Hey, everyone. No earth-shattering news this week. Let’s get right into it.

Personal

Slowly but surely, my grind continues. My girlfriend has been incredibly supportive throughout some recent disappointing news, so I’ve been fortunate to hang onto a sense of relative comfort and stability. My exercise is keeping on, the diet, what have you. Since I’m such a media junkie, why not discuss some of the things I’ve been focusing my time on?

I’ve been making my way through The Boys‘s fourth season, and it’s been pretty solid. I found seasons two and three to be heavy handed in their political analogies, in addition to occasionally being overly self-indulgent and stretching the storyline thin. I haven’t been as annoyed by those traits in season four, with the exception of them still repeating and dancing around the same character conflicts and walking developments back. I get the distinct feeling in the back of my head that season five might be the last one – maybe six – so hopefully we’ll start seeing some things of major consequence soon. After finishing this season, I’d like to return to Tulsa King, starring Sylvester Stallone. It’s not an exceptional series so far, but it’s entertaining enough, and Stallone’s charisma still feels effortless.

The bulk of my time has been spent playing video games. My most recent focus has been Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime for the Nintendo DS. I actually beat the game a couple of years ago, but enjoyed it enough to where I wanted to complete everything in it. The game’s world is so colorful, delightful, and pure that there’s almost this odd sense of “owing” it to the game. Hard to explain. I’m a completionist to begin with, but this one is particularly satisfying. It could also have to do with the fact I always wanted to play the game as a kid, so maybe I’m making up for lost time in every way possible.

I was curious about Miami Law after seeing it in Nintendo Power as well. This is a DS game too, and one of the many visual novel/adventure game experiences that brought the genre to a wider audience. This one is simultaneously straightforward and a bit of an oddity. On the surface it’s an enjoyable if unexceptional police procedural thriller in the vein of Miami Vice or CSI, but it being developed by the Japanese company Hudson Soft (of Bomberman fame) makes it more interesting to scrutinize. The DS was an opportunity to reach a huge casual audience, particularly in highly populated western countries, so developers were inclined to tap into that goldmine by appealing to their cultural sensibilities. The game’s genre is obviously accessible as is, and Americans do love their crime dramas. What could go wrong? Well, in an oversaturated market, it’s more about what really needs to go right, and it seems Miami Law didn’t wow its intended audience.

Nonetheless, I have a soft spot for it. It’s like this weird little pet game I have that no one else knows about. If it came up, I would happily talk about it, but at the same time I’m too embarrassed to show it to my guests. This is another one I’ve actually beaten years ago. The game’s narrative structure comprises two protagonists of which you’re periodically asked to choose who you want to follow. These paths are mutually exclusive, so you can’t see all of the dialogue and scenes on one playthrough, even though the overall story is the same between the paths. For my first playthrough, I played as whoever I thought had more interesting conflicts going on at that moment, assuming that I would unlock a scenario chart upon completing the game that allowed me to know which scenes I missed. Silly me. Nothing of the sort. Naturally, I didn’t write my choices down, and I didn’t want to spend time replaying the game guessing at which scenes I hadn’t watched, so I put off a full look at the game until this year. I would like to review this game on finishing it, since it’s such an oddity.

I was a bit on a Digimon kick a few months back, and intended to marathon quite a few of their games, somehow forgetting that they’re all fucking exhausting. This began with Digimon Story: Lost Evolution, yet another DS game, and the third and final installment of the Digimon Story trilogy that I had loved growing up. The first two games were released in English as Digimon World DS and Digimon World DS: Dawn and Dusk Version for branding purposes. The third was only recently translated by fans in early 2023, so I was anxious to give it a go.

I won’t sugarcoat it: I think the game sucks. There’s too much to cover here, but the game is absolutely littered with bad design decisions, scrapped quality of life features, increased tedium, cut Digimon, and a paltry amount of new Digimon to even make the experience worthwhile on its own merit. The first two games absolutely had their flaws, but Lost Evolution doubles down on them in a manner that’s simply astounding. It’s not nostalgia speaking, either. I replayed the first two games in their entirety before Lost Evolution. It really is much, much worse. No shade thrown on the translators – they didn’t make the game, and I appreciate the chance to satisfy my curiosity. I want to do a review of this one as well, just to rant like a lunatic.

For Lost Evolution, I still had a fair amount of quests to clean up in the post-game. It’s particularly dull work since now every single quest is gotten from Digimon in your Farm, yet another example of doubling down on an obnoxious mechanic from the previous games. I just want to bury this game. I couldn’t stop myself from washing the taste down with something more palatable, so I began a new file in Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth, which is, in fact, the same team as the DS trilogy. Fortunately, they’ve grown their skills significantly and released a quite solid traditional turn-based RPG. I’m not too far in yet, still not having caught up to where I was previously. I abandoned that file because the developers chose to have the game’s internal clock run while in sleep mode, which means a single night of having Digimon in your farm makes them massively over leveled. I didn’t want such a compromised difficulty level, so I resolved to restart the game at some point.

A friend and I began Custom Robo V2, the second game in the titular series. We played through a fan translation of the first game a few months ago, and it’s looking like we might end up going through the whole series. We’re both huge fans of the GameCube installment, and while I have plenty of experience with Custom Robo Arena, he will also play through that for the first time soon. After V2, only the GBA entry will have escaped me, and that one certainly looks… interesting. It’s a shame Nintendo acts like they’re embarrassed of this series, as it’s pretty fun. The same friend and I also did a run of Star Fox 64, one of my all-time favorite games. It, almost literally, never gets old. My girlfriend is also watching me play through Majora’s Mask, which is roughly the tenth time for me and the first time for her. I wanted her to see the cool shit in it, but she wasn’t too into the idea of playing herself.

Other than that, I’ve just been grinding gems in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links for the next Rush box, and I’m similarly keeping afloat in the economy of Master Duel. In DL, my main decks are Solfachord and Wyrms, while in MD I’ve been enjoying playing Yubel for the first time. There’s definitely some baffling restrictions in some of the recent support, but any control-based strategy with a really cool-looking boss monster is good enough for me. I’d like to try other new archetypes like Centurion, but my pulls on the newest set have been cruel, and I don’t have any spare money to fix that right now. The balance of YGO as a whole continues to be absolutely fucked and pushing in even worse directions over time, so we might see a mass player exodus by the end of this year. It will be interesting to see how Konami responds. Would be nice to have the game ran by people who began as professional card game designers and not marketers. Oh well. Also, release more Solfachord support, etc.

Oh, I nearly forgot! I also resumed my old file of Tales of the Tempest. It’s a fucking horrid game. Assuming I finish it, it will easily end up on the list of the worst games I’ve ever completed. I began it on a Tales kick a while back in lieu of any of the console games being on sale at the time, and it’s pushing my patience as a completionist to the absolute limit. It’s so mind-numbingly boring that I question if I’ll even write a review for it, but at the same time I know that’s the only thing that could give value to my wasted time with it. God damn it. I also quickly discovered I permanently locked myself out of a 100% file due to a moronic quest cut-off point, so I can’t shake the feeling I might return for a second playthrough. I hope some day they cure this disease I have through methods other than a lobotomy.

Professional

I had a promising interview last Thursday that I thought I nailed. Apparently I was correct, as I received a response Friday that shared they really liked our conversation and had no criticisms of my performance. Naturally, I wasn’t hired. Undoubtedly a classic case of being passed up by someone with more experience for a job that would give me experience. Everyone knows it’s unfair, but here we are. I’m trying to remain optimistic as I seek other opportunities and I’m potentially scouted for a second wave of new hires by this most recent company, per their suggestion.

Public

The much-delayed Perfect Dark review is here. It’s not a great analysis of the game, as it will explain, but I thought my style and syntax was near its peak, so some may still enjoy reading it. Imports of my anime reviews continue to pile up, so check those out if you want.

Interestingly, I’ve just begun to link this blog to potential employers asking for a portfolio/writing samples. Not every one of them, mind, but those requesting works of a more casual nature. In such cases, I worry about the bland visuals of my site turning them away, but it’s still probably not worse than having no samples available at all.

That’s it. Tonight, I’ll be watching The Mummy for the first time. Yes, the Brendan Fraser one. It’s my girlfriend’s favorite movie, and she’s been wanting to share it with me since we started talking. Not sure what to expect, but I’m sure I’ll enjoy my time with her. The thing I’m worried about is I only can think of two generic ancient Egypt jokes. Something about the mummy’s curse, and something about walking like an Egyptian. Now, watch me do the latter on out of here.