Games Since October

One of the free November games is called Burly Men At Sea, which features a branching story with 4 major choices that can be be completed in about 20 minutes per cycle. There isn't really much to do besides read how the story changes. I'm guessing it's based on Nordic folktales, but the presentation is minimal, unique and overall pleasant. Even the audio effects are some dude making sounds into the mic. 3-hour Platinum GET!

While we're outside my usual genres, I got my hands on an old favorite: Lumines Remastered. In this game you match tiles to the rhythm of a flow of levels. Each level has its own music and rhythm of the sweep that clears your blocks. It's visually and aurally amazing, and one of those games where the music will put you in a trance and muscle memory and quick reactions will keep your sessions longer than you might have planned.

Picture Mode was fun!

Next up was a rental of my second favorite Uncharted after the second game: The Lost Legacy. This episode features Chloe Frazer and Nadine Ross, one treasure hunter and mercenary who kick ass and take names. The game has your signature Uncharted stuff: gorgeous scenery, lifelike characters, ridiculous climbing physics, and some anthropology and history along the way. You meet Chloe in the second Uncharted game, a good bad good thief who works her charms on Nathan Drake, and this game flushes her character out as a physically capable badass. You get to find out that she's mixed Indian and English, and that ends up playing into the storyline, as the antagonist makes a point about the prized artifact being for 'pure' bloods only. This of course blows up in his face cause racism sucks, but Chloe wasn't gonna let him get away with that shit anyway!

Nadine is from Uncharted 4, where she beats the snot out of Nate in a few fistfights before Sully buddies everyone up. The path to platinum is a little more than half as long as a usual Uncharted game, but I thought that was a good thing. As the 5th game in the series, I was ready for something short but sweet, since they're not about to drastically change the gameplay.

Also, shoutout to Naughty Dog (developer) for the accessibility options in this game. I'm a fan of turning button presses to hold for the quick-time events.

 Last but not least is a game that was gnawing at me for the last few weeks since I'd returned the rental: Dead Cells. The longing got the best of me and I ended up buying it. It's one of those games with procedurally-generated levels and progress is made by unlocking access to certain items spawning and certain permanent abilities unlocking each run. One life can last a few minutes, or if you git gud, one life can take you through to the end boss in about an hour. But you will die. So. Much. The gameplay is fast-paced, and you can strategize your approach: throughout the levels you find scrolls that upgrade 1 of 3 stats that affect: melee damage, ranged damage, or defense. The level of each stat makes that weapon do more damage, and you get a % of health with each scroll found, but the enemies also get more difficult. There are a few no-damage trophies as well as beating this game on the hardest difficulty, which would make this game probably a 9 or 10/10 for difficulty, but it's so fun to try.

Also, until Thanksgiving is a quietly huge sale on most of Square Enix's titles from the last 5 years on the Platstation Store. If you like RPGs, head over and get you some! The sale is for everyone, not just PS+ members.

Spend less green, BE more green!

If you're outside of Washington State, you might not know that we had a carbon fee initiative that failed to pass on Election Day 2018. Regardless of how you vote(d), I think being environmentally friendly is something most people can get behind. This is where some frugality practices can help you minimize your carbon footprint. I'm going to limit these suggestions to my own habits that I currently practice.

(By Kevin Schoenmakers) This lady figured it out!

Let's start with a seasonal favorite: hot beverages. They double as hand warmers! If you've been here before, you'll know what's coming. Make. That. Shit. Yourself! Hot beverages are super easy to make. They're tastier than cold beverages by default because they're not dulling your tongue! Milk, some kind of sweetener (honey, sugar, maple syrup), and a flavoring (cinnamon, cocoa, coffee, vanilla). I get the hand warmer part, but folks are going to that place with the green mermaid/Statue-of-Liberty-ripoff and spending $4 a pop! You can raid your pantry for the makings of a hot beverage. For $.50 a cup, you can drink some of the finest coffee available to the middle class if you make it yourself. I alternate between LaVazza (more like $0.20 a cup) and Kirkland Signature (which is Starbucks, minus the label. $0.11 per cup).

A trip to the cafe or McDonalds means you've commissioned TWO people to do the work of one, albeit amazingly efficiently. However that wad of napkins and fistful of sauce packets you throw away every spring is just plain irresponsible. Sit-down restaurant? The host, the waiter, the cook and the busser. I completely understand the convenience of having an expert prepare your food, but another way to shrink your carbon footprint is to cook for yourself. Or invest in some great pre-assembled entrees. Either way, you're going to create less waste, spend less green and likely eat healthier.

No recipe needed. Seriously.

In addition to cooking for yourself, eat oats and vegetables! Actually, for the last month, I've added 3 cans of different beans, some dry lentils and sausages into a crockpot. For about $4 of ingredients, I get lunch for 4 days. A friend of mine who has a high-paying job as a software engineer still lives frugally. Once a month he buys two big ass bags of rice and lentils that works out to something ridiculous like $0.10 per meal, except on those decadent days where he adds an egg, skyrocketing the cost to $0.40 per meal. Washington Post gives a chart on just how much of a reduction of greenhouse gases you make if you choose veggies over beef! Of course, frugal people like ourselves opt for chicken, pork and tofu anyway.

It hurts to dryyyyy...

I am one of those weirdos who uses his dishwasher as a drying rack and hand washes everything. Green. I also air-dry my laundry. In addition to living in Asia where that's till normal, a 25-year-old me once saw a friend's gorgeous blue dress that I thought was brand new. Turns out she'd had it for 10 years and just doesn't use a dryer. The only drawback of hang drying is crusty towels that don't get fluffed by the dryer. There are also weeks where it's just too damn cold and humid so I concede to the machine.

Public transportation. Use it. Be green. Airport run? Take the light rail. Read a borrowed book from the library or read this blog on your phone instead of being accident-fodder!

One of the stats is that skipping beef once a week is equivalent to switching 12 incandescent light bulbs to LED, which is the first thing I did when I moved in August. If you live in Washington State, LED bulbs are subsidized and you can get ~20 bright-as-day bulbs for $15 at your hardware stores (significantly cheaper than buying online, where the store likely can't pass along the discount.)

Recycling is pretty obvious, and buying secondhand accomplishes a few things: it generally avoids wasteful packaging, it proves the item itself is durable enough to survive the first owner, and you aren't economically supporting the manufacturer (if you have ethical issues with them.) Full disclosure: I struggle with this because as much as I love to save money, my favorite game developers miss out on my cash when I buy their games used.

Just because the law doesn't (yet) push you to be green doesn't mean you can't be green yourselves! All of these require more time than simply paying for the various services that most others use everyday. One thing that shocks me is how much time I spend washing dishes for just me and my wife. We clear the sink after every meal and still spend a good 20 minutes on weekend days cleaning dishes. Air drying laundry means your skivvies won't be ready for up to 2 days. Making your own coffee robs you of 2 precious minutes, but the way I see it, you can do these things yourself, or you could earn the income to pay someone else to do it: you're investing time and energy regardless.

October opus: Sonic Mania Plus...

Sonic the Hedgehog is 28 years old this year but has lived more than half his life in shitty games. Our blue friend had a home in 5 great speedy platform games in the early 90s. Then, some bigger changes in technology and some really terrible direction lead SEGA to produce poop for the next 20-odd years. Nintendo has always taken new tech in stride and implemented it in the titles quite well. Think of each system's new Mario or Zelda game and how well it uses its console's gimmick: Mario's movement in Super Mario 64, Z-targeting in Ocarina of Time, Link's Master Sword moving 1:1 in Skyward Sword via the Wiimote Accelerometer, and more recently, using the Wii U's touchpad to sketch blocks in New Super Mario Bros - nTh iteration.

And still better with the 2d D-pad.

Sonic...hasn't received the same treatment. The SEGA Saturn title used an isometric view and analog controller for Sonic 3d Blast to go with the new CD-quality audio. The music worked; the rest was awkward. Then while Mario was messing around on Sunshine Island (Gamecube), SEGA decided Sonic needed vocals and we were treated to unskippable, poorly-acted, awkwardly paced and stupidly long cutscenes in a game with only a good first level. This trend of underwhelming Sonic games with only good first levels repeated for years. But even with the music, there's been a prominence of guitar-heavy rock music with lyrics in most of the titles since Sonic Adventure that were hit and miss.

THEN, a few years ago, a fan updated/remade a few Genesis-era Sonic games. This all culminated into Sonic Mania, a return to roots with a blend of the only 5 Sonic games that matter: Sonic 1-3, & Knuckles, and Sonic CD. Sonic Mania blends these so thoroughly into a great shiny package and hits on almost everything great about the series. For example, two desert levels Oil Ocean (S2) and Sandopolis (S3) have been conceptually blended. In the original Sandopolis, you were inside of a pyramid that consistently got darker until you activated light switches throughout the level. In Sonic Mania, you're running through an oil extraction site that gets hazy until you activate fans to blog away the smog. The blends manifest themselves in the music, aesthetics and functions like the haze mechanic I mentioned. There are so many stages that Eggman Dr. Robotnik has gone the way of Bowser and recruited the Hard-boiled Heavies to harangue the heroes in different boss forms.

The devs balanced speed and running really really well. The levels are loaded with springs and sequences that don't screw up momentum with obstacles. There are even those parts in the game where you're running so fast that Sonic almost moves out of the frame, and they're used sparingly enough for you to really appreciate them. Past titles have suffered from poor camera controls, camera tracking, or the simple fact that touching the controls during the speed sequences could kill Sonic. A lot of the titles may have only had one of these sins, but Sonic Mania doesn't commit any.

Sonic Mania is the most fun I've had in a while. The game is gorgeously colorful, the remixed soundtrack is amazing, and I'm considering buying it for the appeal of a playable soundtrack. Have any of you played a game again for its soundtrack?

Hang on, Geddy! Ohh wait-shoot em!

I actually started the month with a title called Owlboy, which is heavily inspired by Kid Icarus from the original NES. The game has a neat aesthetic and in true sci-fi nature takes its world of sentient owls, stick bugs, penguins and spiders as established; there's no irony there. The story has to deal with capture and pirates and stuff...and I was just playing the game to experience vertical platforming. I really liked the music and artwork. Even towards the end of my 14-hour journey to the platinum, I forgot controls occasionally since they were just a bit awkward.

Ohh my! Yes, yes. Quite riveting!

After Owlboy, I was waiting for Sonic Mania to arrive in the mail and discovered just how awesome one of the previous free PS+ games was. The game is called Foul Play, and the title card is a theatre curtain. I figured it would be some murder mystery or otherwise dialogue-heavy slow-paced game. It turns out that this is a beat-em-up game where you play actors in a series of Vaudeville plays, beating the snot out of baddies for the audience's enjoyment. Get combos, dodge, pop the fist-fodder into the air, whack, sock, evade and chuck enemies into stage objects to applause and a great soundtrack. One fact is that October has seen three fast and fun titles with great music and unique aesthetics.

Katamari Forever: a profile

I am one of those people that uses the word perfect subjectively. I think something is perfect if it does what it's intended to do and nails all the details along the way. I abhor smoking but can tell you cigarettes are a perfect product. The addictive factor has been refined through decades of testing despite the obvious signs of damage to health. Cigarettes are so good that skipping 5-10 minutes of work every hour or two is socially acceptable, as long as you're harming your health. Try that shit with a 5-10 minute break to read a book or blend some smoothies in the break room and report back to me. Anyhoo, cigarettes are a perfect product to me, and the Katamari Damacy series is also perfect.

This guy is hilarious, annoying, the most important entity
in the Katamari universe...and that bulge is amazing!

If you haven't heard of Katamari Damacy [~Clump Soul], the story goes that your father, The King of Cosmos, [got drunk one night and] accidentally destroyed the planets, and it's your job to roll up enough items to form new ones. This story is told through surreal 10-second animations which were just as random in original Japanese. Also, to reach back to the title, it doesn't make sense in Japanese either, and the creator said it randomly popped into his head. This is a relief to me, as there are some really stupid anime titles that had to have been conceived similarly. Bubblegum Crisis and Cowboy Bebop come to mind, but I digress. Anyway, the bizarre opening sets the tone for the whole experience.

The game has a bright, cartoony palette and features everyday objects that the Prince of the Cosmos collects into a ball as he rolls through living rooms, backyards, train stations, and eventually the Solar System. This can be explained with a picture. What can't be explained is how the game sounds.

Each game features a peppy, poppy and eclectic soundtrack that stands well on its own. The music is good and the composer knows it. The PS3 title that I'm currently playing, Katamari Forever, is a blend of the first and second title, with a story to link all the chaos. The entire soundtrack is a remix of these two games as well. From the Katamari Wiki: "Miyake employed the help of over 20 other Japanese artists and remixers to help the soundtrack, which was designed to act as part of a "musical trilogy" with the soundtrack to Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari. This was accomplished by choosing tracks from those games that were either fan or staff favorites and having them remixed by both Japanese and non-Japanese artists, though Miyake notes that the majority of the artists were Japanese as he did not know many non-Japanese musicians, the same problem that kept non-Japanese artists out of the first two soundtracks of the "trilogy".

I'd argue the most popular song of the series is not the main theme, but Lonely Rolling Star. The first gets its own version in each game, and the second gets a dubstep remix in the PSP title. One of my favorite tracks from the first game, Cherry Blossom Color Season, is a very poignant track about a summer memory with school kids doing vocals while a boy takes the lead. In Katamari Forever, it's done by a peppy 80s soft rock female vocalist. Both versions nail the sense of nostalgia, even without knowing what the lyrics mean. The remix that most blew me away in the same game was the second game's J-POPpiest song Everlasting Love being both mashed up with You Are Smart and translated to English (Everlasting Love + You).

For sound effects, objects are picked up with a plop or plunk that gets deeper with larger things. You start out picking up thumbtacks and batteries and once you get to animals and people, they let out screams and other strange noises.

The aesthetic, sounds and music combine to create an amazing experience, and the controls fit perfectly. Your rolling is controlled by both thumbsticks and little vibrations tell you when you pick stuff up. Although titles in the series are on other platforms, the controls make the most sense on the Dualshock controllers, as the sticks are side by side. The latest titles are on Android and iOS which makes me wonder what they did to the controls. There's a remake of the first Katamari Damacy coming to the Switch at the end of the year, which fits the theme of the Switch being a GREATEST PORTS platform with almost no original titles. Either way, the Katamari Damacy series is highly recommended and you should give it a roll!

Where the hell have I been?

It turns out working full time, wrapping up a graduate degree, owning a house and doing marriage paperwork takes a lot of time.

School: I'm currently in a class about how to choose, create and make the most of materials for ESL learners. Basically, true/false and multiple-choice questions are dogshit for actually learning language, but garbage sells. It's a lot easier to sell shit that's easy to grade to the non-teachers who are in charge of curriculum and budgets, so inefficient and superficial language learning prevails!

Even Abe is sad I can't buy stock...

House: mid-August to now has been me coming home from work with some kind of project to address: replacing the kitchen faucet, garbage disposal, installing the bidet, making a noise-and-temperature window insert, and exploring my new neighborhood. Traffic is pretty loud and I still hate motorcyclists. What are they revving their engines for in a 30 mph zone, anyway? My new neighbors, on the other hand, understand the concept of not being noisy at night, parking where they should park, and training their animals not to be douchebags. This is a massive improvement to my quality of life for an amount I can afford with some concessions...LIKE INVESTING *dramatic crying*. No more monthly deposits into Vanguard for the time being. It sucks, but building equity is like investing...just gotta cut through that thick block of interest first.

Spoiler: not the last time. This is at the beginning of the game

With all that, it's not like I wasn't gaming at all. Septemper PS+ owners got God of War 3, a game where you play as a complete asshole. Like, wow. Kratos spares nobody. In terms of trophy hunting, this game is pretty quick and easy. This game still keeps the fluid and responsive fight controls, though platforming requiring double jumping and gliding sucks. This game has your signature smooth combat with lots of blood, a protagonist who doesn't have a whole lot of motivation in this title, and the occasional boob!



Before that, I had the express pleasure of Cosmic Star Heroine, a 16-bit-ish action RPG that is heavily inspired by Chrono Trigger. You can see and avoid battles, there are battle abilities that resemble single / dual techs, and the soundtrack is quite awesome. Also, the game is hilarious and has some personality. Even if the plot is so-so, the characters are pretty entertaining, and the NPCs even more so. I scooped it up on sale for <$10 and it was a sweet playthrough and worth it! Go, small developers!

Other than these two Platinums, I have been logging the other half of playtime plugging away at Overwatch, Star Wars Battlefront 2, and Guitar Hero Live. I just shacked up with Gamefly for their $10 promotion for a single disc rental for 2 months and my first crack will be OwlBoy.

Gaming in August 2018

Hey Folks, nothin much going on but the rent. PSYCH! I got married on the first of August and started a mortgage two weeks later. So, 'ain't nothin going on but the mortgage.' Now begins the paperwork to get a work permit for my beautiful wife. Once we let her loose on the American work force, she's going to be the breadwinner by far. I'd like to think that this means I'll have more time to play video games, but that'll likely mean more housework!

The death music in this game still triggers me

Speaking of video games and my wife, while between quarters and waiting the on paperwork, she found herself with an abundance of free time. Earlier this year, I'd gotten an SNES Mini and the game she chose to start with was Super Mario World. Now, I've had 30 years of experience with the franchise, which has barely changed its controls. Folks, I watched her walk right into enemies or right off of pits over and over and realized that I am a really terrible backseat gamer. At least there are short cords on the controllers, meaning her ability to rightfully huck the controller at me is limited. Turns out SMW is a pretty hard choice to be your break-in to game. Progress is slow, but man is she persistent!

This fight took a couple attempts

In June, she started Chrono Trigger after seeing how excited I was to add the ROM to the system. She absolutely loved CT and saw at least 3 endings. Next was Final Fantasy IV. It was pretty awesome to hear the soundtrack as I did whatever I do around the house that isn't playing video games while she hauled arse. In August, she completed A Link to the Past. Her biggest challenge was a room in the final dungeon with a collapsing floor and 4 torches to light. It came down to the coordination of an action button + a direction. I don't know if she should burn through all the classics or start getting into some of the less-polished games. She's not a fan of current-gen controllers with 20+ buttons, so we'll likely stick to the SNES mini.

Pissed off bantha

It has been great seeing her enjoy something she used to just think was for 'boys.' Since she mostly plays when I'm asleep or at work, I get to hear her new experiences of games I've known well. I don't think she'll be playing Overwatch and cursing Hanzo alongside me any time soon, but in 2018, she's played 4 of the best games ever made and doesn't show any signs of slowing down--now she's playing Final Fantasy VI.

Fireworks on muh screen!

How was your 4th, folks? I got to hang out with friends and watch The Rock's San Andreas and the new Tomb Raider. The former was a neutered "action" film that unraveled the moment you thought about how callous it is to make a movie with hundreds of thousands of people dying on and off screen while following a divorced couple's rekindled relationship. Ohh, and screw you, new husband, for making this divorcee happy! Tomb Raider was kinda boring but had some cool sound effects, and properly beat the shit out of Lara Croft, per mandate of the new game series.

Hell yeah she is!

In a much more efficient use of media funding, Gravity Rush has stolen my heart. I've wanted to play this PS4 remaster since even before January 2018, my Ladies' Month, and spent 30 disorienting minutes figuring out the (thankfully) simplified controls. The game involves a spunky heroine named Kat whose cat can decide which surfaces are up and down. You do this by floating, aiming at the surface you wish to stand on, and flying into it. This is all done with one button, and the camera will help you out most of the time. I'm having a blast playing this game, and I hope the story is brisk enough that the gameplay doesn't wear out its welcome.

Update: Since starting this post a week ago, I've gotten the platinum. I probably put 16 hours into the base game and all expansions, and was excited to play the whole time. The most challenging mission in the game has a perfect run of 3min30sec and took me about 20 minutes overall to ace through research and repeated attempts.

Overwatch. I've been playing the new Symmetra and a great deal of FFA deathmatch. After 2.5 years of naively trusting strangers to group up in balanced teams, there is now a create-a-group feature where you can assign roles. While it takes an extra minute to fill up, you can finally avoid the K:D ratio bros that will fill your last team slot with Genji (instead of a needed healer or tank). The problem is that the system isn't quite intuitive, and there is no usual info box with an explanation. How...cantankerous!

More like "Turn-it-up!" Ah...that was lame.

I started Rayman Legends, which is a really huge game. This Ubisoft platformer series has a great aesthetic that reminds me of Nickelodeon cartoons and certainly doesn't take itself seriously. It's one of those games with slightly floaty controls, but the levels mercifully aren't designed for precision. Rayman was a franchise I overlooked pretty much since the first game in 1995. Legends is pretty fun and not frustratingly challenging so far. I dig it!

Shape-up your security, folks!

Part of frugality and financial fitness is more than smart spending, folks. I shrug off horror stories all the time about suckers who got got by blatantly poor decisions or planning. I feel like I am above it all. This viewpoint, however, is ignorant as hell, and someone out there will be laughing hard when I land in hubris hot water. However, some of my confidence is well-founded because I take steps to protect myself the best I can. Here is what works for me:

Freeze your credit! Employment, house loans and (don't do it unless necessary!) car loans require a good credit history. Freezing your credit means telling Equifax, TransUnion and Experian not to open a new credit card or loan account without your consent to lift the freeze. This was another one of those things that I laughed off, thinking it would never happen to me. It still hasn't, but this extra layer of protection can be done in just a few minutes. Wells Fargo got busted for creating fake accounts (and subsequently spent millions of dollars asking for our forgiveness via commercials--the audacity of those crooks!) In February, Seattle ICE was caught in identity fraud.

I didn't have luck with TransUnion's website, so I called 888.909.8872 and it was an automated call. Same with Equifax; 800.685.1111, option 3 or say "freeze." It's free in Washington currently and at least 7 other states. Experian was the only website that actually worked for me, though their number is 888.397.3742.

If you have a fraudulent transaction, don't forget to tell your credit card company and let them do the leg work of investigation. I experienced some drama with Frontier Communications (may the company lose all business and collapse into nothingness!) over a bill that was $150 more than expected. I ended up waiting 5 months for it to be corrected (it wasn't) and ended up calling again when I was reported to collections. I should have paid the whole thing with my credit card and sicced my credit card company on them!

Art by dougdougmann@deviantart

This credit report security is especially important because I've been shopping for condos this summer. At first glance, you'd be right to question my frugality in addition to my longing to live overseas again. However, once I can sweet talk a bank into a loan, the monthly payment towards a condo loan (unit+HOA dues) is $100 or more less than rent in the area! You have to go in with a good down payment and good credit, but we're all masters of wise financial decisions, so this is no problem! This doesn't apply everywhere, and I'm leaving out the massive detail that I'm currently in an apartment with sliding scale rent. However, the going rent in Lynnwood is currently $600 for a room in someone's house, $1000 for a 1 bedroom, and $1200+ for a 2 bedroom. One of the banks I asked offered me just over $1100 monthly on a 2br condo. Consider it, folks! To keep with security, a condo means that you can't be suddenly evicted!

Also, as a person who doesn't use cash, it's amazing how more than 99% of my income is digital. That said, to limit liability, I suggest paying your cards and accounts from your bank account. The alternative is to login to Chase, Capital One and Citibank and link your bank account to each individually, creating 4 vulnerabilities instead of one. However, this is a lot of important information to have all in one place, so make sure your password isn't worthless. Make those hackers work to rip you off!

You'll want to put some thought into your password, but not too much that you can't remember. I like to use catchphrases with numbers instead of letters. "Hasta la vista, Baby!" from Terminator 2 is long, but memorable as #4st4l4v1st4b4by. I guarantee you know 10 lines or their approximates that would work very well as passwords.

Two Reddit accounts. One for NSFW, one for general browsing that leaves comments.

That's all I have for now, folks. These are all steps that take a minimum of time and energy.

Update: It's only poetic justice that I get fraudulent charges on my account a week after posting this! It seems some rapscallion used my card via Uber Eats, which you know I'm too frugal to pay for a) a phone that would be able to run the app and b) someone to deliver food I could make or go get myself! It's all good, though. I called credit card customer service, who connected me to their fraud department, and the entire phone call took 3 minutes and I'm not liable for anything. This is a great example of why I use credit card over debit cards, as the week it takes to replace your credit card is a lot less traumatic than having your bank account locked.

Gaming and Graduation

Holy moly, folks! 2018 is hummin along, with my most recent viewing of a seizure-beckoning Incredibles 2, and a significant reduction in gaming time. I just finished up a graduate-level grammar class and Washington heated up a bit, educating me on just how much warmer a TV makes the room. Back to Incredibles 2, the movie was quite awesome save for the one poor choice of a scene involving a really intense strobe light. I don't have photo-sensitivity, but I closed my eyes for sure. Don't let that keep you from seeing it, though I can't really say that it's a big screen movie, since the action is really well directed and you pretty much always know what's going on.

It def gets dicey in this game

Games! I finally platinumed Children of the Zodiarcs, which is an entertaining and beautifully drawn tactics RPG. You're a bunch of orphans making your way through seedy neighborhoods, killing those who need to be killed. My only complaint is that the soundtrack is very minimal, so about half of my gameplay was without sound. If you want a play style that feels like a board game but has the convenience of digital interaction, this game is for you. Also, plus points for having a black female lead.

Art direction +1 Lookit dem colors!

Also finished up everything in God of War. My biggest shame for being frugal is that really good games like God of War that have a shorter path to platinum usually end up getting borrowed, and the dev never sees my money. At the same time, I gotta look after Number One, and I can't be spending emotions on businesses either.

I spent a good deal of time playing Overwatch during the anniversary event, where they unlocked all the skins and even game modes for almost all of June. The game that keeps on giving.

Omae ga mattaku shinisoudaze!

In game-related news, E3's finally shown me more than a buncha zombie survival games, and Ghost of Tsushima is one title I'm very excited for. Sony musta bribed the devil with all the great exclusives coming to the PS4. Assassin's Creed Odyssey looks great, though I haven't played any titles since AC II. Cyberpunk 2077 might be the most compelling of the batch, and I'll know not to rush into it. I screwed up my Witcher experience (same developer) by starting my first play on HARD. I gave up on that playthrough, but might give the game another go before Cyberpunk comes out.

What got you most pumped at E3?

Grow up...sheesh

Salad bowl brain blast incoming! I am a pretty negative person, and that may not always come through in my posts, here. That's the benefit of writing over saying something: you have time to control your ideas. Any jackass who tweets jackass things probably doesn't realize that tweeting is writing, and those people have the boon of time to...maybe not say racist things and lose a bunch of work for a bunch of people *cough Roseanne cough*. So, without further ado, it is TIME TO RANT.

Gaming trends

Fallout 4. Ark. Daylight. Fortnite. PUBG. Terraria. Breath of the Wild. State of Decay 2.
What do all of these have in common? Crafting and survival. Trends have the potential for creators to take familiar routes and hopefully break left when everyone else broke right and make something new. Developers usually rest that divergence on narrative, characters and/or aesthetics. However, if you're like me and really don't value the resources-and-survival genre, it's easy to feel like there's no new content. I personally feel like the developer stopped making the game and left me purchasing their full-priced dev kit. Minecraft looks like LEGO and gets credit for being a big deal early on (though I'm not sure if it was the first.) But the fact that so much of modern releases are now these glorified physics engines is getting obnoxious. Oddly enough, I highly favor RTS games, which have a lot in common with this list of games I started with. Maybe the player perspective is what I don't like about these?

Solution: give me a narrative!

Playstation Network

Speaking of gaming trends: smaller developers have been my lifeblood, especially in the last year. It's incredibly frustrating how rudimentary marketing tactics prevent games that aren't trendy from seeing more money. I'm going to pick on SONY for having a poorly-executed Playstation marketplace for more than a decade. A better system helps everyone! If you're a AAA title, you get your own page: the 5000 people who weren't already going to buy Destiny 2 were treated to a menu option in the store with a huge banner and a neat little video. However, maybe you want to play a game that isn't a shooter or maybe you've grown sick of Bethesda games and want to try one of the thousands of games that don't fit these two overdone categories of games.

I usually go to the sale pages, and filter GAMES out of the ADD-ON, BUNDLE, (dashboard) THEMES or DEMOS. There's a GENRE filter as well, but not on the main storefront page. You have to know what you're looking for: the browsing is so limited, and there's no way to know just how many games are available on the PSN. Also, searching is atrocious. You search, one letter at a time, from a shrinking choice of options. You can't just search by keyword. The ratings should be more robust than a star system. Perhaps with more detailed feedback options, gamers might be willing to spend more money. They could stick with the 5-star system and break it down into categories: Gameplay, Difficulty, Controls, Visuals/Audio and Pace. I'm sure someone who works for the company and gets paid for ideas could come up with something better than me, but the store they've had since even the PS3 days has been garbage. A better system helps everyone. Also, on a technical note, the store crashes all the time from not being able to keep up with loading preview media of games. Also, the video still plays despite skipping over it and trying to go to pictures. This has gone on since the PS4's launch. The volume of movie clips is so much louder than whatever you're playing that it's quite jarring, and I just don't watch their stupid previews unless the remote is within reach. A better system helps everyone: fix your shit, SONY.

Movies

When Avengers: Infinity Wars came out, I was still winding down from Black Panther being the big deal it was, with it's showcasing Black Excellence, compelling villain and strong women. Then, Avengers kicked my ass all over the place with Thanos being THE ultimate badass. And now, some idiot or collection of idiots decided to release a Star Wars movie barely after Avengers, and half a year after The Last Jedi. I really liked Solo. It had my favorite musical score of the movies, other than a few choice tracks from the saga, of course. The movie was really enjoyable and the dude who played Han was as much of a rascal as he should have been. I did my best to ignore the secondhand warnings I got from people who read and value professional critics' declarations of disapproval and saw the movie in a reserved-seating theater with reclining chairs. That is my first gripe with this movie: the critics got to see the movie first and ruined it with their crappy opinions. I realize the irony of this, considering that I primarily review games on this blog. But seriously, between unimpressed critics who only revere old movies and "fans" who were still burned from The Last Jedi not perpetuating some outdated elitist belief that every advantage is hereditary, this movie didn't get a fair chance to shoot first...Also, the idiot studio not waiting until December to release it lost that movie millions of dollars of revenue. These things are external as hell, but they still did affect the experience of seeing Solo. My only gripe with the movie is the trope of absolutely needing to unmask characters that wear masks. Screw that, keep the mask: retain the mystery.

Math

Yeah! I'm on a roll, here. So far I've talked about entertainment stuff, which is easy to argue that I should let it go because we're lucky enough to have access to it in the first place. Grab your Maslov Pyramid for a moment, cause I'm gonna rant on something that has REAL WORLD FUNCTION!
At some point in my early education, I was two years ahead in math. This means that I took algebra and geometry in middle school, and I can see the value of basic formulas and measuring space as life skills. However, high school further explored Algebra and then I studied Calculus, which was completely useless to me, who became an ESL teacher. Calculus is useful in the world, and probably to scientists who don't have calculators or internet connections.

Solution:
However, finances, debt management and credit should be priorities in (middle and) high school. Every. Single. Person. Uses. Money. My point here is that the Math Directive needs to teach students about money and credit before rates and advanced formulas.

Republican Party economics

There isn't one person who is both competent and not evil in that group. How can you possibly believe that Republicans "create jobs" when they slash funding for social programs that...help people work? Planned Parenthood helps people decide whether or not to have kids and...work! Slashing that funding means a bunch of social workers lose their jobs, as well as the parents who were on the fence about working now have to either balance baby life and work life. Whether working more or less, the result is a family that suffers quality of time and life. Same thing for healthcare, except now you've got sick and dead people's debts. Who do they expect to pay for this?

Then there's this nonsense about economic trickle down. Squash. That. Noise. I live outside of Seattle but work downtown. I don't work at Amazon; their AI decided my resume didn't have enough keywords and boom, no job. That's fine, but the only evidence of trickle down with Amazon that I see is that it's now okay for salads to cost $14, and a 400 sq ft studio is $1600 per month. The surrounding neighborhoods are super gentrified and homelessness has skyrocketed. Go trickle-down!

If you're not from here, the recent politics are that the City of Seattle wanted to charge a special tax to large corporations and use it to address homelessness. Obviously they pushed back and said the City should get better at financial planning (true) and the spineless council caved. I personally think that if Amazon left, smaller businesses would have more of a fighting chance, rent would go down, and so would the ridiculous cost of eating. Also, smaller businesses will likely pay taxes instead of keeping their money in Ireland. Amazon is both online and global, so it's not like I can't use their business if they move away from here. I really don't feel like there's any trickle down besides those gorgeous globes they built in the middle of the city.

Solution: Never, ever believe in trickle down. It forces you to pay taxes that corporations should be paying.

May Gaming: Dad of War

This game is awesome, Boy.

Whaddup, Nahmi.

Deadpool is going to have to wait, folks. The lead up to this weekend involved an indie (Cardboard Utopia, Canadian) title called Children of the Zodiarcs, which is a tactics RPG with dice-rolling to remind you that RNG reigns supreme in these kinds of games. Between battles, there is deck building and dice crafting, and Children brings all the best parts of a combat-based tabletop game without the feeling of being locked into a 6-hour game that just. Won't. End...*cough*. The battles last from 5-20 minutes and that's all you need to commit. Mechanics aside, the playable characters are brown in majority, and the dialogue is funny and mercifully skippable if you have to replay a level because your character died :). The music is not a strength, and you might need to grind to your own soundtrack, but the game was also $10, so I can't complain. The aesthetic is neat, the drawn portraits are beautiful, and the change of pace to tactical RPG combat is a relief to balance the shooters I'm playing.

Ohh snap! We in trouble!

Speaking of shooters, I started Wolfenstein 2 and got a solid 2 hours in before I got hopelessly lost, losing my interest in the game, too. There is a map in this game with mission objectives and everything, so it's hilarious that I spent 30 minutes walking in circles, but I just wasn't connecting the dots. Ohh well, I'll try again later! There are priorities...

My friend Aaron broke some wonderful news to me that he'd completed God of War and was ready to loan it to me. After 6 other titles of revenge-driven, violent hatred of those-who-are-bigger-and-meaner, this game's director took a slower pace. I remember God of War 3 ended with a minigame where you repeatedly mash a button to mash Zeus's face, bloodying up the screen until you could only hear the meaty bashing. Don't get me wrong, Zeus was an asshole, and the multi-stage boss battle is pretty engaging and a raging climax for the angry series.

The new God of War follows an old gruff Kratos, who becomes a widower left with his somewhat-estranged son, Boy Atreus. The game starts with the two going about the death rituals of Kratos' wife Faye, and the last thing they need to do is place her ashes at the top of a mountain. On the first mission of training Atreus how to hunt, Kratos is terse with his son as they feel out each others' combat prowess and personalities. Assuming that the other God of War titles are canon, it's understandable that he's not the warmest father figure. He was tricked into killing his wife and daughter long ago, got his revenge, and then again on the dubious gods as the situation was escalated. Between God of War 3 and this one, Kratos settled down again, just to lose his new wife. I am only a few hours into the story, so I'm not sure if the previous titles are canon, nor how exactly Faye died.

That looks...painful.

Either way, as you go about trying to place her ashes on the top of a mountain, the seemingly bleak father-son banter of the excited youth being reminded to control his feelings and mind his surroundings gives way to the characters sharing their grief and eventually bonding. There are plenty of stories that start at a low or sad point that provides the catalyst for plot to get moving, and God of War is no exception. The narrative succeeds by having the memory of a character act as a passive third character who shapes the story every bit as much as the main two characters who are alive.

Gently down the stream, Boy.

The game feels a lot like a cross between Last of Us and Uncharted in terms of gameplay and production design. There is not one cheap texture in the game, all the characters look solid, Atreus' AI is intelligent enough to feel like a real partner. It's also obvious that the characters' relationship takes over the plot in the same way that Naughty Dog games do so often and so well. There is also some researched lore on Norse Mythology that amounts to more than everyone is naked and the gods are selfish that previous titles featured. While exploring, the characters tell stories to each other that are interrupted as soon as you get to an action point, and continued when things calm down. I first saw this in Uncharted 4 and it's a great way to enrich the mundane parts of the game. The combat is a little slower and quieter than the previous God of War games, but has a lot more variance to the attacks and is still really fun. So far, the violence is less visceral than ripping a (demi-)god's head off through a quicktime event as the music pounds.

The newest God of War is such a good experience. While there's no shortage of games powered on male fantasy, the grieving demigod hacking and slashing his way through realms to save the world is augmented by bonding with his son and being a protective father. It's an exciting, immersive experience and this major change to the series is as good as it gets.

May Play

Readers! It's been a busy couple weeks, seeing and then reading Ready Player One, and changing my freakin life with the viewing of Avengers: Infinity War. I'm not going to spoil it more than the fact that I really enjoy good villains, and Thanos was able to capture my attention away from the two dozen personalities that are trying to beat him. Black Panther was uncomfortable because you don't really feel good about the opposing force not winning, just as watching some of the protagonists "succeed" in Breaking Bad isn't necessarily a good thing. Good writing and acting can do that. I'm trying to say that I only just realized in the last few years that just because I'm reading/watching a point of view doesn't mean I have to cheer for them. That said, I cheered for Thanos because I like to sympathize with a good villain. Thanos isn't particularly complicated, but he's strong (and thus cool) and opens the movie with a badass speech. I was hooked.

Totally taken from https://ourviolentchild.wordpress.com/

I saw it again this weekend and was once again shocked by how insanely violent this movie is. There are tons of kids in that audience watching people get tortured, impaled, slammed, smashed, blown up and simply annihilated, and their parents are more riveted than they are. But we didn't see a titty or hear, "Fuck!" so it's all good for the scores of 5-year-olds that saw that movie, right?

Anyhow, going back to narrative, I'm reminded of how the story unfolds in Metroid Prime, which I finished over the weekend. As you collect the story in fragments through scanning and downloading your oppressors' computer, the narrative turns tone as the Space Pirates react to Samus. As she beats bosses and gains abilities, Samus graduates from a nuisance to a threat to a superior force that the colonizing Space Pirates have to prioritize. This gets to the point of their scientists conducting risky experiments on organisms and throwing the ones that didn't die in some horrible failure at you. I spent the majority of April revisiting this classic, as well as Nex Machina (twin-stick shooter) and Overwatch.

I don't own this photo.

Also, in celebration of May the 4th and Revenge of the Fifth, Star Wars Battlefront 2 did a double xp weekend. This is a huge deal because you actually earn 2.5-3x. I say this because the game is poorly optimized. If you're playing half the amount of games, that's a LOT less time waiting for players to fill the queue, as well as the post-battle tally screen and level loading transition. I understand that managing all the resources for the awesome graphics and sound requires loading time and that's fine. However, the game is built so that you constantly have to return to the main menu to upgrade heroes after they gain levels, and this main screen takes over a minute to load. It's like if every domestic flight in the US were required to pass through LAX, despite being Seattle to New York or something.

There isn't much else to say. I hope set up another themed gaming month in 2018, but there is some non-trophy-hunting I want to do like replay the Final Fantasy XIII games. I've always struggled with story coherence in those games, and would really like to play through without side missions and collectibles and just focus on experiencing the story, the same way I did with FFVI last month. What classics are you revisiting?

Tax Day frugal update

Filing taxes presented two challenges this year. The first was finding a service that would do them for free, which required some in-depth searching. The complication for me was that during last year's hard times, I'd sold some of my investments and most of the free services think that this extra form calls for an upgrade to their $40-70(!) premium services. Luckily, FreeTaxUSA stayed faithful to its moniker, unlike the other dopey sites.

The other challenge to paying taxes this year is where that money is going right now. At the city level, when my car was vandalized last year and the thief left blood and a knife at the scene (in an apartment complex with children), the Lynnwood PD took a look, told me that they rarely catch the suspects in these cases, and promptly left. Also, calling the public works department was fruitless in asking if I should be concerned about my orange bathwater. At the state level, the governor punched Comcast in the face with a super-strict net neutrality law, so that's a bonus. Also, Washington state healthcare benefits when I was unemployed were awesome to have and easy to sign up for, so no grudges there. Taxes at the federal level? That was the biggest barrier to not filing an extension or just mailing the IRS a recycled envelope with a photocopy of my middle finger (black and white, of course, it's cheaper.) I don't recommend running from the IRS, but it's hard not to ignore the fact that the highest office in the land won't release taxes (because he didn't pay them,) and big douchebag companies like Apple and Google haven't paid a cent in corporate taxes for years. I'm going to stop there because this blog is supposed to be about frugality, Japan and video games. I'm also simplifying something I don't understand and I want to keep some integrity in this blog.

Back to the update: I have socked away $2150 of the year's $8000 goal so far. That is about $500 behind schedule, but if I put most of my tax refund into the market, that will sync things up again.

Frugal steps taken in 2018, in no particular order:

I have only spent money in a cafe once, using a gift card. The balance is that I spend about $30 per month on my favorite coffee from LaVazza and Costco espresso beans.

Comcast emails me a few weeks before my actual billing, and I noticed that my premium was going to jump from the usual $60 to $80. They restructured their speed tiers and were about to charge me more for the same level of service. I spent my first work break clearing that shit up. By the way, the speed boost is a silver-plated crock of shit, I have speed test screenshots to prove that this company is lying and tried to take my money. Anyway, stay on top of those subscriptions, folks!

I've been using Movie Pass, a service that's $10 per month and lets you see movies in theaters. Big flicks, multiple viewings of Black Panther, get you one!

I've been cooking dinner at home, having 10-cent oatmeal for breakfast on weekdays, and mostly brought lunch. I'm not completely boring and joyless - I've broken down and bought lunch at work less than 10 times this year. It's that...there's just...there's an Indian buffet 3 minutes away!

Hosting friends instead of going out. Putting that big ass TV and uncomfortable furniture to good use!

I live 20 miles from work and take the express bus instead of driving. People really wrinkle their nose at taking the bus, but the commuter ones are really comfortable, plus I can goof off, read or just look for hot drivers of other cars. The last time I put gas in the car, frat boys and sorority girls were puking green beer in celebration of a dude who got rid of snakes!

To tack onto living so far away from work: Seattle rent sucks, the apartments are old and small, and it's loud as hell. Sure, there's a 10-minute walk on both sides of the trip, and the rent is a lot more affordable, $800 for a 700 sq ft apartment. In the city are $1000 150 sq ft micro studios without kitchens! Lots of people are gearing up to move: factor transportation into your rent and see if the next neighborhood away could ease your financial burden.

2.50 per month for my phone. I read books and listen to music in my spare time outside of home, neither of which need a $40 data plan.

I sound like a broken record because these are habits 4 years in the making. Anyone can do it, especially if you start with one change at a time. Start with cutting out the Starbucks and making your own drinks...those people don't pay their taxes, anyway!