lonely hitbox controller

 At some point while Guilty Gear Strive and Street Fighter 6 were fresh and new and cool, and I somehow deluded myself I'd put a lot of time into This One Hobby, I got myself an all-button controller primarily focused on fighting/arcade games.

The thing with fighting games however is that they update themselves relatively frequently, enough that if something else takes your focus, a new character could drop in and change the meta or whatever and you gotta know what their deal is.

It also doesn't help that my already existing hobbies took so much of my free time I couldn't be bothered with keeping it up for a while.

After I moved and properly put everything into place I figured I could give it a try again. Which I did. And it was mostly practicing how to play Sol Badguy for like 30 minutes and never opened a game again lol.

Now the controller is sitting on my desk, judging me for my lack of commitment. Not even commited to store it away, on the off-chance I get the motivation to be a Gamer Fighter. Until whatever I decide to do, it will sit there, collect dust, and dish out shame.

My iconic box with buttons

retromania retrospective, man...ia

Trough reasons I'm not gonna delve into, I ended up visiting a convention dedicated to nerdy retro stuff called "Retromania". It's got it all you'd expect: Old video games, Pokemon cards, physical movies, Pokemon cards, artist alleys, Pokemon cards, Pokemon games, Pokemon cards, a potion themed shop, Pokemon cards, toys of different kinds, even Pokemon, and, shockingly, Pokemon cards.

 

Did I mention Pokemon cards? I'm somewhat conflicted over the dominating presence of that. On one hand the franchise is over 30 years old so naturally it would count as a retro thing, and people (especially the kids) do love their Pokemon cards. On the other hand: good lord it seems to be an easy market for people to establish themselves and make money out of. The price of some of the cards I glanced over cost more than my monitors. As an outsider it feels like the card game trading market for Pokemon has gone way overboard. I think that all of the expensive modern cards do have cheaper and easily attainable alternatives for people who just want a card for play or they aren't too picky with their collection, but it's a bit ridicolous that some of these things can eat up at least 10% of most peoples monthly salaries. My own spending was fairly modest, got myself a Gameboy magnet by an artist who makes/sells a bunch of pins/stamps/magnets related to nerd media. And if there's anything I want, it's a magnet from a event/place I went to. I also got a Scissor model kit. I did not know they even made those for Pokemon. Of those that were available, pokemon love, and general Cool Toy Vibe, Scissor won with a solid competition of Metagross. 

Beyond that, it was pretty cool to see all the old consoles and games. Primarily the retro TV-consoles, since some were hooked up to CRT TVs and I saw some people playing them. It really does make a difference in how the games look and feel as they are played. I don't have a CRT TV or any old consoles besides a Game Boy Advance SP. Which, while neat, is replaceable with either modded consoles or just plain emulators. But the physical medium of a TV can't be digitally replicated. At least, not to the extent it's indistinguishable from what it's copying.

So overall I'd say it was pretty cool to visit, I also realized it was basically me poking a lil look into some fandoms I have barely any connection to. While I'm lightly entertained by the spectacle, I don't think I'd get much of it unless I actually did collect retro games/consoles.

nose, handshake emoji, eyes, bottom text: leaking

I have been sick since thursday, which I think is a result of couple of factors: consumption of food and bevarages of questionable quality (met some friends at a local pub) and people generally catching colds around this time. I got literally no sleep during the bedtime hours between wednesday and thursday, and I developed a headache and a cold soon after.  

Literally me fr

All of these things which influenced me to do a very wise decision: Instead of resting I'm gonna play a video game. Specifically Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name. Even though I told myself I would play Hollow Knight as the next game to give myself some break from the Yakuza/Like a Dragon games. 

But it has been a while since I played a game to begin with, and I've heard that this was a relatively short game so I could finish it by the weekend. 

One thing I was worried about with this game is the developers major problem with Refusing To Let Kiryu Go. Up until this point he's had, what, 4 games where the end is "This Is Kiryu's Last Story" and then follow it up again by picking his arc by straws just to have him do something, often at the expense of other characters. I groaned loudly when he made a sudden comeback in the middle of Y:LAD and stuck around for a while. And now he gets his own game as the sole protagonist. Again. Yippie. 

So with that pessimism addressed; LADG:TMWEHN is really good and has an absolutely fantastic ending. It works as a second/third/fourth attempt to do Kiryu's story right. There's a lot of rethreads but they've been repackaged to make the story better overall. Also the ending turned me into a sobbing mess. Which I haven't felt for any piece of media in Years, so that's gotta count for something.

The new gadget mechanic for the combat is a welcomed addition and it is really fun to pull gang of people with the Not Spider Man Web Shooter Metal String Watch and dashing around with the goofy jet shoes. 

 I'm so used to the games being from a different time period in terms of technology that I did a double take when I did a substory that revolves around a guy using Not ChatGPT as his dating guide, hilarity ensues. It does feel strange that the games have now reached the moderna contemporary period instnead of catching up 30 years of technological development. Rombas aren't that quirky anymore, it's AI time now, fuckers. 

Who needs an hour long youtube video about the dangers of ai chatbot when I have a japanese video game from late 2023 telling the same thing with (slightly) less insanity 

In the end the game turned out to be a really positive surprise, almost frustratingly so. Like "Oh, they still got it" kind of way. I don't know how well regarded the Majima spin-off and Infinite Wealth are (latter of which this game has a demo of, and the ending does feature Kiryu with his godawful haircut from Inifinite Wealth, ugh), but it did make me feel a bit more hopeful about playing those games. That being said my main frustration with Y:LAD was the game got really tedious to play in the last quarter, and it is in a different game genre than Name, so I'll see.

why

Until then though, I played maybe 15 minutes of Hollow Knight so I will finally get around the indie darling I should have gotten around to ages ago, I finally find out why his night is hollow.

Dislike a Dragon

Just finished a second glass of sparkling wine.

In the previous entry I mentioned I was playing trough Yakuza: Like a Dragon and was about to encounter a notorious difficulty spike of a boss fight. I fought, lost, grinded my way higher levels and more varied movesets, changed team setup, fought again and won (felt like the fight took a while). Felt obnoxious.

What I wasn't expecting was this process would be repeated in similar ways for every upcoming boss fight, with their own annoying quirks that made to tired of playing the game. It got to it's breaking point in the final chapter where you have to go trough a 30 minute long dungeon and a fight a boss with ridicolous amount of health (no save points during any of this) and, get this, the boss starts using an instant kill move after getting to half health, trough the rest of the fight. The only way to deal with it was to use the rather unreliable blocking mechanic. He first attacked Ichiban, the protagonist. I failed to block, and it killed him, causing the game to ask me if I wanted to redo the fight again.

I didn't want to do the fight again. I got so sick with this annoying nonsense, so I watched the rest of the finale on youtube. Did you know there are two more long fights right after the boss? And, again, no way to save? Yakuza games have always had this weird dichtonomy where they want to have big long epic finales in these adult-themed games, but they are usually tedious and the lack of respect they have for players time (especially this game) has always made the finales dreadful. Doesn't exactly help that they rarely had satisifying endings, wether it's the gameplay and/or story.

Thankfully ending is actually among the best in the franchise. It's just a shame it's locked behind a massive swamp of slog.

It's a shame that I'm finished with the game on such a sour note, because everything up until that initial difficulty spike has been pretty darn good: main story, cast, side-quest and all.

I had plans to play either Hollow Knight or the DMC trilogy collection, but after being frustrated by game mechanics so much I'm feeling a bit hesitant of risking having that happen again, so I might take a break from games for a little time. Doesn't help that I haven't done much else today so I feel the desire to get other stuff done.

Bit of a shame to start the first proper work-weekend on a sour note. Should figure out what to do with the rest of the day, of the few hours I have left before bedtime.

Cool as Dragon

Can you believe it's snowing in Sweden? Well aparently, Sweden doesn't. This whole week has been filled with gorgeous snowy weather, but today it snowed Just A Little Bit Too Much so public transit fully stopped for a bit and I assume the car traffic did not fare much better. Me though? I was working from home and took a 25 minute long walk to the gym. I'm fully aware that it was the equivalent poverty tourism for snowy climate, but it is a bit odd how Sweden (or at least the south of it) seems to be so ill-prepared for heavy-ish snow. But hey, good opportunity for photos!
 

Statue of Karl IX

It also seems like tomorrow is not going to look any better weather-wise, so it will be a nice and chill restday tomorrow (which means: gaming). Actually, speaking of games, I've been craving some Riichi Mahjong lately. I wish I could say it was due to Yakuza: Like A Dragon since I'm playing it, but I haven't touched the Mahjong minigame at all. Instead it's due to passively watching some NorthernLion VODs and I felt the urge slowly growing on me. It's a similar feeling when I watch someone play World of Warcraft even though I've sworn off that game about the 5 times by now. But with Mahjong it wasn't so much "swearing off" as other things took interest. Doesn't help that learning the conditions you need to have a winning hand is a pain. I found out the city's Mahjong club is pretty close to where I live and it's been active for quite a few years. But I figure that I should prioritize getting my Croatian to be decent before I even consider getting another hobby. I have plenty of them as is. I do hope to finish Like A Dragon soon, but I do know from spoiling myself that I'm heading towards a massive difficulty spike in form of an Important Boss Fight, and there still are 3 or so chapters left, so it's going to take a while, but I have done what I think was sensible amount of grinding, so tomorrow I'll see how that paid off.