm currently working, so...basically, they're looking to replace me. That's happened before, and the case managers have always explained why a change was requested. But they didn't this time, and I'm also still scheduled with this client for the foreseeable future, so I don't know what's happening. Naturally this has been eating at me since I received the email. In absence of any direct information, I suspect there are two possible explanations for this oddity:

-I am mistaken. When the office sends out these work notifications, they're absent of most personal information; all that's given is the shift time, town/city, whether the client lives with family or not, and a general overview of the type of assistance required. (e.g., safety supervision, help with ADLs, PT assistance, transportation) So it's possible the email wasn't about my current client, just one in the same town with the same needs and the same living situation with my exact shift times. Possible, but I find it...rather unlikely.

-The family has requested a change, but my office can't find anyone suitable. This seems obvious, but again...it's not the first time I've worked with someone and they've requested a replacement, just the first time I've never been told about it! The office has always been very good at not only informing me promptly about these changes, but why they happen, whether it's something I can improve (like hesitating too often) or not (I'm too young-looking and the client can't get over it, haha). I've never been in this situation, where the office is looking for a replacement but not taking me off the case, nor informing me that this is occurring.

So I'm left speculating at what the problem is, if there's something should (or can) do to help mitigate it, and if I'm not replaced, how I'm going to handle this week's visits...I'm thinking that the office isn't enthused about looking for a replacement, I'm under the impression that this family has been through quite a few caregivers. Of course, whether the office is fed up with the family or not is beside the point. I know I should contact the office and ask them directly, but I'm a bit miffed that they haven't told me anything at all and I only know about it because of a mass email. And--well, working with this client/family has been pretty stressful even without this complication; I'm not looking forward to working with them for an extended period with this simmering in the background. Is it unprofessional of me to say that I'm mostly grateful that I might not have to work with them again, ever? It probably is.

Well, I'm off to die in Mushihimesama before I melt into the bed for the night.

I had work today, but only for 4 hours, and I was finished by noon. What did I do with a whole Sunday afternoon, you ask? I slept. I slept until 5:00 and then I stayed in bed for another hour to fully enjoy the sensation of being snug and warm in bed on a cold Sunday, with no pressing obligations until tomorrow. Part of me is regretting all those 'wasted' hours, part of me feels nice and refreshed and...ready to sleep another eight hours, lol.

I still need to sort out the clothing donations, though....

***

In search of inspiration for writing fandom essay-ish type things by reading old posts at ship_manifesto, which has been dead for awhile but still has a template for use and interesting posts in general. It's helped me structure my thoughts about a few ships that have been taking up space in my brain for awhile now, but that I've never really talked about--P4/P3 protagonists and Tsubaki/Noel being foremost in that category, but nearly every piece of media I've consumed in the past few years has had a character or pairing I've enjoyed. But I don't discuss why, partly because I'm uncertain my friends through LJ/DW would be familiar with the fandom and finding people who want to analyse rather than squee is a lot harder to do. It's not just a 'tumblr problem' either; the fact that 'fandom' takes place across many different social media services and sites, and the most popular ones are not geared towards long-form, slower discussion styles is the real issue. Tumblr's just a symptom of a larger trend in fandom participation that was occurring long before LJ activity collapsed. And it's not something I want to whine about all the time--complaining about the way the internet has changed is not interesting to read or write about--I miss the creation very small, specialized communities of people who were willing to discuss something as silly as a non-canon, video game slash ship with great detail and over a long period of time. It's hard to talk about what you like and don't like when there's no one around to listen to you. :(

Day 4: Favorite area in Borderlands

Oooh. There are a lot of areas I like, and I was having a hard time picking between the Southern Shelf, the Caustic Caverns, and the hub of Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt campaign, but I finally had to choose

( the Caustic Caverns (cut for images) )

( a story about work )

I spent the morning getting an oil change then doing one out of three hampers of laundry. The two I didn't finish are the ones destined for the donation bins; they've been in storage for years and I'm under the assumption that they're full of yuck and empty of clothing anyone actually wants, but I haven't actually looked too deeply into the hampers. I did today and discovered a number of non-clothing items (just plastic...stuff???? didn't look too closely) so I'll have to *sigh* go through them and toss out all the not-clothing stuff before bringing them to the laundromat. OH WELL. It will be good to have the extra space for all of a day before it gets filled up with more stuff from some other corner of the house no one is using.

Still haven't gotten around to cleaning the house! :T

To end, a couple of interesting game music tracks to consider:

★ J-E-N-O-V-A, arranged in Mario Paint Composer Looking up Mario Paint composer arrangements of other video game tunes is one of my favorite niche past times; this J-E-N-O-V-A arrange is remarkably close to the original, and uses the "dog bark" note in lieu of timpani. The addition of dogs is always an upgrade, so in some ways this is an improvement on the original piece! :P

★ Metal Gear Solid theme, arranged for the Gameboy Color Things that will never stop amusing me: the fact that a Gameboy Color port of Beatmania exists; the fact that the Metal Gear Solid theme is a playable track--complete with video overlay!--in said GBC port.

★ Aquatic Ambiance, re-arranged by Masashi Hamauzu To end on a very different note, here's a beautiful re-arrangement of the Aquatic Ambiance track from Donkey Kong Country. Hamauzu says he was really happy to work on this track, which isn't surprising since it features the atmospheric, chromatic harmonies that he favors in his own compositions. Also: piano and violin solos! ♥