No new Infrared Isolation chapter today. If you want to know why, you can just read yesterday’s post. Dealing with the folks who inspired that post, in the days before writing that post and the days following it, has drained me of pretty much every bit of extra energy and willpower I had. So I’m skipping today and just trying to desperately rest in hopes of breaking out of this continuing spiral of awfulness that has been my experience of 2023 so far. Honestly, there’s not much left that can do sour or bad, so hopefully it’ll stop before much longer. In the meantime, I’m going to play Minecraft, as much Splatoon as I can manage, and then try to enjoy a game of Star Wars 5e with the remaining members of my TTRPG group.
Splatoon
The Latest Update to Splatoon 3 Looks Pretty Chill
A new season has begun in Splatoon 3. I haven’t been playing the game much lately, and the idea of new stages, game modes, and weaponry doesn’t really appeal to me in the “let’s try out some new cool stuff!” kind of way, but it might just get me back into the game anyway. After all, it’s always been fun when I haven’t been getting disconnected and put in time out as a result. The core gameplay loop is pretty fun and fairly low-stakes since the matches only last a few minutes, so the only thing that ever really gets on my nerves is the communication issues. Sure, there’s still some issues that the game’s creators need to address by improving communication overall, but my ISP also shares some of the blame at this point and there’s not much I can do about it unless I want to call so I can get sales pitches thrown at me for an hour while I get transferred between various departments multiple times before someone just as tired of the rigmarole as I am finally confirms that they don’t offer any service plans that include what I want. And I would rather do just about anything else with my time than that.
Continue readingPreparing for Pokémon and Another Splatfest
As I’m writing this, we’re a week away from the release of the next entry in the main line of the Pokémon franchise and, to mark this release, Splatoon 3 has a new Splatfest where the theme at hand is which Pokémon type makes for the best partner. The three types involved are Water, Fire, and Grass, representing the three starter Pokémon that will be available in the new game. All of which I have incredibly mixed feelings about since my usual option (Grass) is turning into another antropomorphic cat according to the recent leaks. While I know it’s possible that the leaks aren’t actually leaks but clever fakes, everyone I know has been expecting the new grass type to turn into an anthropomorphic cat this entire time (myself included), so I’m having a difficult time convincing myself that there is still hope I can cling to that we’ll get a cool tiger or something instead of ANOTHER ANTRO CAT. There’s so many of those suckers already and that sort of design doesn’t really appeal to me (though I know it appeals to lots of other people) even when it doesn’t feel as played-out as it does in Pokémon.
Continue readingThe Splatoon Comm Error Saga Continues
After spending a week struggling to find every single possible issue that could explain why I kept getting an error claiming my Switch had lost connection to my router, I spent the first twenty-four hours of the most recent Splatfest trying to enjoy myself between instances of getting temporarily banned from continuing to play. Nothing I’d done had worked. It had maybe decreased the frequencey of the issues, which was probably enough to hide the problem in the week leading up to the Splatfest, but with all of the heavy traffic and multiple hours of playing that weekend, the lost connection issues resurfaced. I spent time on Saturday doing more research, once I’d gotten so sick of being banned that I decided to call it quits for the night, but it was one of my friends who gave me the tidbit I needed to confirm the actual source of the issue.
Continue readingThe Second Coming of Splatfest
I’m writing today’s post in the brief period between the end of my work day and the start of the September Splatfest. I’m excited to play a bunch of Splatoon 3 with my friends, especially if the fixes I’ve done to my Switch’s internet connection managed to eliminate all of the wireless errors I was getting. It would be amazing to be able to play for multiple hours without getting kicked out of a match because my switch hiccupped hard enough that it lost connection with the internet. I’m still a bit nervous, though, since I’ve been too busy, sick, and tired to do much video gaming the last few days and I’m not sure if the one night of testing I’ve done was a fluke or a reflection of the fixes I did. Only time will tell, unfortunately, but I’ve set myself a pretty relaxed schedule for the next few days so I’ll be able to walk away if I wind up getting connection errors that leave me feeling frustrated.
Continue readingSplatoon 3 Is A Bunch Of Wholesome Joy
In the days since Splatoon 3 came out (keep in mind I write these a week before they post), I’ve played the game more and less than I expected to. The relatively smooth and straight-forward nature of the game lends itself to pick-up-and-play gaming, with me fitting in a couple matches by myself or some time working through the challenges in story mode into whatever spare fifteen minutes I have. At the same time, the often-times frustrating nature of repetitive losses or getting stuck on a challenge that requires a level of skill you just don’t have can make the game incredibly easy to put down. Over all, though, I’d say the fun, light-hearted nature of the game and relatively swift matches tips the scales so that I find myself enjoying my time with the game far more fequently than I find myself putting the game aside in frustration. In my experience with online, mostly player versus player games, that’s about as good a result as you could ever hope for.
Continue readingA Splatfestival Of Friendship
I spent almost 12 solid hours on Saturday the 27th of August playing Splatoon 3’s free demo with two of my friends. I’m talking maybe 30-ish minutes of breaks in there, though there was a bit more downtime considering the average queue time for a match was about 45 seconds and I kept getting booted out of matches right around the top of the hour. Any match that started within 2 minutes of a new hour, before or after, would end prematurely with me getting kicked out due to a communication error. It was too dependable to be an internet issue on my end (not to mention my voice call didn’t drop once), so it was clearly some kind of odd communication bug. Aside from that and the way that Team Scissors got absolutely massacred by the unbalanced Tricolor Battles, it was an amazing and fun experience.
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