Most of the time, I’m not really one to watch people play video games. I don’t really enjoy Let’s Plays, I don’t really enjoy watching most people stream, and I even have a bit of a hard time sitting around while other people play a game nearby. This is because I have a very firm grasp of game mechanics, how to succeed at most games, and am easily frustrated by what looks like, in my eyes, inefficiency. I don’t get really backseat driver-y with video games, but I can feel my blood pressure rise as someone scrolls past an item in their inventory that they’re looking for or that they know is worthless and yet won’t throw away. It is my own personal hell, to watch someone play a game I know how to do well when they are struggling because they either haven’t grasped a core mechanic as solidly as the game requires or because their level of general disorganization is making their life difficult. I feel physical pain whenever I watch someone play a video game that involves a degree of inventory management and they refuse to manage their inventory in any kind of sensible or logical way. My heart cannot take this vibes-based “do I keep this pile of junk I’m going to throw away in ten minutes?” type play because it inevitably leads to the player messing around in menus for ten minutes while they try to figure out what precious junk they’re going to keep this time only to toss it the instant they find a cool new gun or whatever. It’s easier to handle on YouTube, with Let’s Plays, since I can just skip forward past things that will be frustrating to me, but that’s not an option for stuff like streamed video games and most people don’t want “helpful tips” from their viewers. Which I would never provide unless solicited, of course. I’d rather be miserable than make someone play a game the way I want them to rather than the way they want to.
Continue readingMonth: October 2025
Kirby and the Fogotten Land + Star-Crossed World Was Short But A Lot Of Fun
I played through the Kirby and the Forgotten Land Switch 2 expansion/DLC finally. I thought I’d get it right around my birthday at the end of August, when it came out, and play it immediately, but I was super hooked on Final Fantasy 14 stuff then and had my friends over, so I didn’t really need something to do at the time. Now, though, as I’ve been taking a break from FF14, that made it into the number two spot on my list, right after beating Donkey Kong Bananza. It took a couple nights, maybe five to seven hours total, to get through all of the expansion and find out what was contained within that Star-Crossed World, but I had a fun time doing it. I was incredibly out of touch with the game and it took a few attempts to really get back into the swing of it since I’d forgotten how most of the power-up systems and abilities worked, but I quickly figured it out again. It also helped that one of the abilities is basically the most powerful one you can get and while the utility of the other abilities might make them more useful in the right circumstances, about ninety percent of the expansion involved me using the Morph Sword power. I did look into upgrading it, once I remembered how all the currencies worked, but it didn’t really need an upgrade and the only way to get some of those special currencies is to run the boss rush type tournament things again and again and that’s not exactly my idea of a fun time. Especially because I’m still pretty rusty at the game, even after beating the expansion, and would struggle to take on some of the more difficult fights I did back when I was at the height of my power towards the end of the core content.
Continue readingTaking A Break From Not Playing Final Fantasy 14 To Enjoy TEA Time
After barely playing Final Fantasy for a week (especially if you exclude the time I spent making alternate characters), I returned to it last night for a few weekly tasks and my weekly Ultimate Raid event. Our group had advanced through the first portion of The Epic of Alexander well enough that we started hitting the second portion, known as Limit Cut, that requires a huge amount of coordination and practice to execute well and doing it poorly will quickly get everyone killed. Last week, when we couldn’t do much practice due to weird lag and connectivity issues between literally everyone and the game’s servers, we turned instead to a simulator that lets you run mechanics with a group of other players in order to get the coordination down without having to fight your way through the whole thing every single time. That way, if you messed it up, it wouldn’t hurt as much to have to re-do it. We spent a bunch of time practicing it last week (as of writing this) and were still struggling to get through the mechanic since it requires a decent amount of situational aware, perfect execution, and consideration of where your allies are placed in relation to yourself. Now, the simulator isn’t a perfect recreation since some parts of the mechanic didn’t function properly and not accounting for the extra steps you needed to take could get you killed in the simulator while it wouldn’t hurt you at all in the real thing, so there was a little bit lost in translation when we finally made the jump from the simulator to the real thing yesterday (as of writing this), but we managed to get through the real thing much more easily than we did in the simulator.
Continue readingA Return To Form With The Rotten Labyrinth
As this slowly becomes my most-consistent Tabletop Group (it benefits from having 6 players and only needing 3 to actually play), The Rotten Labyrinth has returned to high-form with our second repeat session post-taking-a-break. We had it all this past week! There was a combat encounter that almost went very poorly and likely would have ended differently if not for a lucky crit by one of the players! We had a bevy of traps, some avoided and some carelessly tripped! We had our first instance of the party being split! We had a creative application of some magic based on something the party had learned previously! We had glorious treasure, plenty of close-calls, and a dedication to the party’s chosen mission the likes of which I had not seen before! Everything went exactly according to plan, by which I mean that the party alternated between fucking around and finding out, and driving towards what they thought was their best path forward! Unfortuately, the first floor of this labyrinth is a maze and they may have overestimated their ability to get where they want to go by moving in cardinal directions! They found some dead-ends, skipped some interesting paths forward, and flirted with multiple instances of learning something about the labyrinth without ever pursuing it further. All-in-all, it was a pretty fun session! The first one I’ve run in months that acually used almost the whole time set aside for us to play. Today, I’m very worn out from all that talking and game-running, but I’m excited to see where they go next now that they know simply walking (map) west and (map) south will not get them to their destination.
Continue readingI Cannot Sleep For The Imagined Sound Of Roof Work
My roof was mostly replaced today. There is a bit, the only stretch of roof actually visible to me, that remains only partly finished. It seems such a small thing to be left incomplete, like an afterthought or something forgotten rather than work deliberately left until later, but I am not privvy to the minds of these roofers. I could only begin to guess why anything happened the way it did today, and it would all be me grasping at figments of my imagination and incidental observations. I did not speak to them. They did not speak to me. I barely even observed their work, instead measuring their progress in the tromp of feet above me, the grinding hum of an air compressor somewhere out of sight, the staccato five-beat pattern of their nail guns, and the occasional appearance of a worker using my balcony as a staging ground for moving materials from the ground to the roof. This happened twice–my day interrupted by the expected knock at the door and an apologetic smile from a man who probably would have felt more comfortable climbing a ladder to use my balcony rather than being told to move through the apartment building, and I still do not understand why it had to happen this way. I didn’t mind the interruption. It wasn’t like I was doing any deep or focused work, distracted as I was by the constant noise of their activity and the rattle of my apartment building as an unknown number of men walked across my roof. It was just odd, this strange set of circumstances that led to me being home all day and my brief, wordless interactions with this poor, uncomfortable roofer. None of my neighbors interracted with the roofers at all. Only me. And even then, all I did was open a door for the roofer and then lock it behind him once he was finished passing sheets of plywood up to his coworkers. It was as distant a remove as could be possible when your roof is being replaced and your balcony is needed as a halfway point for passing materials up.
Continue readingMixed Emotions About Doing Different Activities Instead Of Final Fantasy 14
Not playing Final Fantasy 14 for a few days has been a weird experience. I wrote Monday’s post about taking a break from FF14 before I actually put it into effect. I stayed up pretty late on Sunday night to wrap up the Dawntrail expansion and solidified my decision to take a break betwen then and writing my blog post the following day during breaks at work. Then I left work early so I could participate in my Monday night Ultimate raid practice, spent a few hours making alternate characters on my now-open server to combat my anxiety, spent a few hours last night working on the final raid in the Alexander Savage raid series my group is doing, and then spent another hour and a half after that hanging out online and unlocking an activity that I was planning to do tonight. I haven’t really played all that much less than normal, at least looking at it on the basis of daily participation. I did, however, stop playing FF14 every night with time enough to still do other things before bed, which I didn’t used to do. And tonight I’m not actually doing the activity I unlocked because I was at work until my personal cut-off time (8:30pm, a time I will not work past except in the case of emergencies) and had to do my grocery shopping after that because my car is going to be trapped in my apartment’s underground garage for a few days while the parking lot is filled up by the roofing company that will be spending the next few days replacing the rooves of my apartment building and the one next door that shares a parking lot. So I got home super late, ate dinner late, showered late, and was too miserable and tired to want to hop online for thirty minutes or whatever. So I’m writing this instead.
Continue readingDonkey Kong Bananza Has A Lot Of Post-Game Appeal
I do not think I’ve ever played a game where I’ve been faked out about the actual end of the game as many times as Donkey Kong Banaza has done to me. There was the ending the game told me was coming from the very beginning, there was the ending I expected from not long after the start of the game, there was the ending after that which I didn’t really expect but thought was kind of fun, there was the ending immediately after that which was exciting and a little over-the-top (in a fun way that very much fit with the game up to that point) and now there’s a new ending I’ve yet to reach that might just be setup for the DLC? I don’t know. It’s impossible to tell what this ending might be other than a pretense in order to let you continue playing the game [this is exactly what it was]. I don’t really know. I’ve got more game left to play, after all, and the story for this part is thinner than ever so I can’t really guess at anything beyond the clearly stated reason everything is continuing to happen. It’s a wild, silly experience that hasn’t damped my fun at any point. The entire series of sequential endings was a joy. The only downside to all that was how much more time I spent playing the game before I finally went to bed. I did expect to be done with the game after a single night, though, so now I’ve clearly got at least a couple more nights of it to go yet. Then I can do the Kirby DLC and, after that, finally start Final Fantasy Tactics. Or whatever other game has come out that feels more urgent.
Continue readingWeird Anxiety Spikes Are Still Less Trouble Than My Depression Was
Two months into my current dose of antidepressants and I’m pleased to say that my old misery/constant depression has stayed consistently gone. I’ve had my ups and downs during this period, my sleepless weeks that make the whole world seem darker, but it has been a weight off my shoulders to not have to fight myself every step of the way. Well, mostly. I’m still fighting myself occasionally, in ways that I was only sort of prepared for, and that by only one weirdly intense interaction with someone and the constant refrain of people complaining about weird increases in anxiety. Turns out, one of the side effects I’m experiencing is irregular but intense anxiety spikes. My brain will pick one specific thing and get incredibly bent out of shape about it no matter what that that thing is or what I tell myself. The first one was about a weird experience I had in a discord server and how I should have responded, where I worked myself up like I haven’t in a decade despite my best efforts to calm down and work through it myself. The second one was about my birthday, though I didn’t recognize it for a strange anxiety spike given how negatively I normally feel about contemplating my birthday. Currently, I’m struggling to contain the anxiety I feel about knowing that the world population status on Final Fantasy 14 has changed as part of today’s update (the day I wrote this) and the intense feeling that I need to take this time to make alternate characters because there’s no telling when the world will close again or how long it will be until it opens up again in the future. I’ve had a couple other spikes here or there, but they were all easier to work through: things that took a few calming breathes or waiting a few minutes for my mind to calm down rather than the day or days that these other ones are taking.
Continue readingTime To Mix Things Up A Bit And Play Less Final Fantasy 14 Before I Burn Out Completely
Well, I did it. I finished the base expansion of Dawntrail in Final Fantasy 14. I’ve got a few patches worth of Main Scenario Quests to do yet (twenty-five quests, according to the wiki that has a little quest progress bar on it) and plenty of other content on my immediate to-do list (some big “Alliance” raids, various exploration zones, whatever it is you do to get good gear once you’re basically “current,” and tons of crafting stuff), but I think now is the time for me to take a break. I’m very tired, if I’m going to be honest. Not of Final Fantasy 14, just in general. I have had a lot of fun and continue to have tons of fun, but I need something without the sense of urgency that comes with most Final Fantasy 14 stuff. I’m not going to forbid myself from playing it or anything like that, I’m just going to give myself a nudge to do other things instead of constantly pushing myself towards Final Fantasy 14. Part of me wants to take a complete break–stop playing altogether–but I don’t want to bail on the people who’re depending on me for various group activities. Sure, static groups sometimes need to replace people temporarily, but things rarely go as well when they do and it would just be temporary. I doubt it would last more than two weeks before I felt the urge to log on for one reason or another. Plus, I actually want to keep doing that stuff, even if it isn’t the most fun or the most rewarding and is, perhaps, the most tiring stuff I do in the game. I want to do it. I am just also very tired.
Continue readingEye Have A Problem Once Again
I have been back at work, doing my usual overtime, for a week and I’m already worn out again. This time, it’s not just the usual burnout stuff (though I’m sure that hasn’t helped any). This time, a significant part of why I feel so worn out and tired is because my eye problems are flaring up again. Or maybe it’s “eyes” problem. It’s the same problem, but this time it’s flaring up in both eyes at the same time. The old familiar irritation, sensitivity, itchiness, and inability to resolve any of those in a quick manner has left me feeling drop-dead exhausted from the constant sensation that is having eyes right now. Each of them itches like I’ve got gunk in the corner of my eyes that needs cleaning out and every time I blink I feel like there’s something trapped underneath my eyelid. It’s a frustrating pair of ghost sensations that won’t stop no matter what I do because there’s no gunk and nothing in my eye other than the irritation (and maybe some ulceration, but if I see that, then it’s time to call my eye doctor and get them checked out again rather than just treat it at home with extra drops). It’s wearing me down completely, this inescapable, unignoreable set of sensations, and I’m ready for it to stop. The only relief I get from them is when I’m sleeping, so I’m very hopeful that the double-vaccination I’m getting today (flu and COVID) will knock me on my ass for a couple days while my body recovers from the vaccinations and my eyes recover from their current irritation.
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