Okay, so I am way past an intervention. No relief from work and only because I forced myself to do something besides work (or sleeping what little I can)…I even find myself dozing or daydreaming when I don’t have to worry about my job every single second. Of all the things that COVID robbed from our world, I think it really robbed many of the people reasons to enjoy their lives. I enjoy my family certainly, but it’s hard to not look over my shoulder. Before COVID, I planned for the future but I didn’t sit there and wonder if I would have one. I don’t worry about getting the disease (in fact I’m pretty sure I had it when right before this whole thing started and mass chaos ensued). I would like things to be normal again but I think people’s mindsets have to be normal again. Right now, I don’t see that happening and I’m not entirely sure that it can get back there either.
This is really why I barely can blog, never mind actually write something creative (and certainly not like I used to). Sure I have little flashes of creativity when it comes to my book reviews (you can see those on the right of this page). I mean, I got a wonderful edition of Beastmaster 4k from Vinegar Syndrome around Christmas time. Did I do a review like I normally would have? NOOOOOOOO. I mean that movie is probably in my top 50-75 movies of personal favorites. I have another “special” on the way from Imprint (Australian) for Breakdown, a well underappreciated Kurt Russell movie. I might just have to force myself to do that one, it would help to ease this horrible feeling inside of me.
On the gaming front, I am currently playing Murdered: Soul Suspect and I just finished the Church. I had a lot of issues in the beginning especially with dispatching demons but I am slowly getting better. The whole fighting demons thing really feels tacked on but I guess they were afraid of it being labelled as a visual novel with a ridiculous amount of collectables otherwise. I like the story aspect of it, but the gameplay does have issues. The other problem I find with this game is that I’m afraid if I don’t play it everyday I’m afraid it will become one of those games that I drop and never finish (see Invisible Hours).
I am messing with Skyrim as one would have guessed, I’m actually level 31 currently and have pretty much cheesed my way to that level by sneaking, pickpockets, conjuration (bound sword), and anything else I can easily do. In classic Skyrim fashion, I find myself messing with miscellaneous objectives rather than main or side quests. I have told myself that once I get to level 35, I will probably force myself to do either the main quests or at the very least Civil War. I want to live long enough to see the true “end” of Skyrim. The 360 version, I did get to the end of Civil War and Thieves Guild story line and level 47 I believe.
We do have a new crop of Games with Gold. Both of the Xbox One games are hugely uninspired, we have a run of the mill first person shooter and then a game about Llamas. Really?!!? They might as well just offer Goat Simulator. The Xbox 360 games are a little better, I’ve actually almost bought Port Royale 3 several times when I saw it for $5 or so. Metal Slug 3 is a good game but unfortunately it’s also extremely hard. At least I’ll download the 360 ones. It’s months like this when I wonder if they are just going to abandon Games with Gold and rely on Game Pass for freebies. Doubt it, but stranger things have happened.
I am a little late to the party, but here are the Xbox Deals with Gold as well. The last couple of weeks I had picked up some of the Pinball FX Williams packs since I did not have them and they were having a decent sale. This week there are a couple more of Pinball packs but unfortunately I have them both. Onto other games in this sale, I thought about Azkend 2 for a brief second with its attractive price point but do I really want another “Bejeweled” game? No…no I do not. I do also see sales for the Scott Pilgrim and Yakuza remasters but 20 and 25% respectively are not going to quite cut it. I really wish the Yakuza one had a nice boxset, I really like them and the first 2 on Playstation 2 and the most recent Like a Dragon on the Xbox One. This would have filled in a nice gap. I’ll just wait for a better sale I reckon, probably in the 50 to 60% range.
On the 360 side, it’s the usual Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Rayman and Tom Clancy games that are on sale every month or so. No new price points either. Well, I guess that’s it for me, I do plan to write something next week since Breakdown will be arriving and it would be nice to do a movie review again. We’ll see what happens, enjoy.
