WickedCestus

Putting this in spoilers because it's a bit of a vent.

Ok wow! That manual is super helpful; thanks! Sorry for the vague question; I didn't quite understand anything well enough to come up with any specific questions. That manual was pretty much exactly what I'm looking for. This game's damn complex, but I think I'm slowly getting the hang of it.

I bought this game yesterday because I have a bunch of free time right now, and I'm honestly completely overwhelmed. I've never played a game in any way like this, so it's taking me a long time to get used to all the mechanics. Menu-based real-time combat has always been the bane of my existence; I get so overwhelmed and confused and by the time I think I know what I'm doing the battle is finished. I'm only about three hours in and just became a BLADE, so it seems like the game's starting to open up and I don't feel ready! Any tips for what to focus on at the beginning to ease myself in? Be it combat tips or just how the general loop of sidequests/equipment/XP/class stuff works....thanks.

Playing Dragon Quest 4 in Japanese right now. Kinda reminds me of playing Ocarina of Time as a child. I know enough to figure out what people are talking about, but I'm missing enough vocabulary to find it difficult to determine what exactly I should be doing. In English games, it's really easy for me to tell what information is important and what's not because I'm so comfortable with the way games are written in that language, but in Japanese, I treat all random NPC chatter with an equal amount of reverence because it's all equally difficult to understand. Because of this, it's taking me significantly longer to progress than it usually would. But I'm learning a lot of cool new words! A good one I figured out early was the word for "appear", because it shows up at the start of every battle. I do use my dictionary a decent amount but over time I'm needing it less and less, which is a nice feeling. It helps that, similar to Pokemon (but to a lesser extent), these games are designed to be playable by children as well as adults.

A forest is anywhere where squirrels outnumber people.

That's a real sucky situation, pabosher. I feel for you. You got stuck in a real confusing and uncomfortable period of someone's life. It's always really tough to know (or suspect) when the last time will be to see someone you care about.

God, that was the funniest thing in the world. I was actually shaking.

Yeah, it's really tricky. I get where you're coming from, Clyde, and I didn't mean to devalue your experience or anything like that. Obviously all types of people can enjoy all sorts of music, what I was referring to was what I perceive to be the target audience of the video based on the content of the video and my (limited) knowledge of K-pop and Korean culture. But, it's always tough to tell whether the creator intends their messages or not, or what those messages even are, especially with music funded by giant companies that will be touched by so many different people. In the end, it's all about what viewers see and how they react. To me, it crosses the line and comes off as somewhat uncomfortable, but that line's going to be different for everyone.

I definitely disagree with you there, Clyde, but I don't know if I'll be able to articulate it properly. I think the misleading part is thinking that because Hyuna is the leader in the video, that means that the video was directed or influenced by her. From my understanding (someone correct me if I'm wrong), Korean girl groups are created and directed by men, for men. It's an industry that recruits beautiful girls at a very young age to turn them into talent. It's, at least from my perspective, a bit skeazy. But, in some ways, no skeazier than the American music industry. I think the main thing I think about with this stuff is that just because the dancers are obviously willing and happy to be dancing and performing in the video, that does not mean that the message the video sends about women is necessarily favourable. That is just my take on things.

That's such a cute story. My cousin just got a kitten and seeing her was the first time I had interacted with a kitten in real life. It was one of the greatest things I've done. Kittens are just amazing.

Feeling a weird disconnect with people lately. The only person I really talk to about anything I actually care about is my girlfriend. No one else seems to care about anything I have to say, so I just say stuff I don't mean in order to extend conversations about things I don't even want to talk about. I don't know if I'm starting to drift away from my current friends or if I am just completely forgetting how to interact with humans. I am often reminded of this comic: I just want people to realize that I'm an actual person with thoughts about things even if I rarely make it apparent. I feel like I just have this explosion of emotions and fears and everythings that I just want to unleash at someone but I don't know how to let myself. All it seems like anyone wants to hear from me is how excited I am to leave and how awesome and cool everything is. I'm really not a relentlessly positive person but I accidentally made people think I am and it's hard to break that. I still feel like I'm just trying to hide the fact that I feel depressed most of the time because I'm worried people will think I'm taking life for granted. It really sucks that everyone just hides everything from everyone else. And I leave for Japan in 3 days. Oh jeez. I know this is a huge cool opportunity but it's also going to be quite difficult. I hope that living in a dorm with people will be better for me than living with my parents 30 minutes away from anyone I know.

I like running because it's a good way to just listen to music and think. When I try to do that while sitting around I get distracted by wanting to do things, but while I'm running, all I can do is think and keep running. That being said, I only run a few times a week so maybe it gets more boring if you're trying every day.

!!Apparently Nintendo announced a sequel to Picross 3D (The #1 best game on the original DS) that will come out in Japan in October, for only ~$30!!! This is great news!! Now I have to region-unlock my system!!!

Has anyone tried this new hack that uses the Youtube app to allow you to play games from other regions? I'm kinda interested because apparently it's pretty easy/safe and I want to play the new Rhythm Tengoku game a stupid amount.

Gave up on Sleeping Dogs last night. I think the execution of the city was top-notch and it felt really cool to drive around and appreciate the feel of Hong Kong. However, I didn't enjoy anything else about the game, especially the writing. I understand it was supposed to be emulating a kung-fu action movie, but it just made everything feel totally meaningless. All of the story missions were the same boring stuff and the combat was a bit too formulaic and slow to keep me going. I'm surprised I played it for the three hours I did. It sucks because I thought they really had something there with the world and they just didn't execute on any other part of the game.

I'd love to hear it. I've been thinking a lot about it (while continuing to play this game) and I probably took a slightly more extreme position in my original post than what I actually think. This is all coming from someone who has watched pro Starcraft for the last 5 years so I'm not anti-e-Sport in general. But yeah I'd love to hear your thoughts when you have the time.

Uh, yeah. It came out and was...okay. I liked it because I liked Artosis and Tasteless a whole bunch already, but as a documentary I don't think it's great, especially for people unfamiliar with the scene. I loved "The Smash Brothers" though, and it turned me from someone who didn't know what to think about pro Smash to someone who can appreciate it at least on a basic level. I watched my first tournament about a month ago (The Top 8 of EVO) and found it really fun and engaging. I consider "Smash Brothers" the high bar for e-Sports documentaries.

I've learned the Korean alphabet and Japanese (syllabary?) and I'm quite interested in linguistics so I don't think it would take too much trouble for me to learn it. Maybe I'll give it a shot. Could be neat.

You know, yeah. I guess I did. But I wanted one of my own invention so I didn't have to learn or think about anything. Speaking of which, is anyone here actually able to read the IPA? Was it worth learning? I am sort of fascinated.

Kyuu. I presented an essay in high school once about a new language I called "English II". Basically, I abolished q, c, and x with the reason being that all their sounds can easily be replicated with other letters. I also added letters for "ch" and "th". I still now think about that and say, "yeah that makes a lot of sense". I am far less angry about it now than I was in high school though.

I really like this game, but the more I play it, the more I realize that as an approximation of an actual sport, it feels absolutely hollow. When I first started playing the game, I was amazed at how much it reminded me of being part of a minor league hockey team throughout my childhood. The way you could do little things to help the team; how it felt to score; etc. But I guess as I've recently got more into fitness again and playing physical sports after a few years off, I'm seeing how this game cheaply produces the same endorphins/dopamine/(science happy stuff) for less than half the effort and it makes me feel like part of a dystopian cyber-future. A lot of people who don't like physical sports and like e-sports feel like the lack of physical prowess makes the games more pure because they are intellectual and anyone (regardless of physical prowess) can jump in and play at a decent level. But part of what makes physical sports satisfying is the fact that being fit is really hard and sports are an avenue for all that effort to pay off. It takes a whole lot more dedication and effort to become good at a physical sport, and a lot of that time is spent doing boring hard things that are not the actual sport. This is exactly why it's satisfying to do/watch someone do really cool moves in a physical sport. It is interesting because behind the scenes you just know there is so much going on and what it means to the player to be that good. And it's not just important at the top end. I was never the most skilled hockey player, or a terribly fast player. But god damn it I tried very hard and I came off the ice every shift dead tired and proud of myself. Skating across the rink as fast as you can and diving to make a defensive play feels great because it's hard. It means something. Boosting back and making a save in Rocket League gives you the cheapened version of that experience a few times, but after a while it pales in comparison. In a physical sport you can actually make a difference just by trying hard even if you kinda suck, where in Rocket League there is no trying hard other than doing well. No one can tell you're trying hard when you're just driving around aimlessly and missing shots. And it leads to less empathy for teammates, because when they suck there's no redeeming qualities. Like I said, I wasn't very good at hockey, but everyone on the team appreciated the effort and wouldn't give me much shit for missing shots or passes or anything. But in something like Rocket League it's so easy to get frustrated at a teammate because there's no indication of effort. I guess this is all really obvious and pointless to say but I've just been thinking about it a lot while playing and seeing everyone compare the game to physical sports. My long-term irrational worrying-person worry is that as these become more popular everyone will forget what it actually feels like to play a physical sport and then the robots/aliens will challenge us to a basketball game and we will all die. (I still think the game is cool)

I actually find the Endless Eight to be my favourite part of the show, even though I did watch it after it aired.. I like shows that make you feel comfortable with the characters to the point where you sorta know what they're gonna do, and EE was the most literal example of that. Plus, the little changes kept me paying attention. I dunno. I really like re-watching shows/movies over and over to pick out everything, so that's probably a factor. I actually went back recently to watch the show and then realized all I wanted to see was the Endless Eight, so I just watched those episodes by themselves. I guess that's weird.

My friend and I would turn on moon-gravity in Tony Hawk's Underground on the PS2 and run around on foot searching for glitches.We found that if you had moon gravity turned on, there were certain walls you could jump against to double-jump for infinity. Specifically, we found that if you climb up the tower in Vancouver, once you reach the top your skater will fall into the floor and just be a head poking out of the ground, which we found consistently amusing. We spent hours and hours doing this. This same friend and I would play Star Wars: Battlefront and play on different teams and see who could get the "Bantha Fodder" award for most team-kills on our CPU teammates. My sister never was a huge game-player so whenever we played games it would turn into some sort of role-play where we would aimlessly wander around pretending to do something. My main memory is playing Lotus on the Genesis and pretending we were on the phone while commuting to work. I don't know why we considered that exciting enough to want to imagine.

That's a good point, AppleCider. I've been trying to keep notes of what I did each day, but it would be impossible to track all the little things that happen that could affect how I feel. I've been doing this for 2 weeks and the main thing I've noticed is that I go a lot longer without seeing my friends than I thought. I live about 30mins away from most of them, and before I was keeping track I thought I saw them regularly, but now I can see the days slip into a week+ and it's usually after that period of too much alone time that I start to get quite down. I always used to think I really liked being alone but I'm starting to realize how important it is to get out and be in contact with people. It seems obvious but yeah. Recently, I've been sort of trying to pull away from part of my circle of friends because they're totally toxic to my girlfriend and I, so there are less opportunities to be social, and I sort of have to make them myself which is new. However, I'm trying to get at least some exercise each day and meditate and I've been feeling better since seeing the doctor. He basically just told me to exercise and be more social, but it changed my perspective from this being something that just happens to me inevitably to something I can try to manage and lessen through a better lifestyle. I think I'm going to look into therapy when I get back from Japan.

Thanks for the suggestions. I've played SMT IV already, but I'm adding Fire Emblem, Bravely Default, and Phoenix Wright to my list for sure. I don't know about Monster Hunter, because I won't have anyone to play with. Is that vital? I'll be living in a different region and it's completely region-locked and none of my friends back home play it either. But, I'm used to playing co-op-focused games alone (I played like 80hrs of Borderlands alone (I was a different person back then)). Is it worthwhile as a single-player thing? My only MH experience is ~3 hours of Tri on the Wii. I'm thinking of maybe picking up Animal Crossing as well, but maybe I'm just going overboard at this point haha. It would be worrying for me if I end up actually having enough game time to play all these. Still, good to know that there is no shortage of awesome games for this thing that I've missed so far. (And I'll keep that VLR save thing in mind, thanks.)