Tag: anxiety

shame

I know, I know, I know.

Things have been weird over here, to be honest.  There’s been some medical issues, family-wise, that have taken up a lot of my available brain-space.  There’s been some general all-consuming fatigue; even though I tend to fall asleep the second I hit the lights, I haven’t felt particularly well-rested in months.  The day job hasn’t been that busy, but it’s almost always busy when I decide to start writing here.  (I’ve already been interrupted twice in this paragraph alone.)

And then, of course, there’s the crippling fear that everything I say is profoundly stupid.  Or that my “deep thoughts” that take place during late inebriated evenings are so obvious that nobody else bothers to say them out loud.

Still, I’m paying for this blog, so I might as well get my money’s worth.

I  have a Kindle problem.  My list of unread books on that thing is fucking absurd.  Let me put it this way – if I don’t buy anything until I finish what’s unread, and I maintain my current reading pace, it would probably take me at least three years before I got caught up.  (No joke – I decided to make a spreadsheet of all the unread books on my Kindle and it came to over 140.)  It is stupidly easy to have this problem when it comes to Kindle books.  If I owned physical copies of my books I’d need a new house, and the shame would be all-consuming.  But Kindle books are cheaper, and often go on sale, and the *zing* of endorphins from buying something and then having it appear in your hands literally seconds later has never diminished.

I have more than a few librarian friends who probably want to kick me right now, and they’re absolutely right to!  I am filled with shame, is what I’m saying.  But I’m also determined to actually get through that insane backlog.

Fuck it, here’s that backlog.  I’m currently reading Wrecked, volume 3 in the IQ series.  If you see anything here that you think I should read sooner rather than later, please let me know.

Killing Commendatore Haruki Murakami
Wrecked Joe Ide
French Exit Patrick deWitt
In the Distance Hernan Diaz
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Stuart Turton
Foundryside Robert Jackson Bennett
Magpie Murders Anthony Horowitz
The Merry Spinster Daniel Mallory Ortberg
Six Four Hideo Yokoyama
The Shape of the Ruins Juan Gabriel Vasquez
Transcription Kate Atkinson
Six Scary Stories compilation
Our Kind of Cruelty Araminta Hall
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice Laurie R. King
The End of the Day Claire North
The Reason I Jump
Naoki Higashida and David Mitchell
The Left Hand of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin
Notes from the Fog Ben Marcus
theMystery.doc Matthew McIntosh
Florida Lauren Groff
The Last Samurai Helen DeWitt
The Sudden Appearance of Hope Claire North
The Incorruptibles John Hornor Jacobs
Calypso David Sedaris
Less Andrew Sean Greer
Last Call Tim Powers
The Infatuations Javier Marias
Fade Away Harlan Coben
History of Wolves Emily Fridlund
The Book of Disquiet Fernando Pessoa
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki Haruki Murakami
Origin Dan Brown
Reservoir 13 Jon McGregor
The Historian Elizabeth Kostova
The Space Between BDete Meserve
Zeroes Chuck Wendig
Star of the North D.B. John
Olive Kitteridge Elizabeth Strout
Slow Horses Mick Herron
The Only Harmless Great Thing Brooke Bolander
I’ll Be Gone In The Dark Michelle McNamara
Portnoy’s Complaint Philip Roth
A Brief History of Seven Killings Marlon James
American Pastoral Philip Roth
Arcadia Lauren Groff
Kitchen Confidential Anthony Bourdain
Only Human Sylvain Neuvel
Tell The Machine Goodnight Katie Williams
Uprooted Naomi Novik
Invasive Chuck Wendig
Blackfish City Sam Miller
Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs Lisa Randall
Church of Marvels Leslie Parry
Leviathan Wakes James S. A. Corey
The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daugher Theodora Goss
Twilight of the Gods Steven Hyden
The Woman Who Smashed Codes Jason Fagone
Fates and Furies Lauren Groff
The Tragedy of Arthur Arthur Phillips
The Buried Giant Kazuo Ishiguro
Thief of Time Terry Pratchett
2666 Roberto Bolano
Neverwhere Neil Gaiman
How to Stop Time Matt Haig
The Seventh Function of Language Laurent Binet
Awayland Ramona Ausubel
This Is What Happened Mick Herron
The Wide, Carnivorous Sky John Langan
New York 2140 Kim Stanley Robinson
The Lost City of the Monkey God Dougles Preston
Seed to Harvest Octavia Butler
Golden Son (red rising 2) Pierce Brown
Shadow & Claw Gene Wolfe
Grist Mill Road Christopher Yates
The Afterlives Thomas Pierce
I’m Thinking of Ending Things Iain Reid
Peace Gene Wolfe
The Martian Chronicles Ray Bradbury
A Wizard of Earthsea Ursula K. Le Guin
Sword & Citadel Gene Wolfe
All the Birds in the Sky Charlie Jane Anders
Dead Mountain Donnie Eicher
The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley Hannah tinti
The Anubis Gates Tim Powers
A Once Crowded Sky Tom King
Norwegian By Night Derek Miller
A Legacy of Spies John le Carre
The Force Don Winslow
The Power Naomi Alderman
The Inheritance Trilogy N.K. Jemisin
The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler
The Essex Serpent Sarah Perry
The Tsar of Love and Techno Anthony Marra
The Solitudes John Crowley
A Perfect Spy John le Carre
The Long Goodbye Raymond Chandler
The Karla Trilogy John le Carre
Dhalgren Samuel Delany
Love and Sleep John Crowley
Daemonomania John Crowley
Endless Things John Crowley
Mindhunter John Douglas
The Dark Net Benjamin Percy
Medusa’s Web Tim Powers
Hex-Rated Jason Ridler
The Punch Escrow Tal Klein
A Man of Shadows Jeff Noon
The Paladin Caper Patrick Weekes
Mongoliad 1-5 compilation
Mongoliad 1-5 compilation
Mongoliad 1-5 compilation
Mongoliad 1-5 compilation
Mongoliad 1-5 compilation
So Much Blue Percival Everett
The Answers Catherine Lacey
Homegoing Yaa Gyasi
The Prophecy Con Patrick Weekes
Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel
Foundation Isaac Asimov
Sandman Slim Richard Kadrey
Liminal States Zach Parsons
I Sing the Body Electric Ray Bradbury
A Moment on the Edge Elizabeth George
Moonglow Michael Chabon
The Princess Diarist Carrie Fisher
A Great Reckoning Louise Penny
A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall Will Chancellor
The Singing Bone Beth Hahn
The King in Yellow Robert Chambers
(R)evolution PJ Manney
Ulysses James Joyce
J Howard Jacobson
Life after Life Kate Atkinson
Book of Numbers Joshua Cohen
Amnesia Moon Jonathan Lethem
The Harder They Come TC Boyle
The Humans Matt Haig
You Austin Grossman
Ubik PKD
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch PKD
The Malice of Fortune Michael Ennis
The House of Rumour Jake Arnott
The Flamethrowers Rachel Kushner

I will talk about AC:Odyssey eventually, but not yet.  I’m enjoying it – quite a lot, actually – but there’s so much of it and I’m kinda racing through the story so that I can get to Red Dead Redemption 2 as soon as possible.  One thing I’ll say about Odyssey, though – and, indeed, with other huge open-world games like this and, say, Witcher 3 – is that if you were to map my traversals, they’d mostly be straight lines between objectives, with some meanderings to nearby question marks.  I wonder if the designers anticipate that sort of pathmaking.

 

 

The First Many Hours: God of War

Current status:  Any and all synonyms for exhausted.  Mentally, physically.  Resources depleted.  Running purely on caffeine vapors and anxiety.  Trying to keep it together.  In desperate need of a mental health day, while knowing that such a day probably can’t happen until at least next week at the earliest.

Look: I’ve read and watched my fair share of dystopian fiction, and the thing that never gets mentioned in those works is the unceasing exhaustion and overwhelming despair that comes of perpetual outrage.  Or the near-constant stress-eating and resultant GI distress.

This latest fallout from the WHCD this past weekend is just the icing on the cake.  I cannot come up with a witty retort, so I’m gonna let Burneko handle it:

…As you’ve surely read by now, Wolf joked that [Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee] Sanders’s makeup—her “perfect smoky eye”—is made of the ashes of the facts she burns.

That’s about as gentle a way as anyone could come up with to lampoon the single most relevant fact about Sanders and what brought her to a station in life that would make her a reasonable subject of lines in a White House Correspondents’ Dinner monologue in the first place. A frank and honest description of who she is and what she does would be much more harsh: Every day, Sarah Huckabee Sanders plants herself, by choice, between the public and the facts of what’s being done at the very highest levels of American executive power, and does her damnedest to break and delegitimize the means by which the two are brought together. She is one of the most visible and powerful people in American civic life, and she uses her visibility and power—she chooses to use her visibility and power—to confuse the public and degrade its grasp on the truth, rather than to inform or empower or serve it. Her willingness to do this on behalf of Donald Trump, day after day, and the unmistakable teeth-gnashing relish with which she does it, are the substance of her power, and the reason why anybody knows who the fuck she is at all. What history will remember about Sanders is that she is the scum of the fucking earth, and not the jokey means by which one comedian pointed out this inarguable fact—and that’s only if the senile rageaholic pissbaby moron on whose behalf she shames herself on television every day doesn’t annihilate the human race, first.

I take solace where I can, folks, and right now it’s listening to good music, snuggling with my family*, and, after my family has gone to bed, obsessively playing God of War.

Speaking of which.  I’m at least 30 hours into it.  Currently doing a tricky side quest in Niflheim, newly unlocked.  Can’t stop thinking about it.

Let me back up a second.  I’ve recently been doing a thought experiment at work; I keep a Google Doc in a tab and any time a game pops into my head, for whatever reason, I’ll write it down.  I’ve been doing this for a few reasons, not the least of which is that it happens quite a lot, and I’m wondering what triggers it.  As a weird example:  for the longest time, any time I gave my son a bath, I’d start thinking about a certain sequence (the dockyard shootout)  in Max Payne 3.  (I have no idea why, and I don’t know if I want to know why.)   More to the point, I’ve been trying this out because sometimes I’ll be in my basement, utterly paralyzed by my backlog and not knowing what I’d want to play first; the log reminds me what I’ve been thinking about, and perhaps the paralysis can end.

I’m in no such paralysis at the moment, of course, because every free waking moment I have is spent being thoroughly absorbed by the aforementioned God of War, which is, thus far, probably one of the best games I’ve ever played in my life.  It’s probably fair to say that part of my above-mentioned exhaustion is that I spent the bulk of this weekend’s evenings playing far past my usual bedtime.  Like, 3-4 hours past my usual bedtime.

Because this is not a traditional review, I’m not particularly compelled to tell you about mechanics, though they are wonderful – like a lot of actual, professional critics, I found myself spending a lot of the early hours just throwing my axe into things and then summoning it back, and even 30 hours later it never gets old.  It is, indeed, one of the most satisfying weapons I’ve ever used in a game.

Nor am I technologically savvy enough to describe the graphics in any sort of meaningful way.  Let me simply say that, while I don’t know if it’s the best looking game I’ve ever seen, it’s certainly among the very top.  I can’t give it full marks if only because this is the first game I’ve really spent any time playing on my PS4 Pro / 4K HDR TV setup, and having seen what the X can do in that setup, I can see that the Pro isn’t quite as powerful.  (If I’m splitting hairs, I’d say that the X port of Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is better-looking than the PS4’s version, and is also probably better-looking than God of War on a pixel-by-pixel basis, though it’s fair to acknowledge that each game is doing wildly different things.)

And I don’t want to discuss the story, because it should be experienced first-hand.  I accidentally spoiled myself on a mid-game plot point and almost immediately regretted it.  What I can say, though, is that the relationship between Kratos and his son, Atreus, is far better written than I’d ever give this franchise credit for.  There’s a thoughtfulness behind every line of dialogue, and the voice acting is marvelous.

Here’s what I can say, and I know this is going to sound weird – this game feels like it was built for me, specifically; the 40-something tired father with not a lot of free time.   It is paced exactly the way I’d want it to be paced – much like Uncharted 4, the combat is exciting and dynamic but is also spaced out evenly, and there’s just as much emphasis on exploration and puzzle solving as there is on beating the hell out of demons.   The game is beautiful, and it knows it, and it knows you’ll want to explore every nook and cranny, and more often than not there’s a useful treasure hidden away in those places, and so you’re encouraged to go off the beaten paths.  Indeed, sometimes those paths go to rather unexpected places, and the rewards are generally always worth it.

More interestingly, I feel like the game understands how I’m interacting with it and responds accordingly.  The interstitial dialogue as you’re travelling from place to place does a wonderful, effortless job of world-building and character development, and it does it through subtlety (inasmuch as a character like Kratos can be subtle).  If I need a break from killing things, there are always tons of non-violent things to do.  Hell, even just pausing before a combat section so that I can re-outfit my weapons is satisfying; there’s a hint of puzzle-solving that goes along with each encounter, and you can see the results of your decision-making immediately.  It’s wonderful.

As much as I was enjoying Yakuza 6 and Ni No Kuni 2, and also kinda diddling around in Far Cry 5, this is the game that I’m gonna want to keep coming back to.  The new Tomb Raider and Red Dead Redemption games don’t come out until the fall; this will more than suffice in the meantime.

* I just wanted to mention that my current favorite thing is the way my son plays with the back of my hair when I’m carrying him downstairs in the morning.  He is half-awake, floppy-limbed, and can barely keep his eyes open; but when I pick him up, he puts his arms around me and runs his fingers gently through the very short hair on the back of my neck.  It is the sweetest thing – I have no idea if he even knows that he does it – and it makes my day.

Anxious and Scatterbrained

I used to have 2 similar anxiety dreams.  In the first one, it’d be opening night for a play and not only did I not know my lines, but I’d never received a script in the first place; in the second one, I’d show up to a school with a completely foreign layout and I’d be taking a final exam for a class I’d never attended.

I had a new one this morning, and it was interesting to see how it took shape.  I was about to go on stage – but this time as a musician.  Half my equipment was missing, but that was OK; I didn’t know the songs we were about to play, but I wasn’t worried about that either – I figured I’d be able to fake my way through it.  No, the anxiety didn’t manifest itself until I turned my keyboard on and realized that all my preset sounds were gone, replaced by weird and dissonant blurps and bleeps – sounds that are useful in certain contexts, but not in the one I was about to play in.

It wasn’t a nightmare, to be sure; just a sudden sense of alarm, and then I tried to make adjustments on the fly.  (Of course, in the dream, the keyboard’s knobs and sliders weren’t in the right place and weren’t making the changes I wanted them to make, but at least I had some semblance of control over trying to fix them.)  This is, actually, a sort of progress for me.  Normally I’d just panic.  At least this time I did my best to work with what I had.

I’m not sure where the anxiety was coming from, though it is true that I had somewhat of a minor panic attack yesterday afternoon – and even then, rather than letting it devour me, I did what I had to do to manage it.  It’s not good to fight these things, so I left the town festival where we all were and took a 30-minute walk back home and let my brain free associate itself into something approaching stillness.  The weather was nice, and the walk was pleasantly exhausting.

Now, I know I’ve just described an anxiety dream and a panic attack, but I want to stress that I’m in a much better place now than I’ve ever been before in terms of dealing with these things.  I took whatever control I could to improve my situation, and I was never in the sort of skin-peeling discomfort I used to have when these sorts of episodes would crop up in the past.  Hell, in the past I would’ve never left the house in the first place.

These are tough times, you guys.  Do what you can to take care of yourself.

Here’s where I would say that playing games is a form of self-care, and then I’d tell you what I’ve been playing, and that would be the next part of this post.  But honestly, I’m sort playing half-a-dozen things at the moment and I’m not particularly invested in any of them anymore, and I find that as I’m distracted by politics and the health of my dogs and my kid’s domino obsession, I’m having trouble staying focused.

I have a weird little routine now.  First thing I do is check in on my Xbox save of Clicker Heroes, which… look, at some point I’ll write up a long thing about idle clickers and why I’m so addicted to them.  This is not that time.  The point here is simply that checking in on Clicker Heroes – doing a little maintenance here and there, making sure everything’s leveling up appropriately – this is a nice, easy way of centering my attention.  I can also continue to check Twitter and such while the numbers continue multiplying in the background, but in any event it’s an easy way of gradually shutting off the distracted parts of my brain.

And then, once I’m at a point where I can’t make any more adjustments, I’ll switch over to something else.  I’m still primarily playing Watch Dogs 2, though I must admit that I’m starting to lose interest.  I was sorta dipping my toes back into Shadow of Mordor, of all things, and I also started a new Necromancer in Diablo III.  Was also thinking about starting a New Game+ in Horizon Zero Dawn, though I’m not sure I’ll keep on with that.  And there’s all the other little indie stuff I picked up in the various Xbox and PSN summer sales – stuff like Roundabout, I Am Bread, Adrift, and etc.  And then there’s all the other backlog and replay stuff I want to mess with – like replaying Assassin’s Creed Syndicate to prepare myself for Origins, and Wolfenstein: The New Order to prepare for the new sequel (and also to kill Nazis, which, of course, is our patriotic duty), and then sometimes I also have a weird impulse to fire up the newish Doom, and and and… well, you can see how it can be difficult to sit down and stay engaged in something for more than 15 minutes.

I didn’t even know that the Final Fantasy XII remake was coming out this week.  I’ve never played it; I’ve read nothing but glowing reviews of it, but I also know that I’ve barely touched FFXV, and I don’t know how I feel about starting another endless JRPG when I’m already so scatterbrained.  In any event, I presume my rental copy will arrive on Thursday, and we’ll see where we are at that point in the week.

Maybe I’ll take some time off from gaming completely and get back into writing music?  That’s a novel idea.  Who knows.

the fall release calendar

1. I keep waffling on how personal I can allow myself to get on this blog.  But since other social media avenues are closed to me at the present moment, and since it’s been at least a week since I last posted, I might as well explain – I’m on some new head meds, and even though it’s only been a week, I seem to be doing rather well.  So that’s good!  It’s not necessarily an easy thing to admit, but I don’t want to create the impression that I am somehow ashamed of taking prescription medication for depression or anxiety; the quality of my life was not good, for a long time, and it seems to be getting better, and that’s the most important thing.

2.  I am nearly halfway through Nathan Hill’s “The Nix”, and it is amazing.  I’d read reviews that compared the author to both DFW, DeLillo and Pynchon, and so I bought the book almost immediately, like some sort of reflex had just been triggered.  I suppose I can see a bit of that comparison – there are occasional passages in which Hill articulates a particularly neurotic train of thought that covers every conceivable base, in much the same way that Wallace did in “Infinite Jest”, but beyond that the book is very much its own thing.  And while I’m only halfway through, it’s certainly one of the best books I’ve read this year.

3.  I found myself listening to Jane’s Addiction’s “Up The Beach” not too long ago, and I decided to declare it the best opening song on an album post-1985.  (Why 1985?  I don’t know, but I knew that going back farther would make any discussion impossible to reconcile.)  I started a thread on Facebook about it, and got some other very worthwhile candidates, and so I’ve created a Spotify playlist with most of the suggestions that cropped up.  This is by no means definitive (nor is it sequenced in any particular order beyond where they appeared in the original discussion thread), and it is obviously a bit too white-guy heavy, and so if you’ve got further recommendations, by all means send ’em my way.

 

4. I’ve been trying to finish most of the games I play this year, but I decided to give up on finishing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.  This is mostly due to the fact that I was right near the end of the game and I was suddenly asked to make a choice, and I realized that not only did I not care about either of the options presented to me, but that I had literally no idea what the hell was going on.  I’d been content to find sneaky and non-lethal ways to infiltrate buildings and do whatever task needed to be done, and had stopped paying attention to the why at some arbitrary point that was, I realized, too far back to return from.  There are a lot of interesting critical analyses of why DE:MD’s story is fucked up and/or irresponsible and/or bad and/or misses an opportunity to take current political issues and do something interesting with them, but I never got anywhere close to seeing the game’s story in that sort of detail.  I instead found myself focused on the mechanics, because that was the thing that was enjoyable; the story was never particularly engaging, and then by the time I realized that the story mattered, it was too late.

5.  We are about to enter the fall release schedule, which means shit’s gonna start getting real.  I’d already bought the ultimate edition of Forza Horizon 3, which means I get to start playing it tomorrow.  (Possibly tonight at midnight?  If I’m awake?)  But I’m not sure there are any must-plays that are grabbing my attention more forcefully than others.  I mean, I’ve got a bunch of these upcoming games in my rental queue, and I did pre-order Gears 4, but I’m not quivering with anticipation.  Maybe it’s the meds?

I did stop myself from ordering the Bioshock remasters; I still might get them, but I’m waiting for a Digital Foundry verdict first.  I’m currently replaying Batman: Arkham Knight on Xbox One, because (a) cheevos and (b) procrastination.  That game still holds up, though I can say definitively that the PS4 version looks better.  If that matters.

Anyway, as far as the schedule is concerned, Kotaku posted a release calendar; my personal picks are in bold.

September 23

  • Deus Ex: Mankind Divided System Rift | PC, PS4, Xbox One | Story DLC

September 27

  • FIFA 17 | PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Sports
  • X-COM 2 | PS4, Xbox One | Strategy
  • Forza Horizon 3 | PC, Xbox One | Driving
  • Dead Rising 2 HD | PS4, Xbox One | Action Adventure
  • Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice | 3DS | Platformer
  • LEGO Dimensions Wave 6 | PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U | Action Adventure
  • Darkest Dungeon | PS4, Vita | Dungeon Crawler

September 30

  • Yo-Kai Watch 2: Bony Spirits | 3DS | RPG
  • Yo-Kai Watch 2: Fleshy Souls | 3DS | RPG

October 4

  • Warhammer End Times: Vermintide | PS4, Xbox One | Action Adventure

October 7

  • Paper Mario: Color Splash | Wii U | Action Adventure
  • Mafia III | PC, PS4, Xbox One | Action Adventure
  • Five Nights At Freddy’s: Sister Location | PC | Horror

October 10

  • 100ft Robot Golf | PS4, PS4 VR | Robot Sports

October 11

  • Gears of War 4 | PC, Xbox One | Third-Person Shooter
  • Dragon Quest Builders | PS4 | Action RPG, Sandbox
  • WWE 2K17 | PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Sports
  • Metal Gear Solid V: The Definitive Experience | PS4, Xbox One | Action Adventure
  • Rise of the Tomb Raider | PS4 | Action Adventure
  • Rise of the Tomb Raider Blood Ties/Lara’s Nightmare | PC, Xbox One | DLC
  • Duke Nukem 3D 30th Anniversary World Tour | PC, PS4, Xbox One | Memories

October 13

  • PlayStation VR | PS4 | Hardware  [I will obviously need to read some reviews and/or determine if I need to upgrade my OG PS4 to the Slim or the Pro before plunking down any money on this.  People appear to be having cathartic, out-of-body experiences with Rez Infinite, though, and who am I to say no to something like that?]
  • Batman: Arkham VR | PS4 VR | Action Adventure
  • PlayStation VR Worlds | PS4 VR | Action
  • Battlezone | PS4 VR | Action
  • Harmonix Music VR | PS4 VR | Music
  • Hustle Kings | PS4 VR | Pool
  • Rez Infinite | PS4 VR | Music Action
  • Shadow Warrior 2 | PC | First-Person Shooter

October 16

  • Skylanders Imaginators | PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U | Action Adventure

October 18

  • Batman: Return To Arkham | PS4, Xbox One | Action Adventure
  • Lego Harry Potter Collection | PS4 | Action Adventure

October 21

  • Battlefield 1 | PC, PS4, Xbox One | Horse Simulator
  • Sid Meier’s Civilization VI | PC | Strategy

October 25

  • Dark Souls III: Ashes Of Ariandel | PC, PS4, Xbox One | DLC

October 27

  • Just Dance 2017 | PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii, Wii U | Dancing
  • Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 | PC, PS4, Xbox One | Fighting
  • World of Final Fantasy | PS4, Vita | RPG
  • Harvest Moon: Skytree Village | 3DS | Simulation

October 28

  • Titanfall 2 | PC, PS4, Xbox One | Third-Person Shooter
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition | PC, PS4, Xbox One | RPG

November 1

  • Shantae: Half-Genie Hero | PC, PS4, Xbox One, Wii U, Vita | 2D Platformer

November 4

  • Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare | PC, PS4, Xbox One | First-Person Shooter
  • Mario Party Star Rush | 3DS | Party

November 7

  • Lego Dimensions Wave 7 | PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U | Action Adventure

November 10

  • PlayStation 4 Pro | PS4 | Hardware

November 11

  • NES Mini | Nintendo | Retro Console
  • Dishonored 2 | PC, PS4, Xbox One | Action Adventure

November 15

  • Watch Dogs 2 | PC, PS4, Xbox One | Action Adventure
  • Road Rage | PS4, Xbox One | Racing
  • Assassin’s Creed: The Ezio Collection | PS4, Xbox One | Action Adventure

November 18

  • Pokémon Sun | 3DS | RPG
  • Pokémon Moon | 3DS | RPG
  • Killing Floor 2 | PC, PS4 | Survival Shooter

November 29

  • Final Fantasy XV | PS4, Xbox One | RPG
  • Star Trek Bridge Crew VR | Oculus, Vive | Simulation

December 1

  • Syberia 3 | PC | Adventure

December 2

  • Gravity Rush 2 | PS4 | Action Adventure
  • Steep | PC, PS4, Xbox One | Extreme Sports
  • Super Mario Maker 3DS | 3DS | Mario Maker

December 6

  • The Last Guardian | PS4 | Action Adventure
  • Star Trek Bridge Crew VR | PS4 VR | Simulation
  • Dead Rising 4 | Xbox One | Action Adventure

Where Is My Mind?

Again with the vanishing act, I know, I know…

1. Just a short while ago I’d mentioned that I was feeling pressure to complete my self-imposed Goodreads challenge.  I’d go through my backlog and purposely pick shorter books, and read them a bit quicker than I’d prefer, just to stay ahead of the pace.  As it currently stands, though, I’ve finished 29 of 35, and so I think I’m in pretty good shape.  The last 5 books I’ve read since the last time I wrote this down:

  • A Doubter’s Almanac, Ethan Canin.  Some phenomenally good writing here tracing the generational lines of a tortured mathematical genius, though I must admit that this Goodreads comment is spot on:  “Deliver me from art about troubled men whose genius is used as an excuse for them to be assholes.”
  • The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, Dominic Smith.  Very good prose, but the plot ran out of steam for me and I had trouble staying engaged with it.
  • The Fisherman, John Langan.  Picked this up (among several others) on the advice of Unwinnable’s EIC Stu Horvath, and I’m very glad I did; this is a really well-written bit of cosmic horror that I couldn’t put down.
  • The Fugitives, Christopher Sorrentino.  This is, according to my GoogleDoc, the second-least-enjoyable book I’ve finished this year.  (The least-enjoyable book that I finished would be China Mieville’s This Census Taker, which was short enough for me to finish but long enough for me to swear off his books for the rest of my life.  I also attempted to read Girl On The Train but gave up about a third of the way into it.)  Anyway, there’s some marvelous writing here, but there’s also a ton of bullshit, and the final third is so confusing and messy and aggravating that I found myself incredibly relieved when I finished it.
  • Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates.  I can’t believe it took me this long to get to this.  This ought to be essential reading for literally every person on the planet.

I’m currently reading Paul Tremblay’s Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, also from that Unwinnable list, and it’s certainly doing the same sorts of things to my brain that Stranger Things did, though I suspect this is going to not have as happy an ending.

2. I am very close to finishing Double Fine’s VHS homage to Metroidvania, Headlander, and I’m torn between really loving the hell out of it and also wanting to break my controller in half during some of the boss battles.  Double Fine games are a tough thing for me to objectively critique; my love for Tim Schafer’s early work blinds me a bit, and so I’m willing to overlook a lot of issues.  A lot of recent DF games are marvelously clever and beautiful and charming and whimsical, but they don’t necessarily play all that well?  Headlander, on the other hand, is possibly the most game-y game they’ve made since Psychonauts, where the emphasis is very much on the actual gameplay and less on the writing.  Of course, the writing remains very good, and the game’s audio/visual aesthetic is top-notch, as always; it’s just that this is (for the most part) actually, legitimately fun to play.  (Except for some of the boss battles, which… aaaaaaaaaaaaa)

3. So, yeah; I’m still in somewhat of a cocooning phase, though I’m starting to feel better.  It’s going to remain somewhat quiet around here, though, as the day job has installed some rather heavy-duty internet firewall stuff, and so I don’t really know how much I can get away with (and it’s a line that I’m not particularly willing to cross at this point in time).  I’ll do my best to keep a somewhat regular presence here, of course.

 

discouragement

[CAUTION:  PERSONAL STUFF.  I don’t keep a personal blog anymore; if I did, I’d write this stuff there, as opposed to here.  (I’ve also forgotten my Livejournal password.)  I am feeling inclined to write anyway, so, deal with it.]

I am unwell today.  I think I got gluten’d from my office cafeteria breakfast, and so the morning has been… unpleasant.

Sometimes I hear stories about people who take medication for depression or anxiety, and they start feeling better and decide to stop taking their meds because they think they don’t need them anymore, and then everything falls apart; I am not one of those people.  I’m on anxiety medication and it’s improved my quality of life a thousand times over and I do not plan to stop taking it unless there’s a really good reason not to.  Similarly, it’s days like today where I realize that no matter how much progress I’ve made in terms of my GI illnesses – and I’ve made a lot of progress – there is absolutely no wiggle room for mistakes; if I eat something I’m not supposed to, I pay for it.

(This is also a “fuck you” to people who go out of their way to make fun of people who are gluten-free.  Let me assure you, this is not a choice.)

I am also feeling a bit pessimistic about a timely resolution to the impending NJ Transit strike, despite one of the lead quotes from this article (which directly flies in the face of last night’s developments).  My office also won’t let me work from home, so I’ll be forced to take vacation time, even though my inability to get into work isn’t my fault.

My rental copy of The Division finally arrived yesterday, and so I’d been hoping to offer up some early impressions today; alas, the game required a 3GB patch and for whatever reason my PS4 was refusing to download it in a timely fashion.  That said, if the above-referenced transit strike ends up happening and I’m stuck at home, well… I’ll be able to do a much more thorough write-up, at the very least.

What else, what else, what else.  I don’t know.  I’m in a weird headspace today; feeling discouraged and pessimistic, in addition to everything else.  I wish I could go into greater detail here, but this isn’t the best place for it.

 

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