Wednesday, September 4, 2019

PAX 2019 was a hit!

I guess _I_ was enforced...
This year, I Enforced and attended my third Penny Arcade Expo! My section was Classic Console Freeplay, which is one of the many things that sets this gaming convention aside from other 'gaming' conventions: actual gaming! To explain: Tokyo Game Show has a few dozen developers showing off their games, and if you're not in line to play a demo, then you're looking at booth babes, cosplay or gaming-related merchandise. I would say (ridiculously hot) cosplay is the main draw, and game demos and swag are tied seconds. Tokaigi, held in the same space (Makuhari Messe in Chiba) as TGS, is a little more about actually playing games, with consoles, PC and handheld stations. I did a quick run-through of Seattle ComiCon, and saw a lot of gameplay with prizes (awesome!) and a shitload of cosplay.

Zagreus and Aphrodite (Hades) and Red (Transistor)

PAX, however, probably has all gaming conventions beat: there are giant rooms for tabletop games, a room of beanbags for handheld gaming orgies, an entire floor dedicated to the current 2 consoles, another floor of PCs, another 2 floors for console and PC tournaments, a floor for classic consoles (from NES to Wii/PS2/Xbox), gaming trivia all around downtown Seattle, pin collecting and swapping, digital slot machines that dispense prizes randomly to attendees, and scavenger hunts. There are even run-of-the-mill cardboard puzzles. Of course there's cosplay, anime, trinkets and discussion panels, but the amount of gaming here is next-level.

I was on the team that checked out games to attendees who would sit down at stations and play with friends. There were 32 stations, and most were in use the entire 4 days. Considering loans are 30-minutes at a time, that's a lot of activity! There were faces we saw all four days, as it's a great time killer for certain events. Sometimes, you just don't want to stand in line for 3 hours to play a 20-minute demo. In general, I worked my normal full-time job, and did PAX for the 3-day weekend, and now I'm lumbering through my normal workweek. Sleeping 8 hours took priority over attendance, so I only showed up a few hours early to tour the expo before my shift, and didn't hang around much after.

HOWEVER. I definitely saw some shit!

Lead voice actor Logan Cunningham!
For me, PAX belonged to SuperGiant, the makers of Bastion, Transistor and Pyre (review here). One day, the key dev team held a panel where they told their story of working on these games and how the team met teach other. I got to meet the lead voice actor but was too nervous to do more than tell him I was a fan and smile. I didn't tell him that in the 2 weeks of playing Bastion, I narrated everything I did around the house in a gravely voice. After my enforcer shift, SuperGiant's composer put on a concert with key tracks from those three games as well as their newest, Hades. There was also an orchestra and his other vocalist. During that sweet hour at the Paramount, we were treated to a light show, some anecdotes and almost every duet from their games. Chills the whole time. Getting so much exposure to this independent developer was an amazing experience. If Motion Twin (Dead Cells) ripped through PAX, I would have met my two favorite small developers and that would just be hard to top.

I also went to the Make-a-Strip panel, where Penny Arcade founders Jerry Holkins (Tycho) and Mike Krahulik (Gabe) drew a brand new comic and answered all kinds of questions from their e-nor-mous fan base. To think that these two average-looking dudes from Spokane started the 15-year-strong convention for almost 100,000 people from all walks of life to flock to Downtown Seattle by writing a comic about two roommates playing videogames and talking shit.

If you can make it to Seattle for the Labor Day weekend, then sign up to Enforce at PAX in May!


SuperGiant composer Darren Korb

Monday, August 26, 2019

June update

It's been a while since I posted! Part of it is that I've gotten some new tasks at work and classwork is as engaging as ever. I'm studying adult learning theory and there's a load of stuff to learn...about learning.

I've also been up to various house projects! It's been so rewarding investing time instead of money into little projects. Then, something unfortunate happened with OfferUp. I switched out my SIM card to test it on another phone, and the app suddenly required me to verify my account through phone number. Well, you might know that I use Freedompop, a carrier that gives you a 200MB data limit and phone number free every month. The caveat is that the phone number isn't recognized by services like Uber and certain verification services like this one. After a week of exchanging emails with Offer Up's customer service and no helpful suggestions how to get back up and running, I had to close my account. So unless I want to lie about my phone number, I'm out of luck for Offer Up, one of the less-flaky FREE person-to-person selling methods.

Another reason I haven't posted is because of conflicting feelings. I'll come right out and say that I failed one of my major commitments of avoiding spending money on games. Almost monthly, at this point. Luckily, that's averaged out to about $25 per month, but I still feel conflicted about dispensing advice that I can't follow. Another thought was the responses to frugal decisions in eliminating joy from your life to save money that reaches vegan and crossfit levels of annoying. But I have to remember that this is a blog post and readers have chosen to come here. Also, the satisfaction I experience of doing what I can to put money elsewhere outweighs the 'little joys' brought by having an underpaid person prepare my coffee, food, or wearing the latest cheaply-made brand name clothing. So, take what you will from my frugal habits if you haven't already, and you might be surprised how easy some of this is to make into a habit.

I've still been economically and ecologically sustainable in my normal ways:

Cooking for myself. Sundays, I put 3 cans of beans, tomatoes, spices and whatever cut of meat in a crockpot all day, and by the night I can freeze at least 4 days of lunch. I've been eating this chili 4-5 days a week for about 6 months. Food variety comes for the other two daily meals and on the weekends. I order pizza (carryout!) and eat out twice a month. There is room for improvement, here!

With the exception of screws, a new bathroom motor and cover ($30 total), all of my home improvement has been through secondhand methods. Through OfferUp, I bought some tools for about what they'd cost to rent as well as some custom-ordered cellular blinds that turned out to be the wrong size for the seller, but the right size for me. I basically got 4 for the price of one.

House parties with friends. You get control over the drink selection, and there's no need to shout over air horns!

Hang-drying laundry. This works out to about $10/month in savings, but the smaller eco-footprint is where it's at. Clothes last longer and it's easier to follow up with proper organization than just loading everything into a basket and forgetting about it.

Live on bus lines. I walk 10 minutes to a bus stop that drops me off 10 minutes from work. 350 sqft studios downtown are $1050 per month. My mortgage and HOA dues are roughly the same for a unit twice as big. I'm building equity, too. When I was looking at the place, the bus route was a qualifying criterion for my move. One look out the window on any given day at the daily car accidents remind me that I don't miss driving.

Don't compromise if you have time! I'm writing to my supervisor about why we shouldn't use certain business accounts for office supplies. The argument against me is that they save money on some things and spend more on others in a giant compromise. The problem is that I'm looking at data that we still come out spending 40% more than necessary. You can either spend time working to pay for things, or spend time saving money. This applies to me for groceries: I know what's worth it at Costco vs other stores, and visit 3 different places to get the best prices. Then again, I have the time to do so, and get to torment my wife along the way with fart sounds and car sound effects and everything.




Tuesday, March 12, 2019

March Ballin



I had to invent my own theme song for how paid I'mma be this month. This is a PSA that if you got paid Friday March 1st and you're on a bi-weekly pay schedule, you will get THREE checks this month and one other month in 2019. I also filed taxes this last weekend and am expecting another paycheck and a half. Our orange leader's tax reform shafted a lot of people who were planning on their usual tax return numbers, but us frugal folks aren't too roughed up. Disappointed, but not in financial crisis, right?

I have two thoughts on tax refunds. One is that a refund means you overpaid taxes the whole year, and the federal government got an interest-free loan from you. If you have unlocked the key to the universe and know exactly how much in taxes to have withheld over the year to end up at $0, then investing that money is better. In my case, if I knew the secret, my $1800 refund would be $1980 if I had invested every cent into my Vanguard account at 10% in 2018. The other thought is that I respect people who take the more convenient option of having extra deductions during the year and do impactful things with their yearly refunds. Well, more impactful than our blinged-out Moet-pourer at the top of the post.

image from johnlund.com
If my refund is what the software said it would be, half of it is going to an extra mortgage payment. The remaining money will go towards upgrading the house. The fan was $30, but labor to install it could be $400. I just paid $100 for over $1500 worth of eco-friendly cork flooring for my whole living room, including gas to pick it up. If I'm patient with OfferUp and Craigslist, I can get better blinds for the two windows in my unit for < $100. So far, all of these pursuits are investments and will add value to the home. You may be rolling your eyes at my corny dedication to investment with the windfall, but I also spent a large chunk on something super frivolous: a PS4 Pro. My current system works fine, and this new one won't allow me to play new games or anything; it's a graphical upgrade and runs quieter.

Wednesday, March 6, 2019

Keep raising the wage floor!

Products with integrity...
According to TheGuardian, Amazon raised the minimum wage across warehouses and Whole Foods stores to $15. One of the main arguments against raising wages is always that hours will be cut. So, Whole Foods cut working hours to compensate. All of this is predictable behavior, but at the same time, Yahoo Finance says, "Thanks to the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), Amazon’s federal tax responsibility is 21% (down from 35% in previous years). But with the help of tax breaks, according to corporate filings, Amazon won’t be paying a dime to Uncle Sam despite posting more than $11.2 billion in profits in 2018."

So, Whole Foods, a store whose workers can't realistically afford to buy their own goods, will cut hours, meaning their (generally high-earning) patrons will be waiting longer for service. One user mentioned having to make room for employee shoppers who are gathering goods for home delivery orders. The long-con here is that customers with time constraints will then switch to Prime Fresh and get Whole Foods delivered to them. I won't be surprised if Amazon beats $11.2B this year, but no one is doing anything useful with those profits. I think the argument against raising wages comes with the complete acceptance that companies will behave this way, but the largest ones really don't have to, not with such huge coffers.

Shout out to Trader Joes for having happy employees who, while not millionaires by any stretch, can at least afford to shop at their own stores. In the same way you can't leave Costco without muffins, I can't leave TJs without lava cakes.

Thursday, January 31, 2019

January 2019 = VR

Holy moley Angelina Jolie in a kimono no obi! I recently finished up Horizon: Zero Dawn, which required me to sprint through a ~5 hour main quest line on Ultra Hard New Game +. It was nice to get the story all at once instead of spacing it out over dozens of machine-hunting and sidequests.

Finishing a AAA title always gives me satisfaction and the most first world problem dilemma: what do I play next? This usually results in a week of avid tv or movie streaming while I mull over what game I'm going to complete next. This time while I do that, I get to spend time with my latest acquisition: PS VR. This system is better than I could have imagined. 
I'm gonna getcha!
Virtual Reality is one of those things where doing something mundane like throwing a tennis ball between your hands provides much more entertainment than the real thing. I usually think about the physics and programming involved to do these everyday things realistically and it sends my mind spinning. Growing up, we saw wireframes and random geometric objects that were usually supposed to convey hacking in 3d or a war simulator. Most recently, in Black Panther, that Vibranium-sand that opened the movie with a legend that turned out to be a real Wakandan invention. Err, I guess that was AR (augmented reality), but it was an interactive digital model, so nyah. Anyway, the real VR product is loads better. It's really hard to convey in words and 2d pictures the thrill of solving puzzles by physically moving your body to get a better vantage point, or dodging attacks or even tilting virtual objects and moving your face closer to see details. The gameplay doesn't need to be complex to be enjoyable in VR if you're like me and are wowed by the tech itself.

CoD: Jackal Assault doesn't even let you
do pilot controls...F MINUS
There are at least 200 PS VR titles of varying quality. I don't do horror, so that cuts out half of the selection, and that leaves puzzle games with almost no art direction. Low polygon count and tech specs don't necessarily mean the game has to look ugly; an art director coordinates that stuff. Then there are the must have VR titles: Astrobot: Rescue Mission, The Playroom and Beat Saber.

The Playroom VR is free to download and comes with a set of multiplayer games and even has a trophy list! In one of the titles, the VR headset player is a monster who is stomping through town (the player headbuts obstacles) while up to 4 controller players run for their lives across the city. The tables turn when they get to a platform and huck items at the monster's face. In another title, the VR player is supposed to aim their flashlight on ghosts to scare them away while whoever's looking at the TV can describe where the ghosts are. And that's another thing: all of the titles I've played have a TV display at the same time the VR person is in the headset, which enables multiplayer and gives observers more to watch than a fool with a glowing face.

Then we get to Astrobot: Rescue Mission, which sets the standard for VR. JapanStudio has created a family-friendly cute Mario alternative. This game plays like any of the 3d Mario games, except with VR enhancements like perspective puzzles and hidden items that will have to constantly looking around. The graphics are solid, the colors are bright, the music is good, and the game is stable. I haven't seen any glitches and the game is incredibly user-friendly. This game has really, REALLY cool boss fights and my wife and I are trying to space out our sessions so that we can savor the experience.


I bought this rig after playing Beat Saber, which is the other killer app for PSVR. In the headset, you are dodging walls and slicing boxes with dual light sabers to cool electronic beats. Anyone watching you will see that you're dancing, and it's quite amazing to see two genres that emerge from the same actions, depending on perspective. It's like a horror movie that's a comedy if narrated from a different character's perspective.


Other than VR, I wrapped up a few smaller developer title and started playing a game that's been missing for 10 years: Onrush. Onrush is the new Burnout. This is a car game that forgoes racing and instead encourages you to destroy other drivers to win. OnRush captures the sense of speed really well, and there is no racing in it: instead, there are objectives like hitting targets to prolong a countdown, keep speed inside a zone while fending off attackers, or knocking opponents into traffic and other wholesome ideas. Onrush was one of the free PS+ games in December 2018, and is fun as hell!



Thursday, January 17, 2019

Winter break Pt 2 ft superhero movies

Avengers promo? They have promos all the time.
The listed regular price of $22.99 never happens.
So, I got a Sinemia membership, which is one of those subscriptions where you can see x movies for x dollars per year. You go to Fandango and check your theater for seats, sign into the Sinemia app and manually enter the movie showtime, upon which a credit card number is generated, which you go back and enter on Fandango to get your tickets. At this point, you are charged about $3 and Sinemia pays for the rest. When you show your confirmation email to get in at the theater, you also sign into the movie through the Sinemia app. It's a bit convoluted, but even with the not-really-hidden surcharges, you're shelling out ~$6 for a primetime showing. Not a bad deal with some patience and reading.


Anyway, my first experience got me into a showing of Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, which was a great way to round out Black 2018. Like (my previous review of) Dragon Quest XI, the movie was a living, breathing comic book. After coming off JRPG stories of insisting that darkness is bad and light is good without really explaining why, Spiderman deals with sympathetic villains and twisted 'good guys,' and my brain was almost stuck in the mire of Japanese character writing. This movie hits quick and good, and knows its place in its own world as well as the real world. It does a recap of Spiderman's existence, and kind of eye rolls its way through a 1-minute backstory. Isn't this like the 5th retelling of Spiderman in the last 15 years? 2 of the 5 lyrics in the 90s cartoon tell you all you need to know about Peter Parker: 'radioactive Spider-man.' Anyhow, I don't want to spoil the movie, but one thing I appreciated was that while 15 year old Miles Morales had awkward moments, that wasn't the entirety of his character. It's nice to acknowledge that teenagers are complex human beings, too.

Dolph Lundgren as an advisor? Sure.
The next night, I saw Awkwardman, which had all the teenage awkwardness and bland morality to be expected of a movie with a high budget. King. Kill king. Get power. Power good. Jokes. The score reminded me of Man of Steel in the sense that the one-song soundtrack was great...but it felt like one continuous song. It manifests itself when whoever is Black Manta decides to be Black Manta, which I thought would be his theme. (Dude! Sick!) And then, you hear the three-note theme when he's preparing to do something sinister. (G'hee! Awesome!) And then he disappears for an hour of the long-ass film to some inter-kingdom squabble, and you hear the theme again. At that point, it's just a rogue theme that plays whenever the hell it feels like it. Rupert Gregson-Williams, who previously kicked our asses with the Wonder Woman soundtrack, just wasn't utilized here. I know that the effects will look great in 4k, but at my showing, the actors' heads floated on bodies that weren't theirs, and there were loads of awkward effects like putting the trident up to his face. What the fuck? Point it at someone, it's a weapon! Lastly, the giant sea creature that gave that awkward-ass roar when Arthur...ehh...wins at the end and makes a generic-ass speech. I laughed a lot during Aquaman, and definitely enjoyed the experience. I'll be watching it again, but it was awkward as I've ever seen!

Liam Neeson approves!
In gaming news, I started Horizon Zero Dawn, and boy am I glad I waited. In spring in 2017, I had reached a divergence of this game, Far Cry Primal and Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I was pretty sure they'd be similar experiences, and ultimately chose to be disappointed by BotW and pleasantly surprised by FC Primal. Horizon Zero Dawn is pretty much Far Cry: Primal, though, and that's not a bad thing. The hunting and gathering are pretty minimalized and you spend more time fighting the dino-machines and conversing than preparing for your journey. Crafting is pretty quick and you can bypass it with money, but that requires more stopping to fight on the way to your mission destination. I paused through the main story and have been doing side quests and stuff and got back to the main story after a week or so of other stuff. Just when I was about to make fun of the story for having a really predictable twist, the scenes start to elaborate and this is where it's really shining. The world was destroyed by human greed and overambition, sure. The plan to save humanity is where the writing in HZD establishes itself and I'd encourage everyone to play it.

Other than that, I have been really thoughtless about frugal gaming. While HZD was only $10, I had an instant love affair with PS VR and splurged on a used bundle. Going forward, I'm going to challenge myself to go as long as I can without spending money on games this year. Foot, prepare to meet Mouth at a later date!

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Thanksgaming + Winter controller break

Final Fantasy Type-0 HD was on sale for $10, and I have almost no experience with fringe FF games. It's definitely a relic of its time, with cutscenes upon cutscenes of emotionless dolls that pepper little bits of action. The game was originally a PSP title and is structured for short play sessions. I might be used to new games that tell you everything about where to go and what to do, but I keep getting lost in the middle of missions because I have a short attention span, and this game is just not sucking me in. There's a main cast of 13 characters, all named after poker cards, and you can swap them in and out in groups of three. I might eventually develop a taste for this, but there are more pressing games to complete.

My wife has been plugging away at the Kingdom Hearts: The Story So Far, which is a 9-game anthology. She's beaten two of nine so far: Kingdom Hearts and Chain of Memories, which has shuffled cards into the action RPG mechanics. Weird. She's now onto KH 2. This one has lots of Disney IP including Tron, Pirates of the Caribbean, and 1950's Mickey Mouse Land (or whatever you call it) . The characters have more variety to the sounds they make during combat, so hearing Wifey play while I do other things is a lot less annoying.

I have slowed down a bit on my favorite smaller-developer game of the year: Dead Cells. I'm not sure yet if the hardest trophy is the no-hit boss trophies, or beating the game on the hardest difficulty. I'm trying to do as many as I can because the game is about to have an overhaul patch that will make profound changes to gameplay. UPDATE: you can quit out in the middle of boss fights and the game will save, so I cheesed 3 of the 4 no-hit boss kills. I can definitely say that the harder difficulties are the harder trophies.

Dead Cells also came to the Switch, along with no other original titles. I think I'm mostly underwhelmed by the Switch because I have the Wii U and PS4. I think someone who missed out on the last 5 years of games has every reason in the world to get one. Me? Call me when Metroid Prime 4 rears it's gorgeous blonde head. No, really. I emailed a distress beacon to Samus Aran. One of my coworkers brought her Switch and Smash Bros Ultimate to the holiday party, and it was off the chain, so there's that!

Moving on, I started Gravity Rush 2, which has quite an amazing color palette. I don't know what to call it, but it uses magenta as its reference point and it's gorgeous. The game's maps used to feature several connected cities that you could fly/fall through, and in this sequel, they've added another axis. The result is that cities are now in different levels of the atmosphere, and it makes exploration vertical and horizontal.

Yall couldna added a brotha in this?
December was pretty much the month of Dragon Quest XI, which is the epitome of a JRPG. Silent protagonist to save the world plot, eventually ending up at a boss in space that takes up more than the whole screen? Check. Overcoming battles via brute force grinding? Darkness as the protagonist without explaining what's so bad about darkness? No black characters? Triple check.

JRPG/anime tropes aside, the game delivered on everything I wanted with one exception: the music is sub par. Instead of recorded orchestra with a proper punch and full range, you're treated to some corny synthesized trumpets and boring percussion that all has a childish feel to it, and it's all super repetitive over this 100-hour journey. Most games have the decency to have a few regular battle themes, a sub-boss theme and a boss theme, at the very least. This game has that count, but it's also almost three times as long as your average, and the boss music is bad.

Even nuns gotta get loose in Lonalulu
There's some variety in the towns, which are each based on a real-world culture. The beachtown, Lonalulu, has a kahuna and NPCs greet you with mahalo. Hotto, at the foot of Mt Huji, has citizens that all speak in haiku. Citizens of Gondolia all speak broken English that is peppered with ma bella, ciao and bene. Also, characters drink and are drunk, including nuns, and there are some side stories of loss and grief that are well done.

Visually, DQ XI is playing in a living, breathing anime world designed and colored by Akira Toriyama. It is absolutely gorgeous, and both this and Dragon Ball Fighterz are two strong entries for best art direction of 2018, both from the same original artist. Toriyama likes to put characters' eyes close together, and I'm not sure what the intended effect is, but it's hard to take the game's more mature plots seriously. All the men look like their names are Cody, and I'm sorry but a cross-eyed dragon isn't scary. The women in this game, however, are all ridiculously hot. Like, problematically gorgeous. There's something in the water in the world of Erdrea. There's a subquest to 'get puff-puff' in every town from a beautiful woman, and one of your characters gets multiple suits of questionably-effective bikini-style armor. I think the cherry on top was that to get the game's true ending, you beat a dungeon and are granted a choice of boons, one of which is to marry your best friend. Like...a genie has to make that happen?

Krystalinda, cast your spell on me!
To its credit, DQ XI doesn't waste your time with clumsy romance, and there are at least as many...dudesels...as there are damsels in distress. Also, the two top damage dealers in your party are women, so there's that.




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 ...