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Blog: Upgrade Days 2 – 02/03/21

Last week I spoke about my decision to invest my money into my computer rather than endlessly try and chase down a PlayStation 5, a decision that I’m ultimately glad I made. But I wanted to follow up on last week’s post and briefly go over the roller coaster of emotions that I experienced in a mere 7 days. See, I was sweating the overall installation of the components more than I really needed to. The real hassle, while brought on by replacing my hardware, actually turned out to be more of Windows fucking me over than anything else.

5 years ago I built my gaming computer from the ground up, which was a first for me considering up until then I had only replaced components rather than build an entire computer. It was a wonderful experience that fell a little flat because of some defective hardware, but that was sorted out pretty quickly. But considering I was very budgeted back then, my components, specifically the motherboard, was not able to accept any newer processors. It was a problem for “future Ari,” and boy did 2016 Ari really fuck 2021 Ari over.

So I get all of my new parts in and manage to get everything installed within an hour or so without any issues. When it came time to boot my machine however, Windows decided that I no longer had it installed (despite it totally being on my still connected C drive) and asked me to reinstall. Well, I had no idea where my Windows product key was, but luckily there was an option to proceed without one. Then the strangest thing happened that I’m sure smarter computer folks can explain, but when I tried to install Windows again, it told me that none of my hard drives were formatted correctly for Windows. I thought this was weird considering Windows had been and still was installed on the damn drive it was telling me wasn’t formatted correctly.

After an hour of getting virtual middle fingers however, I relented and took comfort in the fact that I had backed up my PC before embarking on this upgrade, and formatted the entire drive to make Windows happy. Turns out, that wasn’t enough. After some Googling, a user on some forum basically ran down a list of commands I needed to type into the command prompt to more thoroughly format the drive or something. I didn’t quite know what I was doing, but I was assured it would solve the problem. And solve it, it did!

Something you might not be aware of is just how much Windows locks you out of when you don’t have a product key. Every time I wanted to do anything that resembled customizing how my desktop looked, I was gently reminded that cheapskates like myself don’t get those privileges. After some time of trying to track my key down, I ultimately gave up and just bought Windows again from Microsoft, essentially boosting up the price of this upgrade by another $150. Five minutes after that purchase, I found my product key just kind of sitting on top of everything in a drawer that I definitely looked in earlier. Thankfully, the customer support people at Microsoft were very understanding and were able to give me my cash back, but the whole experience just didn’t need to happen.

Bow that Windows was finally installed on my fresh drive I was off to the races, or so I thought. Then I discovered that the system image I made of my computer the previous day no longer existed, maybe that deep hard drive format had something to do with it. I had backed up certain files to an external drive, but not everything. That’s when the panic started to kick in.

Years of projects, articles, and artwork, all gone in the blink of an eye, including literally everything I had for this very website. I very nearly had an emotional breakdown and was ready to write up a post about how the site would be vacant for a bit before I was able to rebuild what had been destroyed. And that was my mentality for a few days.

Then something wonderful happened. I plugged in all of my external drives a few days later and was so thankful that I’m an idiot who gives cheeky little names for all of my hard drives. Never in my life was I so happy to see my external drive show up in the finder than when I saw “Count Backupula” themselves. I dug into the Count’s files, and hidden about 10 layers deep, in folders that was just titled as symbols and numbers, I found it all. My entire desktop was just sitting there, waiting for me. It was a great feeling of relief mixed with the affirmation that I knew I couldn’t have been that stupid to forget to backup everything in several places.

Now I have the best of both worlds, where I have all of my old shit at the ready, while simultaneously getting to enjoy the feeling of a freshly wiped computer. I’ve learned a lot from this experience, particularly the importance of redundant backups. I’ve also learned that while my CPU and RAM upgrades may feel slightly incremental, the biggest and best upgrade one could invest in is an SSD. Seriously, I don’t know how I ever played video games without an SSD eliminating the vast and shitty load times I used to endure so regularly.

And that’s kind of been my week honestly. I’m still happy I made the choice to upgrade, but boy howdy do I need to plan more thoroughly before I do anything like that again. The only upgrades I need to do from here are maybe a new case and the ever elusive 30 series graphics cards. Seriously, those things are just as impossible to find as a PlayStation 5.

Blog: Upgrade Days – 1/27/21

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Over the past few months you might have heard me speak (complain) about my desire to buy a PlayStation 5 that’s been consistently undermined by the fact that getting one is basically impossible. A real quick summary of that situation is that I had saved some money over the past year, specifically to buy one of those goofy looking boxes. But as I spent more and more time in front of my computer, unable to buy one of these stupid things, I finally decided that even with a PlayStation 5 I’d probably still end up spending most of my time on my PC. So I spent my console fund on some new computer parts that hopefully wont get outdated the moment I install them.

As of writing this, my new processor and RAM are sitting on my coffee table taunting me. They haven’t been installed yet because my motherboard is apparently taking the scenic route to my home, probably in an effort to see the world one last time before it’s relegated to living in the darkness that is the inside of my PC tower. I’m pretty sure I’ve checked the Newegg app every hour on the hour for any sort of update as to where this stupid thing is, as if doing so will make whatever truck it’s on travel faster.

I’m genuinely nervous about installing these components not only because I have no idea if everything will work or not, but more so because installing processors happens to be the most harrowing part of any computer build in my opinion. There are just so many dang fragile pins on the thing, something that my oafish hands are ill-equipped to handle. Then there’s the whole thermal paste thing which is a hot-button issue in the PC building community that everyone has a different opinion on. Some folks draw an X on their processors while other opt for a mere dot. I’ve landed in the “grain of rice” sized amount of thermal paste camp, but the very notion of applying it at all makes me worry that I’m somehow going to paint the inside of my tower with this goopy stuff.

But I need to upgrade this machine, and there’s no getting around that fact. My current motherboard isn’t compatible with modern processors or RAM, and those seem to be my main bottlenecks when it comes to gaming and processing video. I’d love to finally be able to play a modern game on my PC that runs at a stable framerate and looks good. Make no mistake, even after this upgrade my PC will not be a behemoth of any kind, but it will finally be compatible with newer components like the newest 30 series of graphics cards. Funnily enough, getting a hold of those is just as difficult as getting a PS5, so I’m fucked regardless.

While it’s a little sad and uncomfortable to see this fund I’ve been building for so long just vanish over the course of a few minutes, I know that I made the right decision. My computer has been one of the few things that has kept me sane throughout the course of this pandemic and that fact alone makes me feel better about funneling more cash into it. My only sticking point is that despite how much I’ve spent already, it’s only half of a complete upgrade. Now I need to build the fund back up in order to get my paws on one of them 3070 or 3080 graphics cards, and then I can watch YouTube videos and work on my D&D campaigns in full 4K resolution, just like Gary Gygax intended.

UPDATE: It didn’t go great…

Blog: A Little Joy – 01/20/21

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Everything is so chaotic right now and it’s insanely difficult to focus on anything outside of the ever growing train wreck that is American politics. Even now as I write this, I fear that by the time this article goes live some horrible bullshit will have happened. I pray that everything goes smoothly and America doesn’t collapse in under its own weight, but literally anything is possible these days. But at some point I can’t keep staring at the wreckage and need to focus on things that make me happy. So here are some of the distractions I engaged in last week that brought me joy.

BALDUR’S GATE III

During my Game of the Year 2020 articles, I mentioned at one point that I wanted to check back in with Baldur’s Gate III and see how it’s evolved since receiving a few patches. Considering I had to restart the game because all previous version save files were no longer compatible, I trudged through the prologue once more and made it back to the first real explorable area. I can’t really say that I’ve noticed many differences in performance or features, but admittedly I’m still very early on and haven’t quite had the chance to really see the majority of content available in the game. They did fix the camera though, which is absolutely huge and was one of bigger issues with Baldur’s Gate III when it launched into early access late last year.

Even though I’m really enjoying playing Baldur’s Gate III, I’m still struggling with the idea of whether or not I want to dedicate too much more time into it. Considering it is an early access title, I can only imagine that save files are going to be in jeopardy a few more times during the course of development, and I don’t know that I want to play through that prologue more than I have to. It’s a decent enough tutorial level but I’ve already played it like 6 times at this point, so I might still wait on that. But in the meantime, I could always dip into Pillars of Eternity or Tyranny to get my CRPG fix.

HITMAN 3

The rebooted Hitman series of games that started in 2016, have become some of my favorite and most anticipated titles with Hitman 3 being no exception. Technically the game doesn’t launch until the day that you’re reading this, but knowing that I’ll have a Hitman game to distract me from whatever misery may come tomorrow is good enough for me to mention it. I think what I love about the series the most is how it makes you have to improvise and adapt on the fly, dashing all of your well made plans into pieces because some guard walked around a corner for the first time ever and spotted you choking the life out of your target. But that’s why you get a cool gun.

I don’t know if Hitman 3 will be any good, but the early reception on it seems overwhelmingly positive. I’m really looking forward to getting to play this one whenever the download finishes.

WANDAVISION

I didn’t expect to be this into a superhero themed TV show, but here we are. WandaVision is an insanely cool take on the Avengers characters of the same names, placing them in this incredibly weird and unsettling version of a 50’s/60’s sitcom. It’s like watching an episode of I Dream of Jeannie that occasionally does its best impression of a psychological thriller, which doesn’t sound like a great fit on paper but it totally works. While the first episode left my partner and I both unsure of whether we wanted to stick with the series, the second episode really got its hooks into us. Or maybe it just hooked me and they were being nice. Who can say?

All I know is that WandaVision is so far one of the coolest things that Marvel has done with one of their properties. My only concern is how well it will actually stick the landing. As of now, I have some ideas and theories about what’s happening or where this is all going, but it does feel like one of those stories that could end with a lame twist like saying it was all a dream or something. I don’t think that WandaVision will do that, but you never know. Regardless, we’re gonna keep watching the show.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS

This one shouldn’t be surprising in any way, but it might be the biggest thing that’s brought me joy over the past few weeks. See, we recently decided to ditch our previous campaign in favor of one that was in a less boring setting. We landed on the Eberron setting, which is basically a magical version of the steampunk aesthetic that’s infinitely less insufferable. One of the biggest motivating factors for the change was the lack of any of the slice of life stuff that people usually engage with when playing a role-playing game. Our last setting didn’t have any real opportunities for the players to do anything outside of killing stuff and drinking ale, which made for a formulaic and uninspired game. I don’t think they minded it as much as I did, but I sensed a bit of fatigue with the module we were using. Also, I was fucking over it.

But that’s not the point. The point is that our campaign is set in a massive city that’s teeming with life and opportunity. We went through extensive character creation sessions where we really defined who their characters are. This was in service of not only creating fully realized characters, but to get my players invested in their avatars and understanding their motivations. Previous characters they made definitely wanted things, but without a setting to support those desires their characters were just walking murder-husks, devoid of any real direction.

I also changed our storytelling format to allow for more downtime and opportunities for their characters to grow through their actions. By using a combination of one-shots and custom campaigns, I’m able to hit them with story threads when they need it, and allow them to fuck around if they’d prefer that. It also allows me to react to their actions better than if I had tried to plan for said actions in advance. Everything about this campaign has been streamlined in a way that has taken a lot off of my plate. While I have a bunch of one-shots that are narratively linked together, an overarching story is something that’s entirely up to them and how they interact with the world. I might write in a bad guy here or a mission there, but I’m waiting for those plot hooks to come up naturally rather than me trying to force my players into it, all of which has made for a much more rewarding and fun Dungeons & Dragons experience for all of us.

So that’s it I guess. Hopefully when you read this, everything is cool and great. I would really prefer if we could just have something uneventful happen here at the finish line and I can go back to talking about video games without having to worry about if the former president is going to try and overthrow the government again. But yeah… good luck America. Good luck everyone, honestly.

Blog: Exhausted – 01/13/21

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I don’t know that I necessarily have the words to properly describe my feelings about the events of last week, nor do I know that I want to go into too much detail about it. In short, it’s been extremely difficult to watch my country rip itself apart at the behest of a sore loser who refuses to believe that more people told him to go fuck himself than those who begged for him to stay. Things are bad right now, and with the ongoing threats of violence all around the country planned for the next few days I think we’re all kind of just hanging in a limbo and waiting for whatever is coming to finally arrive. It’s times like these that I’d normally try and turn to my hobbies to distract myself from the hourly misery that’s been foisted upon us, but there hasn’t been a video game that’s done that for me in the past few months.

But where video games have failed to do the trick, I’ve found myself diving into the various Dungeons & Dragons books I own in an effort to flesh out my next campaign. I’ve been doing a ton of world building and story crafting which has been a lot of fun for me as well as a welcome reprieve from the world I live in. Not to say that any of the stories inside of those books are particularly happier than those that take place in the real world, but I guess it’s just easier to disassociate when they’re talking about goblins and orcs.

One of the things that bums me out about this period of ambivalence I’m in, is that there are games I want to play but never have the energy or will to actually start. For instance, I haven’t played Baldur’s Gate III in a few months and that game has received some significant updates that I’m eager to check out. I’ve also had the PC port of Horizon Zero Dawn installed for quite a while, but I still haven’t launched the damn thing. Ideally I’d like to play that game before the sequel drops at some point this year. There are quite a lot of games that I really would like to spend more time with, but I just rarely have the energy or desire to actually do so.

The only thing I dip into regularly is NBA 2K21, a game that is literally just a way for me to occupy my hands while I watch or listen to something in the background. It’s a comfort food that’s going down real smooth these days, especially after what happened at the capitol last week. I’m just kind of using that game as a way to turn off my brain for an hour or so but I still have a ton of other games I really want to play. There’s just no motivation for me to dive into something new.

Look, I know these blogs have been overly dour and a bit more rambling in nature than I usually opt for, but it’s hard to write about video games right now with all of this shit going on. But I’m sticking it out the best I can, and I hope you’re doing the same. Be good to each other folks, and be safe.

Blog: That Dang Virtual Reality – 01/06/21

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There was a small part of me that expected 2020 to draw itself out by introducing a secret 13th month we’d never had before, but thankfully the calendar held together and we’re finally in January. Since the New Year ticked over however, I can’t really say that I’ve been playing much of anything, partly because there’s nothing new that excites me right now, and partly cause I’m busy focusing on other stuff.

The only games that I have dipped into have oddly enough, been VR titles. One of the things that kept me from just having VR at the ready was just how much space it took up, with the wires and base stations and whatnot, but I did some reorganizing that facilitated a more permanent VR experience. This led me to take advantage of the Steam Winter Sale a bit, and buy some VR games that seemed well reviewed.

The only one I’ve really spent much time with is Ragnarock, a rhythm game that places you at the back of a viking warship with a couple of drums in front of you and big drumsticks in your hands. It’s basically Guitar Hero with viking-adjacent music in it, some of which is good and some of which notably isn’t. The main conceit is that the more accurate you are in your drumming, the faster and farther the oarsmen on the boat can travel and operate. I think the main mode is a competitive race between you and online players, but that’s not for me at all. As is, I really like playing Ragnarock, and quite enjoy some of the tracks in the game.

Outside of that game, I have a couple of other VR games that I want to try. I have a game called Until You Fall, which is this neon drenched hack and slash looking game, that only after I purchased it did I realze it was a rogue-like experience. So I probably wont be gushing about that one. Another one is called Pixel Ripped 1995, and I honestly have no fucking clue what it is, but it looked neat. Lastly, there’s Star Wars Squadrons, a game that will probably make me barf all over myself, but I get to fly an X-Wing, so it’s kind of worth it.

But yeah, outside of that I haven’t really touched much else. I’ve been pretty busy in crafting our next Dungeons & Dragons campaign, which has been a lot of work but a lot more fun. I’ve also been trying to refresh the space I’m in, specifically trying to reorganize and throw away things that I don’t need. I would always suggest that anyone take the time to organize and take stock of the things they have, but after a year like 2020, I think it’s more essential than ever to just shake up everything in your home.

Anyway, I don’t really have a point to this blog, so I’m gonna wrap it up. Shout out to Georgia too. That state looks lovely in a nice shade of blue.

Blog: It’s Almost Over – 12/30/20

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Well hey there everyone, I hope you’re enjoying all the Game of the Year stuff thus far cause we’ve only got two more days of it to go. It was extremely difficult for me to pull this all together just because despite this being a massive year for video games, not a lot of things really got their hooks into me. Regardless, this isn’t about Game of the Year stuff, more of that is coming tomorrow. Instead, I’d like to get a little sappy here on the last blog of the year.

First, I want to thank each and every single one of you for coming and reading all of our articles, day in and day out. It’s honestly been shocking to see how consistent our readership has been for the past couple of months, and I genuinely appreciate that. The Bonus World is a massive labor of love for me that’s been an incredibly important project for my sanity here in 2020. I don’t know that I could have made it through this year without my hobbies and projects, and this site is at the top of both of those lists.

Secondly, 2020 fucking sucked. It was without a doubt the worst year I’ve ever endured in my life and I’m so glad that I was able to make it through to the other side. Although I don’t want to jinx next year, here’s a preemptive “fuck 2021” just in case. I specifically can’t wait for January 20th when I don’t have to live in a country that’s run by a petulant baby that’s thrashing about in the hopes that someone will pay attention to him, but that’s 21 days away. Till then, I expect a lot more bellyaching and complaining while desperately trying to undermine our democracy, so that’ll be fun. My hope is that Donnie actually refuses to leave the White House so I can have video evidence of that big baby being forcibly removed from the premises.

And lastly, I want to thank everyone who kept me going throughout the year. From the readers of this site that justify my efforts in keeping it going, to my groups of friends/DnD parties that provide me with endless joy on a semi-regular basis, to my partner and my family who are always there for me. 2020 was miserable, and I couldn’t have made it through this year without all of your support.

And with that, I’d like to say goodbye to 2020, and remind everyone that there is a light at the end of the tunnel that will encompass us all on January 20th, 2021. But hey, the main thing I wanted to say is Happy New Year. We’re gonna make it through and we’re going to be okay. Also, wear a fucking mask. How’s that for a New Year’s Resolution?

Blog: CyberFunk – 12/16/20

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With the holiday season in full swing, I’ve found myself falling behind when it comes to completing previously planned projects. In addition to gift shopping, updating this site, planning for D&D sessions, and the general things I need to do to stay alive, it just feels like my free time is become more and more scarce. This is all a long way of saying that it’s going to be pretty quiet around here until the end of the month when the Game of the Year stuff starts dropping. But in what little free time I was able to scrounge together, I did manage to spend some time with Cyberpunk 2077.

Usually I’d do a Gut Check piece about a game like Cyberpunk 2077, but my aforementioned time crunch combined with my overall feelings about the game, a blog feels appropriate. I’m about six hours into Cyberpunk 2077, and I’ve got to say that I’m not crazy about it. And this might sound like another one of those, “Ari just hates video games” things, but the game has some pretty bad problems and I’m not the only one that holds that opinion. All of this fails to mention the constant crunch the team at CD Projekt Red had to endure just to get this game out the door is shitty. It isn’t just CD Projekt Red however, this is a change that needs to sweep through the entirety of the game industry.

Aside from miserable business practices that encourage the exploration of developers, the game itself is riddled with bugs and glitches across all of its ports, but I expect that in time those will all be sorted out. That isn’t me absolving them for launching a busted game, but if you’re kind of person who doesn’t play games in their launch window, the bugs might be a moot point. I’ve only played a handful of hours so far and I’ve already encountered bugs ranged from hilarious to game-breaking, but buggy launches seem to just be the norm these days.

My main issues really lay in the poor performance as well as the sheer content & story of the game itself. The performance isn’t great, but it’s held up for me and my aging computer surprisingly well. I’m also playing it on low settings, which I mention because the game looks surprisingly okay despite my inferior computer components. But like I said before, performance and technical issues will certainly be resolved in the future. From what little I’ve played thus far, I don’t think performance patches can solve the design issues of Cyberpunk 2077.

I just haven’t really resonated with the story or the characters as much as I would have hoped for. The game itself throws a lot at you early on which makes understanding not only the story, but the mechanics of Cyberpunk 2077 incredibly daunting as well. From the jump, everyone is speaking what might as well be another language as they bloviate about “net-runners,” “corpos,” and other cyberpunk jargon that sounds like nonsense. There’s a sequence early on where you’re introduced to the concept of “brain-dancing,” which is this weird form of hacking a specific sequence in time. The tutorial that’s used allows you to live through a convenience store robbery gone wrong. You basically float around this 45 second vignette of a dude robbing a store, and you can bounce around through different camera feeds and perspectives to essentially uncover every aspect of that scene. The concept itself is already hard to wrap your head around, and then they start introducing an editing timeline along with audio and thermal layers to swap between to uncover certain clues about the scenario.

*Look at this map, gang. I feel like I have a panic attack every time I open this thing*

If that all sounds confusing, that’s because it fucking is. For as much bullshit exists on screen at any given moment in Cyberpunk 2077, the game does a pretty bad job of explaining some core concepts to you. For instance, there was a fight early on where a meter kept filling up that said “overheating,” and when it filled I would catch fire momentarily. Why this was happening, I had no clue. It wasn’t till a friend of mine told me that enemy hackers had that ability, that the mystery was solved. Even navigating the menus is a weirdly complex task. There are so many sub-menus in Cyberpunk 2077, that I genuinely missed about 6 different upgrade trees because all of the menus are a mess.

It’s such a shame too because the setting of Night City seems genuinely cool and is a place I’d like to explore, but I don’t really have the desire to do much more than that. Apparently the main story doesn’t actually start until about 8 hours into the game, which to me seems like a massive hurdle to overcome. I basically have to endure a full work day to get to the part where the story happens. It’s this situation where I have to ask myself, if this game was in a technically perfect state, would I enjoy it? And I don’t really know the answer to that. In theory I’d like to play an action RPG in a cyberpunk universe, but even with Cyberpunk 2077 right in front of me, I still find myself wanting something else.

I could prattle on about Cyberpunk 2077, but the summary here is that I don’t think I like that game very much. It seems fine and I’m glad there are some people that are enjoying it, but I just don’t think I have the time to commit to a game that I’m not smitten with. I need to spend that free time getting our annual Game of the Year stuff in order anyway. For reference, Game of the Year articles should be going up during the week of the 28th. There will be a blog next week (UPDATE: there was not a blog next week) but like I said, otherwise it’ll be quite until GOTY week. So yeah, see you all next week.

Blog: Boba Fett – 12/09/20

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This post contains spoilers for season 2 of The Mandalorian

So I’m just gonna rip the bandage off and say it — I think Boba Fett is a shitty character. You might be wondering where this is all coming from and to answer that I’d point you towards the hit Disney+ exclusive show, The Mandalorian for this particular blog. You can also thank my friends for the part they played in this blog, specifically how every conversation we’ve had since the latest episode went live have included some sore of Boba Fett themed joke. They know I hate this dude, and I’d like to explain why.

When I was younger, my mother introduced me to the world of Star Wars through the lens of the original trilogy. Back then they were the only Star Wars movies, so heaping praise on them and calling them “classics” was an easy thing to do. Yet even as a kid, there was one scene in particular that always made me chuckle. It was that scene where Darth Vader is meeting with all of the bounty hunters he’s hired, and feels compelled to specifically call out Boba Fett with the line, “No disintegrations.” As a kid, I saw this lineup of characters and thought they all looked absolutely absurd. Aside from Boba Fett, you’ve got Dengar desperately trying to look cool while standing next to the very “topple-able” IG-88, along with Bossk, 4-LOM and Zuckuss standing over to the right in the “who gives a shit?” section of the lineup. All of them are perfectly placed to highlight the man himself, Boba Fett, who according to Darth Vader and only Darth Vader, is very infamous for disintegrating folks.

One could argue that back in 1980 these guys looked imposing, but seeing this “rogue’s gallery” as a kid just made me snicker and laugh more than anything. None of these guys registered as threatening to me, especially not when compared to the guy hiring them, Darth motherfucking Vader. But that was kind of it as far as me thinking about Boba Fett until I watched Return of the Jedi and saw him basically get killed in what could be described as a comedy of errors. The dude gets shot in the jet-pack, launched into the sky, and immediately loses any semblance of being cool as he slams into Jabba’s ship and falls right into the mouth of a Sarlacc Pit. As a kid, that was the height of comedy for me.

But when I got older and noticed that the Star Wars fans around me were sincerely into Boba Fett and the things he could do, I was genuinely confused. They were talking about the same guy who flailed in the air, crashed into a wall and fell in a hole to be digested for centuries? This guy was cool? Why? Well the answers I’d usually get involved some books or expanded lore that did nothing but desperately try to paint this joke as a cool guy. That and his equipment was neat.

Tracking the official canon of Star Wars is tricky and to be completely honest, I don’t care enough to it. But my understanding is that all of the cool shit Boba Fett allegedly did in those books and comics are no longer canon now. I don’t know if that’s still the case or if some books are still legit or whatever, but the fact remains that I still don’t care. The official canon in my mind is that Boba Fett shows up in The Empire Strikes Back, has some unearned accolades thrown at him (i.e. “no disintegrations”), and promptly falls into a hole where he is munched on for an eternity. That’s it. I guess he also has a nice lunch with Darth Vader in the Cloud City, but that’s about it.

Then there’s his “cool stuff.” First, the helmet is cool. It’s always been cool and I will never take that away from the Mandalorians as a people. But aside from the helmet, Boba Fett looks like a kid trying on his dad’s clothes and pretending to be cool… oh wait, that’s exactly what it fucking is. He’s got these dumpy sweatpants, piss colored cape, big dumb orange lifting belt, and the stupidest looking knee-pads on, all of which paint the picture of a man who is desperately trying to look cool. The dude looks like he just rolled out of bed and hastily slapped something together that might look imposing. Eventually however, I was able to stop thinking about Boba Fett and Star Wars all together.

Then The Mandalorian came out, and I was genuinely scared that they’d try to redeem the eternally shitty, yet somehow beloved character of Boba Fett. The first season came and went without him rearing his stupid face, but the second season decided it was time to justify this character’s unearned fandom. As if Disney had been listening to my complaints for years, they sought to make an episode in which Boba Fett did a bunch of dope shit. They even went so far as to make his stupid fucking knee-pads shoot missiles, which I took personally.

The entire episode felt like a ret-con of everything I had specifically called Boba Fett out on for years, and I think that’s what’s pissing me off the most. Like, they went out of their way to do this knee-pad bullshit. But if I’m being completely honest, seeing Boba Fett actually do something effective for once was pretty cool. It was a good action sequence that really seemed to do right by the expanded lore of the character, and that’s fine in my book. Don’t get me wrong, I still think the titular Mandalorian is a much better character than the Fett-man, but I’ll give credit where it’s due. But nothing that Grandpa-Fett can do will make me forget the time he was bested by a blind man and his big dog which resulted in him residing at the bottom of a living hole for a couple of centuries. But I’m sure they’ll ret-con that too.

Blog: One Last Rant – 12/02/20

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I know I’ve repeatedly complained about my inability to secure a PlayStation 5, but I promise you that this is the last bespoke article you’ll have to endure unless something truly buck-wild happens. The majority of issues that are plaguing the launch of both the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 can be summed up with “not enough stock,” or “scalpers.” It’s truly been an exhausting and underwhelming experience that’s made me question why I’m fighting so hard for the chance to spend $500.

What started as the casual perusing of digital store shelves eventually devolved into obsessive behavior and a complete monopolization of my spare brain capacity. I started simply by following a Twitter account known for alerting people of sales and other announcements surrounding video games. With Black Friday coming up, why wouldn’t I follow someone who had their finger on the pulse of deals in a way I did not? I enabled notifications and went on my merry way.

“Wal Mart is restocking at 9pm ET” one tweet read. “Cool,” I thought to myself, I’ll load up the page on my computer as well as my phone just as an additional precaution. This is a hotly sought after item after all. 9pm arrives, I abuse the F5 key to reload my webpage after every instance of the “error adding item to cart” message I’d receive. No worries, I’ll just keep doing this until it… oh, it’s completely sold out and it’s not even 9:01pm yet. This is where things took a turn.

Every major retailer’s PS5 page, both physical and digital editions of the console secured a prominent display on one of my monitors. Several tabs dedicated to both editions across various retailers are left open on my screen, occasionally receiving a refresh just in case one of the 4 PS5 stock notifying Twitter accounts I follow, just happen to slip up. I think we can all agree that I was being very sensible and not at all crazy.

And with this idea in my head that these Twitter accounts could fail me, I found some websites that track the stock of items in several retail stores. Even better was that they refresh automatically and even have alarms for when something comes back in stock. With alarms and notifications in place, one could reasonably assume that I could just go on with my life until I was alerted of something changing. That was the intention at least.

No, it turns out that I’ve been unable to find joy in literally anything else for fear that I might miss out on my one chance to buy this stupid looking console. It also doesn’t help to see that the only consistent “in-stock” options are eBay and a site called StockX, both boasting nothing but scalpers selling their wares at extremely reasonable prices. $1200 for a console that retails for $500? Sounds like an excellent deal to me. There were several listings for PS5s in the range of $30,000, but shout-out to the person listing a PS5 for 1 million fucking dollars. Thankfully shipping is included in the $1,000,000 price tag, unlike some of the other ones that were charging 500 bucks for shipping on top of a $28,000 price tag.

It’s been so infuriating to follow all of this, but this is exactly what so many others predicted would happen in a world where manufacturing and shipping lines had been disrupted by a deadly virus. It’s the reality of the situation, and until we can get to a place where the stock can meet the demand this is how it’s going to be for a lot of people. I desperately want one of these stupid boxes so I can play modern games without them either looking or performing like garbage, and getting a PS5 just happens to be the cheapest way I can do that. It’s that or spend at least a grand on upgrading my computer.

What bothered and continues to bother me the most is how unwilling any retailers or even Sony themselves seem to be about offering people a better shot at buying these consoles. Sites like Wal Mart and others put as little in the way of obstacles as they can to prevent you from buying something. That means there’s no verification process for an automated script to bump up against when trying to secure a dozen new consoles for resale. Meanwhile Sony has a queue system in place that isn’t perfect, but at least gave me the passing impression that I might be able to buy a PS5.

*These are the prices for just the boxes!*

I guess the ultimate question is “why do I want this thing so badly?” It’s an extremely valid question that took me a bit to come up with an actual answer that wasn’t just, “cause I waaaaaaaannnntttt one.” The way I see it is, there are some really big games coming out soon that I really want to try, things like Cyberpunk 2077 and Ubisoft’s terribly named Immortals: Fenyx Rising. My base PS4 isn’t going to do a great job with either of those games, and my PC is showing its age in a way that makes me certain that the clock is ticking. But in reality I could definitely hold off until next year to buy a PS5 and I’m well aware of that fact.

They always say that you shouldn’t buy the first iteration of any electronic product because it’ll inevitably be flawed in some way. There are reports of failing USB ports, incompatibilities with external drives and plenty of user interface issues that seem to be affecting people, all of which are great reasons to wait for a firmware patch or a new iteration. But in a year that’s been fundamentally broken and busted, why shouldn’t my new $500 console be a complete representation of the year 2020? Ultimately, I just want the new shiny thing and got really obsessive about it to the point where I’d get genuinely upset when I couldn’t purchase one online. It was at that point I decided to close out all of my tracking tabs and just try my luck at finding one in a store, which considering that I live in a fairly small town, might actually be my best option.

Blog: A Big Bloated Blog – 11/25/20

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It’s almost Thanksgiving here in America, which traditionally meant that we all had an excuse to break any diets we were clinging to, were subject to horribly racist and misguided “conversation” with distant relatives, and would ultimately result with hiding in a bathroom to avoid your family. Luckily you don’t have to engage with any of that shit this year and that’s fucking great. Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to have eaten a traditional Thanksgiving dinner this year but between the whole pandemic thing and the election thing, I’m super good with just staying home.

And you should be too, quite frankly. I don’t know if you’ve checked recently, but that COVID-19 thing that our nincompoop of a president and his deluge of moronic followers consistently bellow is a “hoax,” much to the surprise of nobody turned out to be real. But people are going to travel out of spite and ignorance regardless of how much that “liberal science” keeps pleading for them to stay home. So do yourself a favor and stay the fuck home if you can. I know that not everyone is in a situation where they can do that, but for those who can make that choice, pick the option where you don’t endanger the lives of everyone around you.

Yeah, stay home and distract yourselves by maybe watching some movies or reading a book. Definitely don’t refresh certain retailer websites in the hopes that a certain stupid looking console might suddenly become available. If everyone could just ignore the internet for a short period of time, that would be so ideal. I must have signed up for so many notifications for when the PlayStation 5 is back in stock that I’m certain my phone will explode when retailers make the console available again.

What else is going on? Oh, the president is still trying to undermine our democracy and erode the foundation that our country is built upon with frivolous and baseless lawsuits, but what else is new? It’s kind of like when you see a kid throw a tantrum in Target or something, it’s loud, annoying, and inescapable unless you just leave the store altogether. That’s basically what these past few weeks have been like, except it’s a grown man with a bad spray tan that’s doing it in front of the entire world. Hopefully this all comes to pass without too much more damage.

I don’t have a great segue to pivot off of that, so I’ll just say that I’ve been playing some Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and boy howdy is it unremarkable. On the plus side, it runs on my computer at a stable frame rate and looks gorgeous while doing it, unlike another Ubisoft release from a month ago. But on the flip side of that coin, it’s just kind of boring. Admittedly I haven’t played too much of it, but I haven’t found the story, characters or mechanics to be all that interesting. Honestly, it just seems kind of bland.

Remember when Assassin’s Creed started pumping out sequels that were basically the same game crammed into a new setting? That’s what Assassin’s Creed Valhalla feels like. It isn’t a bad game at all however, it’s just unremarkable. Not every game needs to be revolutionary or anything like that, but Assassin’s Creed Valhalla just kind of feels like another solid entry in the series and nothing more.

Also, I couldn’t play it for the first day because I kept running into an infinite loading screen that stopped me from actually ever starting the game. I tried a bunch of different options and tweaks to try and get on the other side of this blank void of a loading screen, but nothing sufficed. But for the first time in history, I have to say that a game streaming service saved the day.

I noticed an ad on Uplay+ that alluded to a glut of Ubisoft games, including Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, were currently available on Amazon Luna. Amazon Luna is Amazon’s (surprise, right?) game streaming service. It works fine, but is not the way I’d ever play these games. That is unless they offered cross-save functionality that would allow me to get through a busted loading screen and then take that new save back to the version I had installed on my computer. But what are the odds of tha… oh wait.

Yeah, for the first time in my life I’m thankful I had access to a game streaming service. Oh, and for those of you worried about my finances, I have no intention of keeping the service after the free trial is up. But hey, maybe before the trial is up I’ll try to whip up an article or something about it.

Also, with the holidays coming up and the end of the year approaching it’s time for me to start thinking about Game of the Year type stuff again. I’ve got some ideas and loose plans for things, but we’ll see if they pan out the way I want them to.

I think that’s about it for me this week. Hey, thanks for stopping in and reading this rambling mess. I appreciate your support. Be safe, be smart, and enjoy Thanksgiving if you can, and you’re an American. To everyone else, enjoy your week and ignore all retailer websites for a few days so I can get the funny looking console. Thanks!