I know everyone has their opinion about what’s going on in the world right now, and I also know that my voice is not the best suited to speak on these heated issues, but being silent is akin to not caring at all. I’m sure you’ve seen and read a lot of media about this very topic, so my apologies for just adding another thing on the pile. Oh, and this shouldn’t be surprising, but this one isn’t about video games.
I 100% am in support the protestors and the Black Lives Matter movement. This country has needed systemic reform since its inception, and its citizens have cried out for it countless times in our history. George Floyd was murdered by the police, and those officers, along with every officer needs to be held accountable for their actions, as they’ve been literally getting away with murder for decades.
I know I’m far from the right person to speak eloquently and informatively about this topic, so I won’t belabor the point. It’s been long past the time for action in this country, and I applaud the protestors for continually standing up to oppression despite having a president who both encourages and celebrates violence towards them.
There are plenty of ways to provide support and aid to the movement, all of which are listed here, and I strongly suggest you look into if you are able to. And if you are participating in the protests, stay safe. Not only do you have to contend with the police, but there’s still a deadly virus hanging around that you still need to be cautious about. Above all, if you want to see real and tangible change, vote in November. Vote this pompous, malevolent and quite frankly, evil man out of office later this year. You can check your voter registration at vote.org.
Stay safe everyone. This is only going to get harder.
Maneater is a genuinely fun game with an extremely unique concept that ultimately gets bogged down in repetition and monotony far sooner than you’d expect or want. One would think that a game about being a shark that’s hell-bent on consuming and destroying any and everything in its path would be more exciting to play, and while the moment to moment gameplay achieves that desired level of excitement, the objectives and grinding required of you become very tedious, very quickly.
When you begin Maneater, you’re thrust into the far more capable fins of an adult shark that’s fairly hearty and ferocious. You learn the basic controls of locomotion and eating, and shortly afterwards find yourself devouring placid beach-goers just trying to soak up the sun. After a few snacks of the human variety, a shark hunting party is deployed to your location where you summarily dispatch them through a combination of ramming their boats, hurling divers at their boats, leaping atop their boats, or just chomping away at them until there’s nothing left.
In classic “abilitease” fashion, your shark is captured by some big time shark hunter that’s being filmed for the reality TV show, unsurprisingly titled “Maneater.” This jerk kills the shark you were playing as, cuts a baby out of your stomach, and throws it back into the water, but only after this baby shark chomps off this dude’s arm. Thus you start your murder-shark career in earnest as this orphaned shark-child that’s definitely not out for revenge.
It’s during this first level of Maneater where I cultivated my “Gut Check” opinions, so I’m well aware that things can change as I progress further. The first level is your standard bayou that’s chock full of catfish, cattails, murky brown water and of course, gators. You spend most of this time trying to navigate towards your objective marker while chowing down on turtles and other tiny fish on your way. In this way Maneater feels a lot like a Feeding Frenzy type of game, where you eat enough smaller fish to level up and grow into a bigger shark that’s capable of taking on bigger foes. Except, even at higher levels and larger sizes I was still getting attacked by level one fish who no longer posed any sort of threat to me.
See, in Maneater you don’t just swim over a fish and eat it, you literally have to mash on the right trigger to chew your food. You’ll also need to wiggle the right analog stick if something caught in your maw tries to escape your grasp. If you’re feeling especially froggy, you can even grab some prey in your massive chompers, and then hurl them off into the distance at another target. Maneater clearly is taking its subject matter about as seriously as Sharknado did, and I love it for that. It’s one of the few games in recent memory that have made me laugh, not through a joke or a cut-scene, but through the sheer absurdity of what I was controlling.
Unfortunately, Maneater gets a little repetitive, even so early in the game. I progressed through a few objectives pretty quickly, but ultimately was greeted by a progress gate that required me to be level 4 before I could take on any additional missions. That meant I was just going to swim around and eat more turtles and groupers until I became a bit heartier. This took a while. Now this could just be an isolated incident, but the word on the street is that this repetitive structure only gets worse as you progress.
That’s a damn shame too because I genuinely think that Maneater is such a strong concept for a game. Unfortunately it shows its cards a little too early in the game, revealing that while the core gameplay loop is fun, it isn’t fun enough to outweigh Maneater‘s repetitious nature. That isn’t to say that repetition is the only issue that Maneater has, but it is the most predominant one, with a close second place going to the unwieldy camera.
Maneater does its best in trying to make a game about swimming actually feel good to play, and for the most part it succeeds. But the way the camera works, particularly when you’re in combat with something is infuriating. Combat usually devolves into you and your opponent circling one another, waiting for and then dodging their attack, and then retaliating with your own powerful chomps until they finally die. This would all be fine if the camera actually played along and locked-on to your enemy. Instead, you can click the right stick in to whip the camera around to face your enemy, but it doesn’t lock-on to them. It’s bewildering at best, and I sure hope that there’s either a setting in the menus I missed, or even some woefully misguided later upgrade I can unlock, because as it is fighting anything is a messy endeavor.
Maneater does have its highs though, primarily in how it presents the story to you. The show, “Maneater,” is portrayed to you in the style of a Discovery Channel show about wildlife, interspersed with reality TV show moments that follow the folks trying to hunt you. It’s all narrated by Chris Parnell as well, which is honestly a great choice because he does a fantastic job with the script he’s given, even if all of the jokes don’t land.
I’ve only played a small piece of Maneater, but I’m already starting to feel a little worn down by it. I’m not ready to throw in the towel just yet, but I kind of already know that there’s a very little chance I end up seeing this thing through to the end. I’m just not a big fan of having to grind or complete repeated objectives in games, and it sounds like there’s a lot of that in Maneater.
Recently the Epic Games Store ran their “Epic Mega Sale,” in which not only were games on sale, but they issued ten dollar coupons to everyone to entice people to buy more. Needless to say, this offer worked and I picked up Assassin’s Creed Odyssey for only a couple of bucks, thus starting a several day journey of actually getting to play the damn thing.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey clocked in around 81 gigabytes for its initial install time. I wasn’t surprised by how massive it was considering I knew how big of a game it was. Sure having to wait a few hours for something to install sucks, but it’s an unavoidable part of playing just about any game these days. This was something I anticipated and was prepared for.
What I wasn’t ready for was the disconnect between the Epic Games Store and Uplay, a factor that took me alarmingly long to realize and fix. See, when you launch a Ubisoft title outside of Uplay itself, Uplay still has to launch and authorize that you actually own the game. What I hadn’t accounted for was the fact that I hadn’t actually launched Uplay for a long time, so it needed to update itself as well, but since I was running a shell of UPlay the actual program itself was unable to update.
I was met with a blue dialogue box in Ubisoft colors that said something to the effect of “looking for updates.” This box never went away. It was looking for updates but couldn’t find any. After some time of waiting, I decided to just launch Uplay by itself to see if an update would automatically initialize. Luckily, that did the trick.
So now I was ready to go, right? Of course not. Assassin’s Creed Odyssey had a 30 gigabyte update ready and waiting for me. You would think that in buying the game I would have received the most updated version of the dang thing, but no. For some reason, far beyond my comprehension, I still had an update that was nearly half the size of the game to install before I could have my fun stabbing adventures.
Finally, the update was applied and I was ready to go, right? Nope! Because suddenly Uplay was asking me for a CD key for the game I just bought, and I couldn’t find that information in my cursory searching through the Epic Games Store. So I restarted the Epic store to see if that might refresh some entitlements or something, and it kind of worked out. I had to link my Epic account to Uplay, something I could’ve sworn I already did when I bought The Division 2 when it initially released. So I did that and finally I could play the game, right?
If that was the end of the saga, I might not have written this article at all, but unfortunately for me a new problem appeared just in time to properly piss me off. The game launches, I do the intro mission and start to progress. Not five minutes into actually playing the game as the protagonist, it crashes.
The first mission in the game has you face off against two hooligans who come and harass you on behalf of some gang leader named “The Cyclops.” After roughing them up, you get to make your first choice in the game of whether to kill them or let them live. I chose the latter. A cut-scene happens and you have to make your way a short distance to the next objective. On that journey, I was ambushed by the hooligans I had spared and had to properly dispatch them this time. Upon killing the final enemy in the group, the game crashed.
It did this every single time. I have played this 3 minute portion of the mission a total of 5 times already in the hopes that something different would happen, and I could finally enjoy the fucking game I paid for. I don’t even want to play the game that badly anymore thanks to the multi-day calamity that I’ve been through with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, but part of me doesn’t want to let the game get away with this bullshit.
This whole article has been pretty directly pointed at Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, but this is the kind of shit that can happen in the world of PC gaming and digital distribution. Now, I love playing games on my computer and consider it my go-to place for gaming, but this kind of nonsense is the exact kind of thing that makes me think I’d be better off just playing it on my PS4. But this isn’t unique to Assassin’s Creed Odyssey considering that just last year I went through this exact same thing with Red Dead Redemption II, also through an Epic Games Store purchase.
I know that all of this sounds like I’d end this article bashing Epic or Ubisoft, but I kind of get why it’s such a mess. Publishers want to make as much money as they possibly can, which is why almost all of them have their own PC launcher and storefront. But they also want to put their games where people will actually see them like Steam, Epic or GOG, and still be able to verify purchases and track their players habits in game. That’s why whenever you buy a Ubisoft game on Steam, it launches an extra layer of DRM in the form of Uplay. It’s cumbersome and annoying, but I get it. The problem is that while these problems don’t always crop up, when they do it’s usually because the solutions aren’t as seamless or elegant as you’d hope. I don’t know what the solution to all of this is, but I do know that I’m going to fucking play Assassin’s Creed Odyssey even if I have to reinstall the god damned thing.
UPDATE #1: I have verified the files of the game and unfortunately was greeted with the same crash in the same place, every time.
UPDATE #2: I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m going to have to reinstall this game, and have already begun that process. It’s been two hours and I’m around two-thirds of the way through the download.
UPDATE #3: The installation process is complete and I have officially completed that mission without any additional hiccups. The frame rate is a little wonky though.
UPDATE #4: I haven’t played the game in days. This was a really good use of my time.
Disclaimer: It should be noted that the author backed this game on Kickstarter during its initial crowdfunding period back in April of 2015.
There will never be a time that I don’t find complete and utter joy in a game that allows me to mercilessly mess with my enemies by scaring the living hell out of them. Wildfire is a game that allows me to do just that, layering in some awesome elemental powers and great stealth mechanics, while bizarrely asking me to be a pacifist and not burn dudes alive.
In Wildfire you play as a young villager who through some cosmic coincidence develops the ability to harness the power of the flame, just not necessarily in the way you’d think. Hurling an orb of fire at an enemy doesn’t result in their instantaneous combustion, instead it just scares them into running in the opposite direction regardless of if there’s any ground ahead of them or not. Instead of directly attacking your foes, you’ll be burning a lot of vegetation, bridges, vines, barrels and of course, yourself, in the early goings of the game.
Wildfire wants you to control the battlefield more than it wants you to engage in battle, encouraging you to use your powers to help you slip by or terrify your enemies rather than just transforming them into a pile of ash. I know this because every level has several bonus objectives to strive for, including clear times, platforming challenges, detection and of course, body count. Every level encourages you to not kill or be noticed by anyone, and should you comply you’ll be rewarded with an upgrade currency that allows you to power up your character in a few different ways.
I don’t love how the game heavily encourages that you don’t use your magic fire powers for murdering, and while it never outright stops you, Wildfire does make killing someone incredibly difficult. You’re not just going to launch a fireball at someone and watch them go up in flames, Wildfire instead opts for more of a sustained effect kind of damage. For instance, every character has a temperature gauge that once filled up, will start the burning process that will eventually kill them unless they throw themselves in a body of water. Just like your character has a chance to survive a magic incident, so do your enemies.
Despite that little wrinkle though, Wildfire is a blast to play because it’s constantly encouraging you to think outside of the box in almost every scenario it places you in. While Wildfire gives you control over fire, it doesn’t let you manifest flames out of thin air, requiring you to pull it from an existing source like a bonfire. From there you can launch a blast at some brush and watch it ignite, thus allowing you to pull more fire from there. It seems frustrating at first, but it makes sense when you recognize the puzzle-like nature of the level design and the objectives you’re given.
Like I mentioned in the intro, I really enjoy being able to mess with the enemies who are on patrol in the area and mentally torment them until they run screaming off of the nearest cliff. So far I’ve only been able to accomplish this by starting a fire at just the right place and time, but I assume there will be more ways to dispatch your enemies as you progress further in the game and upgrade your abilities. UPDATE: There totally are!
There are altars in every level depicting someone holding a bowl in their hands, and if you launch a fireball or any other element in there, you receive an upgrade point which you can spend to unlock new abilities for whichever element you donated. There is another currency that is tied to level objectives, rewarding you for completing the level in a certain amount of time, not reloading a checkpoint or not killing anyone. This currency allows you to upgrade how you interact with the checkpoints in the world, with the first upgrades being ones that refill your health when you touch it, and another that allows you to pull a flame from the checkpoint itself.
Wildfire is a really cool stealth game that let’s you play around with fire and how it interacts with the environment around you, which is what drew me to it in the first place. In my brief time with it I’ve enjoyed so much of the game, from its art style to its fire-bending mechanics. While I’m not too thrilled about how it really wants you to be a pacifist and not burn your enemies alive, I don’t hold that against the game. If anything, these restrictions have made me plan out my next few moves in order to send one of the guards screaming off a platform and into a pit of spikes.
Minecraft Dungeons is an isometric, cooperative Diablo-esque action RPG that not only doesn’t do justice to the kinds of games it’s emulating, but to the Minecraft name itself. It isn’t some abhorrent mess that’s barely functional, however it is devoid of anything unique, interesting or exciting. It ultimately is a game that’s boiling down the mechanics of other games into their basest components while doing nothing with the Minecraft brand outside of rendering everything in voxels.
Minecraft Dungeons isn’t a bad game by any stretch, it’s just an incredibly bland one that might be made better with some friends. During my time with it I was confronted with just how lifeless the core gameplay is. You walk around a level that provides very few reasons to actually explore anything, hacking and slashing your way through hordes of classic Minecraft enemies using both melee and ranged weaponry.
There’s a ton of loot that drops in every level that have higher numbers and different effects on them, but they seem to lack any real visual diversity. I’ve picked up several swords and bows that all look the same, but do higher damage or have some enchantment on them that does an extra effect like a chance to replenish your arrows, or chain lighting between enemies and so on and so forth.
While I do think Minecraft Dungeons does some stuff with its lighting that makes the levels visually interesting, there seems to be very little reason to actually go exploring. You’ve got a waypoint pushing you forward, and in transit to that destination you can go down alternate pathways should you want to, but more often than not I was greeted with a big fat dead end with nary a treasure for my troubles. After a while I stopped hoping something cool would be waiting for me, and just started to power through the levels to see what else there was to experience.
It turns out that there really isn’t much going on in Minecraft Dungeons. As I progressed, I saw variations of old enemies who were now sporting armor, some familiar mobs from the base Minecraft game, and some villagers with axes that I assume are in Minecraft proper. Otherwise you spend most of your time navigating different corridors full of enemies, collecting emeralds which are your currency, and finding weapons and armor that were usually worse than what I already had equipped.
Between levels you’ll find yourself in your home base where you can buy random loot boxes with in-game currency and hopefully not get a dud of a weapon. Hopefully more things unlock as you progress, but I can’t say for certain. But in lieu of having some magic enchanter or mystic artificer or something, you can head into the menu and pick an enchantment for your weapons and armor. You also can break down the myriad of useless junk you’ve picked up along the way and apply that currency to other item upgrades. It’s a simple loop that’s very easy to understand, which I think was the point.
I suppose my biggest disappointments with Minecraft Dungeons lay with the fact that exploration has proven to have been a massive waste of time, and that the Minecraft DNA in the game is almost exclusively relegated to the visual style. I know this is an entirely different kind of game, but the fact that I can pick up a pick-axe and use it as a weapon, but not actually mine anything is wild. It seems like a slam dunk to offer some sort of crafting system in Minecraft Dungeons even if it would’ve been in place of the way you obtain new equipment that’s already included, which is finding or buying things.
I also genuinely find it frustrating that in regular Minecraft, you can’t walk 20 feet in any direction without finding something cool, but in Minecraft Dungeons there seems to be absolutely no reason to go off the beaten path. To me, the entire game just feels a complete misunderstanding of what people enjoy about the base Minecraft game itself. I get that this is supposed to be its own unique product, but I genuinely believe that injecting just a little more of that core DNA into Minecraft Dungeons would’ve gone a long way.
As it stands, Minecraft Dungeons is a perfectly fine albeit uninteresting game that you might be able to squeeze a few hours of fun out of with your friends. Sure it looks like Minecraft, it’s got those classic Minecraft enemies you love in it, but it doesn’t scratch any of the same itches that Minecraft does. While I do think the action is uninspired, it’s a solid foundation that’s worth building upon. Also, it’s easy to dismiss a lot of my criticisms by just calling this a “children’s game,” but I feel like that’s doing a disservice to children. Minecraft Dungeons feels like the first draft of a game that could be really interesting and fun, but in its current state, it’s only left me wanting for more.
There are few games that I can think of that have endured for so long while maintaining their popularity the way that Minecraft has. The last time I played Minecraft was probably sometime during the Xbox 360 era, when it seemingly ballooned in popularity. Yet here I am in 2020, playing this game that somehow feels familiar, but not too familiar.
Minecraft has been quietly updating and adding in features and mechanics steadily since its official release back in 2009, layering in new biomes, tools, items, enemies and more. At first glance, everything appeared to be just as I remembered it, but then I explored some more and found so many things that probably were added years ago, but I just missed. From villages, to temples, to flying enemies, and invading marauders, Minecraft changed so drastically in my eyes, which has made it an utter joy to experience.
It’s also not just me that’s been enamored by what Minecraft has become, as all of my friends and I have started a server together that someone always seems to be on. Whether they’re bolstering our food supply, digging further into the uncharted caverns, building a wizard tower, or expanding our ever-growing compound, we’ve all found something about Minecraft that we tend to fawn over.
For me however, Minecraft has been a delightful reprieve from the misery of the real world, perfectly slotting into my regular rotation of games while allowing me the freedom to watch something in another monitor. It’s the perfect game to “turn off your brain” with, while simultaneously providing a wide spectrum of engagement that facilitates absent-minded gaming as well as a more intense experience for those who seek it.
Don’t feel like dealing with the cavalcade of monsters trying to eat your bones every night? Then consider taking the day to go fishing, or collecting wood. Want to get spicy and test your mettle? Well there’s a cavern full of monsters you could clear out if you feel so inclined.
Minecraft is a game that facilitates a lot of different play styles and can adjust to those variations in your mood in real time. I know I’m not the first one out there to praise Minecraft for what it does right, but I’m just so surprised by how much I’ve fallen back in love with it lately. Maybe that has to do with it being a really good game, or maybe it has to do with the fact that the real world is extraordinarily miserable these days, and just being able able to unwind and build your own city in peace has a particularly pleasant appeal. Either way, I’m glad I found my way back to Minecraft, it’s been a joy to play not only by myself, but with my group of friends as well.
Since its announcement and various gameplay reveals, I’ve noticed this low yet consistent stream of cosplay, projects and fan art surrounding the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077. It’s not that it upsets me or anything like that, I just find it really strange that there’s this fandom that exists already around a game that won’t be released for some time.
I’m well aware that fandoms exist for literally everything as people are eager to celebrate their interests, but I’m finding it hard to make the connection with Cyberpunk 2077, especially because we know very little about it outside of its structure and aesthetic. It’s an open-world action RPG set in a cyberpunk dystopia, and aside from a few gameplay videos that are out there we have no other real indication of how this game will come together.
People seem to be confident in Cyberpunk 2077 and what it will shape up to be based on the legacy established by its developer, CD Projekt Red, makers of The Witcher series. I can understand that logic considering how impressive The Witcher 3 was on its own, but it’s still strange to me how big this fandom has become for a game that’s just a date on a calendar so far.
I get that people are excited for the game and want to express that in whichever artistic avenue they see fit, and that’s genuinely great. Honestly, the aesthetic that Cyberpunk 2077 is boasting is gorgeous and very much worthy of admiration and celebration, but for my money I’d want to actually get my hands on the game before I declare my fandom for it. Clearly that’s just me, and I’m essentially acting like an old man who can’t understand why the kids these days are crazy about some genre of music.
I guess my ultimate fear with all the celebrations around Cyberpunk 2077 is my worry with every upcoming and very hyped game — what if it sucks? I don’t want Cyberpunk 2077 to be bad, in fact I’d very much like it to be good, but that possibility is always looming above every piece of media that exists. What if it’s bland and boring or even worse, what if it’s got some real problematic content in it? All signs point to no on that last one, but you never know.
There’s also the distinct possibility that because this game was revealed back in 2012 and has delivered a slow drip of information over the past 8 years that I’m just hyper aware of it. I imagine this kind of thing is going to happen with games like The Elder Scrolls VI and Starfield, considering they’ve been officially announced for some time now and people are probably hungry for any information on it.
This whole thing sounds a lot more skeptical and cynical than I actually want it to, because I’m not trying to be out there telling people not to be excited about the game, but it just feels weird to me that so many people are all in on this thing they haven’t played yet. Be excited, do your artwork and cosplay till your heart’s content, but also be cautious. I’m hopeful that Cyberpunk 2077 will be a tremendous game that’s worthy of celebration, but maybe we see how it turns out first? Or do your thing, I’m not here to ‘yuck anybody’s yum,’ especially these days where happiness is in short supply.
Cancel the whole article! I’ve decided to just mind my own business instead. Have fun and be safe, that’s all that matters.
I’m gonna lay it out here upfront, this one isn’t about video games. Instead, this blog is about me and and important milestone I thought I’d never hit, but finally did.
Years ago I started the slow and plodding process of making good on the fuck-ups of my past, and securing my degree. It took a long time partly because of monetary restrictions, but more so because I was never a great student and a slower pace would allow me to focus on my classes better. When I started the finish line seemed like a distant dream, but as of a week ago, I submitted my final assignment in my final class of my collegiate journey.
What came soon after was this feeling of dread and hopefulness, all twisted up in a conflux that made me sick to my stomach. I’m relieved to be done with my schooling and to finally wield my long sought after degree, but I’m also terrified at what the future holds, especially during these turbulent and uncertain times.
Finding my path into a career would have been harrowing enough had the world not been overtaken by the COVID-19 pandemic, but now in the thick of it, I feel more uncertain about the way forward than ever before.
I worked for so long to get this stupid piece of paper that tells people I’m qualified to do what I want to do, but does it matter now? I’m genuinely thrilled to finally be past this long and arduous chapter of my life, but I’m also terrified of what the next one even looks like.
I don’t know, I just needed get this all off of my chest. I know a lot of people are going through a deluge of bullshit right now, and I know that my stuff doesn’t stack up, but it’s important for me. I’m proud of myself yet scared of what’s to come. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to turn off my brain for a while.
During my time running various campaigns for my friends, I’ve experienced a bevy of highs and lows that have both energized and exhausted me to different extents. Today we’re going to be talking about the latter and how if left unchecked, can wear you out pretty easily.
A little under two years ago I took the plunge and started running a campaign for my friends in D&D that went off the rails a few times, which ultimately led to me rebooting the campaign and home-brewing a story of my own. It was exciting, terrifying, and a ton of work that would be piled atop the rest of my responsibilities and projects. It wasn’t a bad thing by any stretch though, because I was already working on other things like finishing out my degree and working on this website. I was firing on all cylinders from a motivation aspect.
But recently I handed in my final assignment of my last class which was a massive weight off of my shoulders. The unintended side-effect of that however, was that all the fatigue and exhaustion that I had managed during these busier times finally caught up with me. Almost the second after I hit the ‘submit’ button on my final, I felt like a truck hit me, and all I wanted to do was just relax.
Shortly after that, we convened online to play the latest session I had prepared for our Monster of the Week campaign, and once it ended I was thoroughly spent both physically and mentally. I wrestled with the idea of writing our next session and pushing this narrative forward for my players, something that had up until now, had been a labor of love. But I crumbled and ultimately had to pull the plug on the campaign and take a step back from that level of creative output that I was used to.
It wasn’t so much an issue of just running a game that had gotten to me, but the amount of extra work I had to do in order to make it all work that eventually got me. From creating the lore of this world, to fleshing out the characters, making a compelling plot, building on the players past decisions, making maps, making music and so on and so forth, the weight of all of that had just gotten to be too much to handle.
I explained the situation to my players who were all really supportive and understanding of my situation. After all, I had been doing this level of work for them for nearly two years, and they got that. I also made it clear to them that I still did want to play D&D with them, I just couldn’t be the one running the show for a while.
So there I was, with a clear head and a chance to finally unwind for the first time in a while. That’s when a different friend of mine reached out to me suddenly and expressed that his friends and him wanted to play D&D for the first time. Part of me instinctively rejected this idea outright, but then other, much stupider part of me chimed in and rationalized doing this whole song and dance again by suggesting just using the starter campaign on this group. I looked into it and discovered that the module on Roll20, like all of their D&D modules, was incredibly straightforward and easy to use, eliminating most, if not all extra work I’d have to do to make it work.
I still haven’t made a decision about it one way or another, because like I said earlier, I’m an idiot. But there’s something tempting about introducing these new players to D&D the way I was introduced to it, by using the campaign the creators themselves suggest using. I feel bad for even considering doing it at all because I had just told my group that running a campaign wasn’t something I could do for a while. I think the reality of the situation is that I needed to take a break from running these home-brewed games that required so much of me, at least for a while.
Ultimately, the treadmill of productivity that I was on up until now worked because I wasn’t thinking about how exhausting it all was, it was just part of my weekly routine. But once that routine got disrupted by the quarantine, and once more by finishing up school, I was unable to keep up that mental pace. A new DM has risen to take my place in our core group and I’m excited to just play D&D again for the first time in a while, but I’m also genuinely intrigued by the idea of introducing a new batch of people to role-playing games, as long as I don’t have to work too hard to do it.
If you’re looking for some sort of sage advice or piece of wisdom you can glean from all of this, I suppose I’d want to impart upon you the idea that it’s okay to step back and let those batteries recharge. If you aren’t excited about the game you’re running your players through, they’ll feel that too, and I’d rather not disenfranchise them to the idea of playing a campaign of mine again, and instead just end it graciously.
We’ve entered the part of quarantine where the packages I ordered at the beginning of April are finally showing up, and it’s been a really fun experience honestly. A few days back I finally got my Hori Split Pad Pro in the mail, and while I think it’s perfectly fine and functional, golly does it look stupid as hell.
Back in April, my Nintendo Switch Joy-Con controllers started to fall victim to the infamous “drift” problem, specifically on the left stick. Maybe it was happening earlier than that, but I hadn’t really been playing much of my Switch before Animal Crossing: New Horizons released.
At first I’d notice my little villager would start taking very slow walks towards the bottom of the screen, something that was annoying but not game breaking. Then I found myself running from a tarantula, when my villager decided to stop running and just stand still and accept his fate.
This was unacceptable.
So I ordered the Hori Split Pad Pro because it was on sale, and I finally got it. It’s doing the trick despite missing features like HD Rumble and the ability to work wirelessly, but it’s infinitely better than the budget “pro” controller I bought off Amazon months ago. The face buttons feel good, while the analog sticks have a weirdly grainy texture to them which is strange. Other than that, it’s got back paddles that I’ll never use, but I’m satisfied with my purchase overall.
It’s going to be a while before I can actually pick up real, official Nintendo Joy-Con remotes, but I’m okay with waiting because I’m not playing anything that requires the Joy-Con specific functionalities. And while I appreciate the size of the Hori Split Pad Pro and how it feels better in my bearlike paws, it just looks so fucking stupid on the Switch.
The Bonus World 