PixlBit

Shit I've been doing:

Life Garbage (It's a rambling, gramatically incorrect rant with too many parentheticals; feel free to skip it; fun stuff is later)

Still "searching" for full-time work, by which I mean wondering what the hell I want to do when I grow up (thank God 28 is the new 18, right?! Right?! Is it?!), going back and forth on whether a PMP cert is worth the cost or if I'd just be working a high-paying job I hate in Project Management (which at this point, maybe that would still be worth the cost) and have no other experience in or if I should go into coding or if I should accept more debt and just get a doctorate (not a given I'll get in anywhere, and would have to rely on two years of teaching and not research, cause one thesis isn't much research ... and do I really want to be a teahcer-professor, or am I better-suited to research? And if I like teaching more, you're still required to do research ... ) or if I should move back to Nacogdoches so I don't have the "OMG you live with your parents" stigma berating me every day or if I should stay in Dallas cause the rent is free right now and I can look for more jobs here and dating life would be way easier, especially for someone with my predisposition/belief system, but I know way more people in Nac and have a much larger immediate support group there, but long-term is that really where I want to ...

Well, at least I'm exercising and dieting again, so hopefully that helps get me back on track in other areas. 

Games

I recently beat Heavy Rain for the first time in my life. I knew the story from watching a Let's Play of it way back when I couldn't afford a PS3 (or a Wii, or a 360) and figured it was basically a movie anyway, but I have to say, actually playing it was a different and more enjoyable experience. One reason is there were little variations in the story due to my different choices and fuck-ups (the version I watched back in the day was the best possible ending; I actually lost a favorite character and a second-favorite character totally by accident). Another reason was, even if these types of games are more narrative than mechanically driven, there's just something about being in control of certain things that even when it's minimal, it's just way more satisfying to me than passively watching.

Some criticisms include that the button prompts get WAY too complicated at times and I wasn't always prepared or interested in contorting my hands the way the game asks you to. Also, this was made when the Sixasis motion controls were a big deal to Sony and ... yeah, they just don't work sometimes. Like, I really wish they would have given you the option to turn that crap off, because that crap just flat out doesn't register correctly much of the time and it makes missions like the driving one nigh impossible to pull off without error. It's doubly frustrating when you're doing a perfect job of all of the main button inputs. Looks like there will be a couple trophies missing for me. 

All in all, it has its flaws, but I remember this being one of the first really big deal games of its type, and I'm looking forward to playing Detroit: Become Human. One thing Quantic Dream has down is pushing the graphics of a system. I might see if Indigo Prophecy is cheap on Steam as well. 

I've been needing to post my video review of this for FOREVER now, since beating it in December (maybe even late November), going back to make bad choices on purpose and find all the achievement items last week, and probably going to play it again for my "ok now I know what happens, so here's what I'd do for real" run. 

Since the second episode comes out January 24, I'm going to get a review out soon/by week's end, whether it be video or written, then review that one as well. Unfortunately, I recently lost my Adobe Cloud teacher discount when I was unable to log into my edu email and forgot my password. Currently deciding if ~$65/month is worth having all apps, or if I should just do Premiere for $20/month. Either way, I'll try to do this review via free Premiere trial on another email. 

Consider this an apology and an update if you're name is Nick DiMola. 

Holy shit, this game. My review is coming, but just trust me on this: if you like beautiful, Journey-like experiences where there's no spoken narrative but a consistently breathatking experience in which you can't die, but want just a hint more gaminess in the form of puzzle-platforming, buy this. Just do it. It is so relaxing and awe-inspiring all at once, and I think if it came out earlier last year, there would have been a lot more buzz around it in the gaming press. Maybe there was lots of buzz and I missed it, but I definitely feel Celeste and Dead Cells and Hollow Knight got a lot more attention by comparison. 

I asked for this trilogy for Christmas 2017, but never beat the games in the collection, so decided to go back to it before tackling the Spyro trilogy I asked for Christmas this year. I've beaten the first two games (by which I mean gotten past the final boss; not sure how interested I am in getting the true ending for Crash 2) and 3 has been much smoother than those so far, aside from this one particular tiger-riding level. Never realized this game had DLC come out for it, but I'll likely move on to Spyro rather than download it, once I beat Crash 3: Warped. 

All I have to say is it's a fun platformer with a lot of what I would consider illegitimate challenges based on camera angles and occassionally screen-darkening that literally makes me unable to see where I'm going even with TV brightness all the way up ... in a platformer ... that already has visibility issues. Also, I wish they would just go with the 2D sections being 2D, since literally all being able to move toward and away from the camera does in those sections is create more opportunities for failure you don't really see coming. At least the space levels in Crash 2 were pretty neat, if a bit unweildy. 

Oh my God, this game is a DINOSAUR, but in a weird way that kind of makes me love it. I'm still asking around about sailors in bars in Shenmue and that has taken WAY longer than would be acceptable in any other game today, especially since I've gotten exactly one QTE worth of actual gameplay so far.

Plus, the voice acting production sounds like it belongs in a Time Crisis arcade cabinet, not a narrative-heavy action-RPG. Yet there's something about it that is so SEGA and so overly ambitious late 90s that I kinda love it. Hell, half the time there's way more dialogue than needed, Ryo is asking the same question three other people have already answered, and the dialogue appears to be unskippable. You even have to dial phone numbers yourself ... on a rotary dial! I guess this was a thing in Japan, but even 90s telephone booths in America had digital pads! 

Basically, everyone telling me this is only interesting as a museum piece is pretty much right, but what can I say? I get a kick out of history. 

Books

So far, I'm not necessarily getting a "brillaint/classic" vibe from this, but 129 pages in there have definitely been a few laughs ("Patrolman Mancuso's love for the motorcycle was platonically intense" had me rolling just from the way it was written) and I've had a much easier time reading it consistently than I have with other books because it's easily digestible. 

I do sometimes worry about my having a couple similarities to the character, though I'd say I share his living situation more than anything else and that's temporary. I'm nowhere near as disagreeable as he is, nor as fat, nor as mean, nor do I complain about every little thing and act like everyone else is to blame, and I'm actually actively trying to be employed full-time (and have been employed part-time since October) instead of throwing a hissy fit every time someone brings up working, BUT I am an unemployed former professor living at home and it's enough to make me think "Oh no. I have to do better." 

I do feel bad for John Kennedy Toole, who apparently put a little or a lot of himself and his mother in the characters and ... well, I'll let you look it up. 

In any case, I'm interested to see where this all goes and having been to New Orleans once now I can actually picture the bars and streets where much of the story takes place. It's probably one of the lightest -nearly-400-page reads you'll find, and I mean that as a compliment. 

TV

I've basically watched the first few minutes of Daredevil S3 and the first episode of The Wire (recently found out it's on Amazon Prime and a family member is letting me use their account), so I don't have much to say except ... I'm planning on finishing these at some point? I guess? 

TV is always hard to me, because like with comics, I just tend to prefer complete narratives to episodic content.

With a video game like Life is Strange, I'm ok with episodic becuase there's more to do before the next episode releases and you can make changes to the story and whatnot, and there's a limited amount of content I can choose to make an even shorter experience if I want. With a TV show, that's just SO much sitting and doing nothing when it's all at once, and I easily lose track and don't watch if I try to pace it out. 

Movies

 

Speaking of comics, I haven't been in the theater since last year, and I mentioned these two movies on Twitter, but not here. 

I think both are visually stunning and don't really get why people think the CGI in Aquaman is bad and I didn't get the blurry effect people keep mentioning in Spider-Verse, and I watched both in 2D. 

Spider-Verse is definitely the better narrative and has way better characters, but Aquaman works as a fun, self-aware carnival ride with cheesy King Arthur-y dialogue, even if there is way too much exposition and it's a little bloated. 

I plan on seeing Bumblebee and GLASS soon, though I'd like to see Unbreakable before I see GLASS. I saw Split in the theater cause a friend wanted to go, but never did see the orginal part of this now-trilogy. 

Music

 

Been listening to a lot of this band lately, along with some classic heavy metal, newer indie rock, and I do try to keep up with the new pop music and rap, even if I don't like a lot of it (not a fan of the song or video for Cardi B's "Money," no matter how much praise certain friends on Facebook heap on it).

But I've been listening to this band pretty much all day today, and while a lot of their stuff sounds similar, I like that sound enough I don't really mind. Their lyrics tend to be a bit deeper than typical ska stuff I've heard as well.