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A Quick Thought on Hi-Fi Rush

Mon, 06 Feb 2023 12:28:08 -0600

Playing Hi-Fi Rush has made me realize just how absurdly good and criminally underrated the Ratchet & Clank level design over the years were. For pretty much every gen, though some argument could be made that Rift Apart leaned too heavily into the open world sandbox at times.

That’s not to say Hi-Fi Rush is bad, it’s just that they could have taken a lot of pointers from R&C’s level designs through the years to create a world that feels busy and expansive, while still being mostly linear guided levels that more often than not felt like they weren’t. Hi-Fi Rush is extremely guided, and I don’t even know why they have the constant literal glowing arrows pointing where to go that are everywhere, you can’t exactly backtrack through the level most (all?) of the time. It feels claustrophobic, but the rest of the design says they want the level to appear expansive and lived in.

So You’re Suddenly Interested in Online Security and Censorship

Sat, 09 Jan 2021 12:08:42 -0600

Join the club. It’s surprisingly easy and here are some steps to take if you want to dip your toes into the water but don’t want to get too deep into it.

1.) Ditch Twitter. Ditch Facebook after you’ve managed to convince everyone you care about to also ditch it. But if you really cared about not being disappeared from the internet: Mewe, Gab, Mastodon, and Diaspora are really better options. Mewe just has that friendly, easy to use interface that I really like. I am very suspicious about Parler.

Wonderdraft is Wonderful

Sun, 14 Oct 2018 18:41:05 -0600

I converted my Solethania World Map into this beautiful thing using Wonderdraft and I couldn’t be happier.

I mean, just look at this thing. The current campaign, Tales of the Past is taking place in Marcinia. Click on the image to get the full size.

Fortnite Battle Royale

Wed, 04 Apr 2018 15:35:52 -0600

I got sucked into Fortnite BR. I kept seeing how insanely popular it has become and had to check it out for myself. I’m not usually the kind of person who likes BR/Survival games in general, but the art style, and unique gameplay got me hooked. I will say however, I am terrible at building forts fast, and my method of gameplay can be considered ‘active conflict avoidance‘. Whenever I die, I am always left with the feeling that I could have done better, and the drive to be better next time. This is rare in a game genre that’s pretty much defined by getting killed from across the map with no chance to have done anything better other than just not be there at that specific moment.

Photos from WWII

Sun, 11 Feb 2018 21:32:32 +0000

When I was with family this last week we went through a ton of old family photos. Of special interest to me were these images involving Harold Bergstrom), nobody was sure the relation but they were fantastic. I didn’t realize until I got back home that there’s a google app that will actually scan images in better quality than just taking a picture of them.

Now this is Dogfighting

Sat, 30 Sep 2017 01:59:28 +0000

EVE: Valkyrie released this week. It is pretty much everything I’d ever want out of a space combat game. Lots of ships, lots of lasers/beams/guns/missiles/etc. Your ship feels tiny (in the EVE universe, you’re the fighters in the Carrier you can pilot on the MMO side of things) and your weapons feel great. I wish I had a VR system and a hotas joystick and I’d be in combat heaven. But nonetheless the Stix is my ship of choice, and I’m still trying to figure out whether I like the keyboard or gamepad more. I may just have to drop the money on a joystick if I can’t figure it out soon…

Latest Games

Wed, 06 Sep 2017 02:11:35 +0000

I’m addicted to this newish mobile game called Creature Quest. It’s adorable, there isn’t really any pay to win (or at least the premium currency drops exceptionally often, so casual players never feel left out). And they just introduced a little kingdom building element today. Silly mobile games, I love you.

Speaking of love, I absolutely loved the Destiny 2 PC open beta, and am actually really excited about playing it. Unfortunately PC release is late October. Bleh…

Enter the Void

Thu, 20 Jul 2017 14:17:42 +0000

And the Void is hungry, as far as a two month old kitten can be.

Valerian: City of a Thousand Planets Opening Scene

Mon, 10 Jul 2017 03:07:38 +0000

I went to see Spider-Man: Homecoming again today and they showed the opening scene of Valerian: City of a Thousand Planets. It blew me away.

It could have been its own short film, and it told the tale of humanity’s expansion and diplomatic missions via a space station in orbit around earth that began in the 1970s with each mission adding its own little bit to the station. As the years go by each mission adds its own bit to the station. Finally an alien race shows up, and it’s a peaceful first contact, and then another and another throughout many more years, and the station just gets bigger and bigger, until it was too big to be in Earth’s orbit anymore and they sent it off on a journey to continue its diplomatic legacy. It was such a heartwarming and positive thing and stands in such stark contrast to the generally expected first contact situations in the sci-fi genre. It was made even more beautiful because it was all set to Bowie’s Space Oddity.

My favorite podcast right now

Wed, 10 May 2017 12:48:56 +0000

http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/adventure-zone

The sheer shenanigans this group gets up to leaves me in stitches. It’s a little slow the first couple episodes until they find their groove, but when they do… The voices, the actions, the really clever campaigns just turn this into something next level. And now I really want to play D&D again.

This fox is adorable

Tue, 02 May 2017 12:07:33 +0000

Fox steals dog’s toy.