I’m in that thing where I want to write, but I don’t feel like I have anything terribly interesting to write about, even as I keep a tab open specifically so that if anything interesting does happen to pop into my brain, I can write it down as quickly as possible before I inevitably delete it.
As with my last entry, I am in a weird emotional state. I continue to be disgusted by Trump, and I continue to be frustrated with the seeming inability of anyone to do anything about it. I cannot turn this frustration into anything useful; I come home from work exhausted and after putting my son to bed I find myself going to bed not that much later.
I don’t think I mentioned this, but I bought a new phone a little while ago; my iPhone 6 had been shitting the bed ever since I installed iOS 10, and so I decided to splurge and upgrade to a 7+. I like it! It’s huge but not distressingly so, and more importantly the damned thing works. I have an alarm clock again! I have tons of storage! The new Portrait mode in the camera is fucking amazing! And all the games I have for it look and sound better than they ever had before, and so I’ve been going back and re-downloading a bunch of cool stuff that I had to kick off my older phones simply because they took up too much room.
I have not yet bought any bluetooth headphones for it, though. To be honest, I haven’t been listening to a lot of music on my commutes lately, and when I’m at work I have shitty but effective headphones for my PC. (Even though they’ve turned off Facebook and Gmail, they’ve not yet turned off Spotify.) I suspect I’ll break down and get some eventually, because I’m still in that sort of Trump-fueled anxiety that can apparently only be soothed by retail therapy.
Similarly, ever since the news broke that Pebble had been bought out by Fitbit and that Pebble’s smartwatches would stop being supported, I knew I’d have to get something new. I am a smartwatch convert, even if I’m not particularly fitness-inclined. In any event, you probably can guess where this is going – there’s an Apple store in my office complex, and so now I’m wearing an Apple Watch v2, and it’s quite lovely. Even if I’m not using it for exercise, I do like that it reminds me to stand up every once in a while, and the ‘breathe’ app has come in handy during moments of stress.
Gaming-wise, let’s see… I’ve kinda given up on Prey, in that my last few save points are all in troublesome areas and I can’t seem to last more than 20 seconds without encountering immediate and certain death. From everything I hear, the game falls apart towards its conclusion, so I’m kinda inclined to call it a day while I’m still intrigued by it, even as I know I’m still a ways off from where it falls off the rails.
I bought Danger Zone, which is basically Crash Mode from Burnout 3, and it’s… pretty good? It’s pretty good. The presentation is somewhat lackluster and the camera isn’t the best, but it’s still pretty great at creating joyous catharsis out of spectacular car collisions. Load times are kinda shitty, which I hope can get improved with a patch, but it’s not (yet) the end of the world…
…I bought Injustice 2 a little while ago, even though I’m not really a big fighting game fan (nor am I a DC fan, either). As far as fighting games go, it’s pretty amazing – I can see why it got the review scores it did – but I also know that I’m terrible at it, and I’m not sure I’ll ever get beyond “very easy” difficulty.
I also bought Shadow Warrior 2, which I need to spend more time with. A friend of mine worked on it, and I’m hoping to put up an interview with him once we’ve both spent a bit more time with the final product.
I also bought Lego City Undercover, even though I told myself I was done with Lego games, because I think my kid will get a kick out of it. I played a couple missions last night; it’s essentially Lego GTA, but you play as a police officer, and nobody really gets hurt. I think that’s OK for him to mess around with.
Book-wise… I finished Jeff VanderMeer’s Borne, which was quite good. Now I’m on book 2 of Ben Winters’ The Last Policeman trilogy, which is also quite good – I mean, they’re relatively on-the-nose detective novels, but surrounding each mystery is the fact that an asteroid is going to collide with Earth and destroy all living creatures in about 4-6 months, and so the priorities of day-to-day life have changed somewhat. (I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I relate to this context a bit more than I’d like to, being that we’re living under President Donald “Covfefe” Trump who decided to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord for no discernible reason other than that Obama helped make it.)
Yeah, I’m not going to back off of politics here. I mean, that’s not what this blog is about – you can see my twitter feed for that, if you need to – but given the state of events, it’s hard to not talk about this stuff.
That’s it and that’s all.
Shouts From The Couch 
I was pleasantly surprised by Lego City Undercover when i played through it on Wii U years ago. Fast forward to today and its one of the games my 8 year old son is now playing. It gives me a weird proudness to see him playing a game that I enjoyed when I think back on how 3-4 years ago he couldn’t even use a controller. I am sure you and your son will thoroughly enjoy it as Lego games tend to be great for all ages.
I was intrigued by Prey myself having just bought a beast of a PC, but as I am replaying the Witcher 3 and playing another XCOM 2 campaign (almost 500 hours played) I ended up holding off. I have also heard that the ending is a big letdown, but is the overall experience worth it despite that?
I’ve enjoyed my time with Prey, definitely; I don’t feel bad about not finishing it, though. There’s only so much time in the day.