I should be asleep but uh shhhh it's fine. Anyways, I finished and submitted my two pieces for the Inky Paws Zine :D I'm very happy with how they came out, given how hard it is for me to properly describe the experiences I tried to write about. So yeah, go me! ^^
Got a new laptop around a week ago, and it's been great! Sense I don't need my old one any more, I decided to give it to my grandmother. She hasn't used a computer in eight years, so I'm sitting here helping her as I type this up. Hopefully the way that I set it up for her will work for her. I also wrote her up a little document she can reference in the future if she forgets anything. Here's hoping that it all goes well! :D
Update: Grandma decided she's done messing with the laptop for now lol, she's still struggling a lot to use it but I thinks she's getting the hang of things!
I was playing Pikmin Bloom today and...!
I hit 10k steps :D Nothing huge, just fun. Glad this game is getting me to exercise more too lol
I'll end this off with a pikmin reading a book upside down because it's so cute how dumb pikmin can be.
This past weekend was quite the busy one for me! On Friday I got through the last of the bureaucratic red tape that needed addressed before I could start working at a job I got accepted at. Then Saturday was a big BIG day. My immediate family decided to celebrate Easter on Saturday instead, so I left with dad for his house. We stopped by a candy store for some last-second Easter basket items (I got some chocolate filled "taiyaki", in quotation marks as it was actually made with wafer cookie, and a bottle of Peach Ramune that I ended up not liking lol), then had Easter "Dinner" at lunch time.
After that, we got to see the Super Mario Bros Movie!
Some spoiler free comments: it was really good! I liked it a lot. The animation, music, and world were all wonderful as were all of the small nods to various Mario games. Voices for the characters were also better than I anticipated, at worst they were passable. It wasn't perfect, of course, the characters were fairly flat and simple, and the pacing was kinda fast. It was clear they wanted to put as much stuff as they could into the movie, as to try and properly represent a 37 year old franchise in a one and a half hour long movie. It's stupid fun, not a masterpiece, and sometimes that's all you need. It also goes without saying that Browser is the best part of it.
One thing I really appreciate is a joke that the trailers hid from us - Bowser's crush on Peach. It would have been so easy to put one of those early scenes in the trailers, as it wouldn't really spoil anything and it certainly would have helped sales. Yet, they kept it a surprise for us, and I adore that so much. Bowser even sings a love song for our Princess, which you can tell Jack Black had fun singing. In general, you can tell he had fun playing Bowser. However, there was a huge missed opportunity in my opinion: at one point, Bowser is practicing his confession towards the audience, only for the camera to turn and show Kamek dressed up as Peach being the one he's practicing with. Good joke. Would have been better if it was with an annoyed Luigi though, just saying.
On that note, part of the reason why Bowser wants to fight Mario is pure jealousy. He thinks that Peach has a crush on Mario. It is implied that the two may have feelings for each other, but it doesn't go anywhere. Mario doesn't "win" the girl at the end, he and Peach don't become an item. Instead, Mario gets what he said he wanted at the start - to save people, to save his brother, and get the respect of the rest of his family. I like that a lot
I could keep going on with specific scenes but I'd be going on for far longer than needed then. So I'll just cut it here. A solid 80% for this movie.
When we were on our way back to dad's house after the movie, we spotted a carnival that was set up in town. So we figured, what the hell, lets make it a day and go there. It was pretty fun; I didn't ride any rides as they freak me out, but I did play and even win some games! Walked out with four prizes >:3 More importantly, I got to eat funnel cake for the first time in years. Made me feel sick, but it was so worth it.
Then Sunday was fairly chill. Just rested at home.
All in all, a good weekend! :D
My new laptop got some water damage :( it rained this morning, and my "water resistant" backpack got SOAKED. Laptop was damaged along with several books. Thankfully my friend was able to help me repair it, and will sell me a back-up laptop for cheap as well. Unfortunately, my old laptop's speakers no longer work and I'm supposed to immediately turn it off if the battery starts to get hot. Right now I plan to use this one mostly for school for as long as I can get away with it, and the new one will stay safe at home for the foreseeable future.
Discord on android has had a lot more glitches for me as of late, which has also coincided with a sudden increase in Nitro related stuff. Like, I can genuinely think of only one big update that upgraded something for free members (which, I'm not counting the username thing as an upgrade as I'm largely indifferent to it), that being the frankly overdue increase to file size. This nitro focus wouldn't be as upsetting if not for, you know, the whole increased glitches thing. Like, it's hit or miss on if I get push notifications sent to my phone and sometimes the entire app bugs out to the point of being unusable until I close and open it again. And when I come back I'm greeted with begging to buy Nitro??? Why the fuck would I pay a monthly subscription for a service this buggy on the device I use it most often on????
Worst of all, the only reason I'm complaining instead of just using a different service is that it's a chat app. You can't just switch that easily; it's what my friends wish to stick to for now, so it's what I'm stuck with until they change their mind or it gets worse to the point of scaring even them off. And even if that happens, I do still have a Discord server of my own that I'd have to figure out SOMETHING to do with.
TL;DR - local neocities user hates WEB 2.0/3.0, surprising literally no one.
Got Tears of the Kingdom digitally day one, and I've been having so much fun with it thus far. I don't want to write a whole review until I'm done with it, but I will say that it has addressed several issues I (and many others) had with Breath of the Wild. Map size has also more than doubled in size (some are claiming it's 3x as big, which isn't true - it's not quite that big, but it is bigger) and parts reused from BotW have been remixed enough to feel new, even in ways I hadn't expected. A spoiler-free example would be the path I took to Rito Village; the path the game encourages you to go on to get there is the direct opposite from how you're encouraged to get there in BotW. Coming in from a different direction alone felt new, not including all of the other changes made that I won't spoil in this post.
Anyways, don't expect too much activity from me until I finish the game's main story!
Played Minecraft with a friend for most of the day! It's my current plan while I wait on TotK to release hehehe. I did a lot but this is what I got some screenshots of, a little pumpkin farm! But now I must sleep it's like 12:20 AM here now-
Yesterday was officially the end of the spring semester for me! I managed to finish my projects quite a bit earlier than I thought I would! Thus I am FREE and waiting quite impatiently for Tears of the Kingdom to release lol. Unfortunately will have to get the game digitally, but that's fine.
I've also decided to do Dracula Daily this year, as I missed out on it last year. I've never read the book before, nor do I know much about the original story, so it's been interesting to read it so far. The old(ish) English is dense but actually amusing to read, albeit because I'm immature as fuck and giggle whenever they call a rooster a cock. It has been enjoyable in its own way, though, and getting it "live" in small chunks certainly helps ease the denseness of the prose.
I just beat Tears of the Kingdom's main story today! And so I wanted to scream about my thoughts here really quickly with a spoiler-free review. Maybe I'll come back some day to give some more thoughts on spoilers.
Overall, the game is really fun and even amazing. Ultrahand is such a fun mechanic to mess around with, I've built a lot of fun stuff using it. Others have really pushed the mechanic to its limits and it genuinely feels a bit like engineering with how much testing and re testing and making updated versions of things you've designed in the past. I genuinely mean it when I say it feels like it teaches players the core skills of engineering. No, most of what you build isn't realistic, but you are learning how to be patient, how to carefully examine problems, how to work with limited resources (in the cases of shrines and when you realize "fuck I'm out of [thing] what else can I use"), and how to accommodate for other limitations like space, material properties, and gravity. None of it is 100% realistic, but it's more about the fact that you get used to such things which can be applied to the real world albeit with different limitations. Think like how working with redstone in Minecraft is sometimes refereed to as redstone engineering. That being said, I think my only issue with Ultrahand is that the furthest distance from which you can grab objects and the furthest distance you can move objects to feels like it's just barely too short. I understand this was a balancing choice, but I can't count the number of times I thought to myself "how can I not reach that" or "how can I not put it there".
Fuse alleviated the issue of monster fights in BotW not being worth it after a certain point. Monsters don't just drop weapons and potion ingredients, but also weapon parts - meaning that, in general, you'll be getting more resources from fights than you put into them so long as you didn't get in over your head or otherwise messed something up. Granted, as you progress through the game fighting lower-tired enemies will eventually become pointless, but to a far more acceptable degree than in BotW. In that game, I eventually avoided all monster fights unless I really needed a specific drop or they had a weapon I wanted. In TotK, I just ignored weaker monsters with worse drops in favor of stronger monsters with better drops. This system also made the durability mechanic much more bearable, as you could more reliably get good weapons.
The game also tried to make rain less annoying which it... mostly succeeded at. There's now a "slip resistance" stat you can get from armor, food, and potions. By and large, this works, even with the inclusion of surfaces that are always slippery to climb no matter what. But there's one floating sky island that's always slippery due to rain, has really sheer cliffs, and if you fall chances are you're falling out of the sky entirely, and I hate it with every fiber of my being.
Both the skies and the depths were fun to explore, each providing their own challenges and mechanics. All three "levels" of the map felt super different and expansive, effectively meaning that - even though they did re-use BotW's surface - the map size has been more than doubled, meaning there is so much to explore. I will say that most places in he depths feel very samey and that, besides a few major land marks, I probably couldn't locate where any specific clip or screenshot was taken without the mini map present. Sky islands also suffer from sameness but to a lesser degree. The skies could have also benefited from one or two more islands the same size as the starting one that are also unrelated to story progress. Both for sake of variety and for more places to explore. Regarding the depths again, I understand the desire to make the depths climate-controlled except for the lava area, but I do wish they let the Gerudo Depths be sweltering hot as well and mountain depth be freezing cold, each with their own aesthetic. Still, the extra spaces to explore with their unique challenges and loot are welcome, and I just adore how progressing in your exploration of one aids in the exploration of the others; exploring the surface grants you resources to get through the other two while also granting ways to get to the depths and skies, the skies have resources unique to them that make travel faster for all layers and depths travel safer, and the depths have resources useful for fights in all layers as well as upgrades that make travel faster in all layers. Exploring the depths also helps you find land marks on the surface (and vise-versa).
WE ALSO GOT NEW ENEMIES!!! The enemy variety in BotW was severely lacking, which has been largely rectified. Some enemies are unique to the depths and one enemy type is only found in one area on the surface prior to making story progress (after which it is depths only), but the increase is still greatly welcomed. Excluding color/skeletal/elemental/other variants, we went from 11 basic enemies and 3 "mini boss" enemies to 19 basic enemies and 7 mini boss enemies if I am counting right. More variety is always more fun!
Dungeons were also MASSIVELY improved from BotW! They all have unique themes and unique bosses rather than using the same theme/similar bosses. All of them were pretty good as well, still being completely nonlinear. That being said, there are some bosses that I didn't care for. I won't go into detail until the spoilers section, but the TL:DR for them are as follows:
All that being said, the Gerudo temple boss is my favorite in the game and maybe even my favorite across the few Zelda games I've played! It's just a lot of fun, there's so much to keep track of yet it never feels completely overwhelming or annoying (though the very final phase of the final boss is very kickass and I love it too). In fact, the Gerudo questline in general was my favorite of them all.
I also liked how the first town (at least, the first one the game tells you to go to) will change over time to reflect story progress. Just a nice touch. And while I won't say a peep about the story I will say that it was fantastic. Nothing ground breaking, of course, but a good time for sure.
Very low context spoilers, you won't know what I'm talking about until you see it yourself, but the Gloom Spawn enemies absolutely should have been named either Dead Hands, Red Hands, or Wall Masters. Just saying.
My over all thoughts is that the game is good, really damn good. Solid 9/10 for me. There's so much to do and see and much fun to be had. It is absolutely worth your time. Your money, however... This is a $70 game instead of a $60 and, honestly, as much as I love it and want to recommend it whole heartedly, I find that it struggles to justify the increased price tag. The world is massive, yes, and the physics engine is still amazing, but it was built using BotW as a base. Had it not done that and still be just as bug and dense, yes, easily worth the extra money. But as a product based on a separate game that was $60, I don't find the extra stuff added to be enough to justify the higher price point. Either snag a used copy or use that voucher thing Nintendo has on offer. Just don't pay the full $70 if you can avoid it.
It's been a bit sense I wrote to this journal! This summer has been hectic as hell for me, as a lot of personal shit decided to crop up and cause an undue amount of stress. It's mostly been dealt with now though, so I'll be alright.
Today I got to do some training for my new job as a student tutor, which I'm looking forward to! Everyone seems very nice so far too, so that's always a plus. Monday also marks the start of the fall semester for me. I don't really have much else to add, but I expect posts to slow down considerably once school starts again.
HI HOWDY ALL I'M BACK! School has been kicking my butt, so site updates have been painfully slow. But after a long while, I have finally ported over all of my Dreamwidth blog updates. For context, when I realized just how much HTML is needed to make DW posts behave (and even then, I struggle sometimes) I decided it best to just use my own site where I can push the HTML/CSS as far as I'm able to. I'm no master, and I'm sure better coders could see my code and balk at how messy it is, but it works for me.
Next on the agenda: add some more items to the hoard that I have found!
Current Fav Song: Can't choose :P
Currently Playing: Miitopia (again)
School is: On break!
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