Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: AAA

Triple AAA–Zzzzzzzzzzz, part two

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I’m not sure where to put this because I’m going to talk more about AAA v. indie games, but I want to jump of that into talking about how I think about things in general. And why I have felt so deeply while playing Schrödinger’s Call (Acrobatic Chirimenjako). Add to that why I feel like nothing playing most AAA games. Oh, and just to get even spicier, why I don’t like most soulslikes even though I adore most FromSoft games.

While I’m at it, I’ll make the connection between my preference for indie games over AAA games and my preference for indie movies (when I even watch them) over Hollywood movies. To be fair, the last–no, the second-to-last blockbuster movie I’ve seen is–well, no. Let me rephrase that. The last superhero movie I saw in the theater was The Last–er, Guardian sof the Galaxy, and much to my surprise, I really enjoyed it.

After that, I saw Knives Out, which was hyped to an unbelievable degree. And which I was quite looking forward to. Even after seeing the trailer, which I did not like. Look.  I went into the movie excited because I love Agatha Christie. I love huge ensemble whodunnits, and this was supposed to be the next big thing. When I saw the trailer, well, my enthusiasm dipped dramatically. All the cast members were excellent, but there was something amiss. I hated the way the trailer was cut, and I did not enjoy the dialogue at all.

I crashed while writing this, so I’m picking it up today. My sleep has been all over the damn place.

Back to Knives Out. I did not like the first movie by this direction. Rian Johnson. Brick. I found it pretentious, ponderous, and laborious. I did not enjoy one second of it, and I did not understand the hype at all.

I was willing to give him a chance with tihs movie because, well, I’m a slow learner in some ways. I so want a new Poirot (with less British colonialism, please or if it’s another Poirot, an actual Belgian actor), I was willing to overlook my initial doubts about the trailer. I enjoy an ensemble cast, and this one was star-studded. Yes, the trailer had highly-stylized dialogue and hyper-cuts that made me wince, but I tried to put that aside.

More doubts began to creep in when the director made this big deal about pleading with the reviewers not to give ‘the secret’ away. After watching the movie, I have no idea what he meant by that. If he meant the perp, well, I sussed that out the first time I laid eyes on them. I said, “This person did it”–whatever ‘it’ was, and I sincerely hoped it wasn’t the case.

But, alas, two painful hours later, it turned out to be exactly the case.

Look, the cast was fantastic. Jamie Lee Curtis chewing up the scenery gave me so much life. But that was the only thing I liked about the movie. I was so disappointed in the rest of the movie.


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What matters to me in gaming (and what doesn’t), part two

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Let’s talk more about everything that is wrong with gaming. It’s been a shit week, and it just seems to be getting worse. Plus, the weather is so gross. It’s been in the eighties to ‘feels like’ in the hundreds–which suuuuuuucks. It’s definitely summer, which means sticky slimy. And insects coming out to play. Bah. Let me get back to winter, please. I’m doubly mad that we skipped spring because I hate summer so much.

My brother taught me a really cool trick to help with CPU. I usually have about fifty tabs open–up to a hundred or more. (He has over a hundred). You can group together tabs and then ‘shrink’ the group so all of the tabs are hidden. All you see are the the tab group names. It really celars up space, and then you can click on the group tag to let the tabs come out to play.

I was so excited when my brother taught me this, which made him laugh. It was the coolest thing, and it makes my life so much easier. It brought down my CPU usage by around 30%! I joked with my brother that I would be doing this for the  next following hour or two. Onrce you put a bunch of tabs in a group, you can name it and give it a color. It’s seriously the coolest thing I’ve learned in quite some time.

Back to games. We, the consumers, are part of the problem . We are not the cause of the problem, and there isn’t much we can do to stem the problem–but we are definitely part of the problem. Meaning, we’re going to buy the games no matter how expensive they get. There was talk about how expensive  Grand Theft Auto VI (Rockstar Games) would have to get before people wouldn’t buy it. $80 for the base game hasn’t stopped it from selling pre-orders like crazy. The fifth game sold roughly 230 million copies world wide. It came out in September of 2013, so that’s nearly 13 years ago.

This is mind-boggling, but, honestly, it’s not as many copies as I thought it would be. A content creator I watch sometimes said to guess how many copies the game had sold. I thought it would be over a billion, quite frankly. But a quarter-billion is still an astounding number.

I’m sure this game will match if not exceed the number. Or maybe do slightly less, but it’sll be around the same number. People are not NOT going to buy the game. I think the only glitch is that there is no physical copy being produced (which, just, sigh). I said in my post yesterday why I personally don’t care about physical copies, but I do think it’s a shame that there won’t be any. Why? Because a lot of people may not be able to afford the game at full price, and without any second-hand copies, they will have to do without.


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What is niche vs. what is mainstream

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It’s 82F right now. I had to run to the pharmacy to pick up a med, and it was hot. H-O-T, I say. It seems we’ve skipped spring altogether and went straight to summer. Except, we have a low of 41F for Tuesday, so winter may not be done with us yet. That is the weather in Minnesota right now, but not what I want to talk about.

Oh, and my sleep has been creeping back again. But I did get over eight hours of sleep last night, so that’s good. But I don’t want to go to bed past three in the morning. That’s my goal. Four at the latest (which I did not meet last night). I let myself fuck around too much last night–and I found out.

One thing, though. I don’t want to let one off day completely wreck my schedule. I have the habit of giving up if I mess up once. I know that’s not a good thing, so I’m trying to not spiral.

Also, I want to up my daily writing from one hour to two (for the fiction side of it). That’s very doable as I used to write 2,000 words a day before my medical crisis. One hour is nearly 1,000 words, so I should be able to do 2,000 in two to three hours if I’m diligent.

That’s not what I want to talk about today, though. That would be my love for things that sit somewhere in the shadowy (heh) realm of niche and mainstream. There are two things I want to discuss, both in pop culture. Today, I will focus on FromSoft–I have not talked about them for a while.

Below, I have included a video of someone no hitting my BAE, Messmer, with what I think are the Dryleaf fists. (The martial arts weapons in the DLC, Shadow of the Erdtree. Very cool, but not my style.) I absolutely adore this OST and this boss. Funnily enough, he was the face of the DLC so everyone assumed he would be the last boss. Not even close. FromSoft loves to fuck with fans like that. Not saying he’s not important because he is, but his fight is roughly halfway through the DLC (if you do tihngs properly, which I did not).

I still get chills watching this boss fight and listening to the OST. It’s just so epic and grand. I love how From has major setpiece bosses, and this is definitely one of them. In fact, many of the bosses in tthe DLC for Elden Ring are major spectacles.

I’ve been thinking about how FromSoft went from the little studio that could (back in the 10s) to the powerful juggernaut it is today. Now, every game that is anywhere near the action adventure genre adds Fromlike elements to their games, and games in other genres do so as well. There has been a different focus at different times, and right now, it’s on the deflect/parry. Which, yuck. I hate it so much. Not only is it ableist (which it most definitely is), it’s just so boring.


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