My wife and son were out of town this weekend, and so my plans were very simple:
- sleep in;
- stay away from the news;
- relax;
- play some games; and
- clean out my closet.
Instead:
- I had insomnia all weekend, and so while I slept in, it’s only because I only finally fell asleep at, like 7am;
- Of course I had to look at Twitter, because of course our President* is a fucking idiot and there’s really nothing quite like watching him admit to obstructing justice in real time;
- Neither of the above helped me relax;
- I did clean out my closet, which was necessary; and
- I played a ton of Assassin’s Creed Origins (henceforth AssOrgy) and realized I still have a ton more to go.
On that last point – I think I’ve started to reach the point where I simply can’t sink 100+ hours into a game anymore and still be a functioning adult / parent / husband / employee. As much as I’m enjoying AssOrgy – and I’ll get to the specifics in a moment – it is so overwhelmingly huge and I just can’t deal. I thought I was approaching the end – there was a point where I was told that by accepting the next mission there was no turning back – but instead now I see I have at least 12 more hours to go, especially if I want to be suitably leveled up. There are still at least 5 or 6 huge areas of the map that are fogged over, and I’ve already sunk over 40 hours into this game, and the idea that there’s still so much left to do is sorta soul-crushing, a little bit.
That said, AO is rather incredible. I certainly appreciate the amount of work that went into it; it is gigantic and yet rich with detail, and it’s the first open world that Ubisoft’s made where the world itself is interesting to explore on its own terms, rather than simply trying to cross off all the various Xs and Os on the map. It’s hard to look at AO and not see the heavy influence of Red Dead Redemption and The Witcher 3, both similarly huge games that make great use of their environments in addition to the stories they’re telling. Indeed, aside from Black Flag, this is the least Assassin’s Creed-ish AC game in the franchise, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing; the series desperately needed to evolve, and this one feels much stronger for it. It feels like I’m playing an enormous novel, rather than a game, and I very much appreciate that kind of feeling. It’s just that, well, I simply don’t have the kind of time anymore to allow myself to be immersed as thoroughly as I’d like. I was alone in my house for almost 48 hours this weekend – that will probably never happen again, and I really need to stop taking mental health days with the sort of frequency that I’m used to. (I ran out of sick/vacation time in early November.)
Meanwhile, I’ve got Wolfenstein 2 still on my to-do list; I keep ducking in here and there just to check it out, though ACO keeps pulling me back. I’ve also got tons of stuff on the Switch I keep meaning to get to. And I also re-rented Battlefront 2, if only to play a bit of the campaign and let my Xbox One X do its thing. (It’s very pretty, even if the campaign is kinda weak. And shooting rebel soldiers is always gonna feel weird.)
We started watching the new Netflix series Dark last night; I’d heard some really good things about it, in that it’s a Lost-esque quasi-supernatural mystery show. It is that, but it’s also creepy as all hell, and it’s also gorgeously photographed. Probably the best-looking show this side of Hannibal, I think. We’re only 1 episode into the 10-episode season, so who knows if it falls off the rails. If you decide to watch, I’d recommend keeping the original German audio and putting on English subtitles; the English overdub is distracting.
I’m moving very slowly through John Crowley’s Little, Big. It’s the sort of book where you sorta have to read and re-read every sentence, because the way each sentence is constructed is somewhat deliberately ambiguous at times. This can be frustrating, in the same way that playing a 60-hour game is frustrating – I’m very much taken in by the world and what’s happening, but I also don’t have that much time to read these days, and so it can be very hard to dip in and out of it on the train or during lunch. It’s the sort of book that would appear to be best read in a week-long sitting, where you don’t get out of bed. As much as I want to devour the rest of his catalog, I need to remember to bear this quirk in mind.
Am I gonna get around to my year-end lists? I don’t know, you guys. I consumed a lot of media this year, mostly in order to drown out the noise of the outside world, and while I enjoyed a great deal of it, it does feel a little silly to rank things in a year in which I’ve had a mild but unceasing anxiety attack since January. I’m exhausted. I kinda just want to enjoy things without feeling the need to give them ribbons. If anything, I want to give myself a ribbon for making it through the year.
Shouts From The Couch 