Been crazy here this month, and next month will be just as crazy. I really thought that spreading out this move over a couple months would make it easier and in a lot of ways it does, but it means instead of one absolutely crazy moving-week we’re experiencing weeks and weeks of moderate craziness. But things are coming along and we’re pretty excited about the new place. We’ve made two trips there so far. The first was brutal, the second much easier which was interesting because I think my body is actually just growing stronger that quickly. Or more flexible anyway. Whatever the reason, hauling boxes of books up and down stairs didn’t take nearly as much out of me during the second trip.
Somehow I’m still sneaking in a fair amount of gaming, but I’m going to rip through all this pretty quick cuz…. boxes need to be packed!
Playing
Wuthering Waves: Shelved for now. I did a couple of months of the subscription thing (where you get premium currency every day) and the paid version of the battle pass thingie. Made good use of both of those but, as is VERY typical for me, they also made the game feel a bit like a chore. When I started playing a swore to myself I’d just play for the main story line but alas, that was dropped in favor of logging in every day and doing all the things that give you battle pass progress and stuff. I did get in something like 150 hours before burnout hit though so… not a bad run.
My Time At Sandrock: I started this a year or so ago right after finishing My Time At Portia but soon realized I needed a break between two titles that are so similar. Glad I did because I am HOOKED on Sandrock now. If you’ve never played a “My Time At…” game they’re a lot like a Harvest Moon or Stardew valley, except in 3D and they take place in a post-apocalyptic world. But a pretty, mostly friendly, post-apocalyptic world. The tension is between two factions, one that shuns technology since it ruined the old world, and one that wants to rediscover technology to make the current situation better. You kind of straddle that line and mostly spend your time harvesting, building, farming, mining, fighting and trying to befriend the natives. It’s pretty casual and stress-free in site of all that stuff you have to juggle. One setting that I can’t remember if Portia had is the option to slow down time so each day goes by more slowly. I turned that down so I could just putter around without a lot of time management stress.
Ball X Pit: I wrote a post about this… still playing!
Winter Burrow: Wrote a post about this too. Also still playing. This one has turned out to be a bit harder than I thought it was going to be due to the lack of a map and the ‘cold’ mechanic that means you have to be careful of how far you wander from home. Also your inventory is pretty small. It’s cute as heck but that doesn’t mean it’s super easy, as it turns out. Or maybe I’m doing something wrong which is always possible.
Octopath Traveler: Picked this up on sale and I’m playing it on the Steam Deck in the evenings when we’re at the new place. Very early days and everyone interested in this game is familiar with it, so just sticking a flag in the sand to say I’m playing.
Assassin’s Creed Mirage: This game follows Bassim who was in AC Valhalla and I did NOT like him in that game so I had no plans to play Mirage. But then it hit Game Pass so I figured “What the heck.” I’ve barely gotten started on it, though.
That’s too many games to be juggling, isn’t it? Sandrock is by far the title I spent the most time on this month.
Watching
Nobody Wants This S2: This is the Kristen Bell sitcom about her dating a rabbi and all the trouble that causes because she is not Jewish. Loved S1, loved S2. Can’t wait for a Season 3 which I assume is coming.
Talamasca: This is set in Anne Rice’s vampire mythos. It was a PartPurple pick. The Talamasca is a shadow organization that keeps tabs on supernatural goings-on and in this show a new recruit is sent in to spy on an ancient vampire. It was actually pretty good, but I’ll never admit that to Purple.
The Witcher S4: I didn’t really miss Henry Cavill so much, though PartPurple did. We’re in the part of the story where a lot of the emphasis is on Ciri anyway. I enjoyed it but it is VERY similar to what I remember reading in the books. Almost too much so since I know what was going to happen next every step of the way.
Tales from Woodcreek: This is a D&D Campaign hosted by Deborah Ann Woll on YouTube. This is the 2nd time we’ve watched one of her campaigns (the other being Relics and Rarities, also on YouTube) and we really enjoy them for a few reasons. First, each episode is a manageable length: about an hour. Second, she brings in guest players, often ones who’ve never played D&D before, and generally her guests are actors. It’s fun watching the regulars help the newbies and being actors, the newbies tend to really get into their characters. Third, her campaigns tend to be really interactive with props and such. In this one she actually leads the party to new physical locations to set the scenes and such. Now I do not play D&D so I can’t speak to how authentic this all is, but it’s really fun to watch.
Reading
The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories — A collection of Isaac Asimov’s short stories, mostly written in the 1970s. Lots of robots. Lots of concerns about AI that seem pretty similar to the concerns we have today, for reals.
microserfs (Douglas Coupland) — A novel in the form of a journal. The narrator is a 20-something Microsoft employee and super-nerd, living in the 1990s when working 100 hour weeks was considered slacking. He and his colleagues decided to leave and start a company making a Lego-like videogame called Oop. (Oop, as described, seems a little bit like Roblox, though the game isn’t the focus of the story.) I really enjoyed this though it is hard to quantify why. In the end there isn’t much story there; it’d be like, well, reading the journal of any mostly ordinary person. I lived through this era so there was a lot of nostalgia for me. The team going to visit 3DO HQ, or going to CES and seeing the Ninteno VirtuaBoy. I was at that CES so, y’know, maybe brushed shoulders with these ficticious characters. It came out in 1995 but looks like it was re-issued at some point [Amazon link]. If you enjoy ‘nerd culture’ you might enjoy it. [I found this while purging to move and intead of sending it to the donation bin I held onto it to read.]
Old science fiction and fantasy magazines: I found a cache of these in the back of a closet. Most of them are from the 1990’s which means I’ve lugged them through 3 or 4 moves. Now I’m finally reading them and they’re pretty fun since in a lot of cases their “future” is our present and boy did they get a lot wrong (and some stuff right).
It’s strange to be reading physical magazines again! Remember “Continued on page 104…” WHAT? Why do I have to jump around you crazy editors!
OK, back to moving and by the time the December recap rolls around we should be (more or less) settled in our new dig! Happy Holidays!
Douglas Coupland was one of my favorite authors for quite a few years. I bought Generation X when it was first published in paperback in the early 90s and then every novel he wrote after that, on publication in paperback, until Generation A, which came out in 2009. The later ones became progressively more disturbing, with Coupland’s authorial voice seeming to verge on the sociopathic at times. I really ought to go back and re-read them all because I have a feeling most of them were pretty amoral, something I didn’t really notice at the time.
Coupland was a pretty big deal for a couple of decades, both critically and commercially but around the time I fell out of like with his work I also stopped seeing new stuff from him as much. Given I work in a bookshop, I don’t generally need to make much effort to keep in touch with what successful authors are putting out. I thought perhaps he’d fallen out of favor with a lot more readers than just me and that was why we didn’t seem to be getting his novels in any more but now I check it seems he only wrote two more after i stopped buying them, both of which I remember seeing and choosing not to get. After that he appears to have turned to writing non-fiction and also become less productive.
I remember reading Microserfs, albeit only vaguely. I think I thought at the time that it felt like an only moderately successful attempt to live up to his media image as a cultural commentator with his finger on the zeitgeist. Actually, that could apply to just about all of his work. Your comments make me think he was doing a better job than I gave him credit for and I just didn’t have enough experience of the world he was describing to see how accurate it was.
I can’t speak to working at MS in those days but it felt similar to stories I’d heard during the dot com bubble, with everyone watching their stocks balloon and such. A lot of it just might have been him talking about what was current at the time; one weird thing is that everyone was REALLY eager to go see other companies’ work places, which seemed odd even to me!
I’d like to watch Talamsaca. I read all of the Anne Rice books back in the day, and it’s got that TSW or VTM vibe to it. However, we don’t have cable or access to wherever it’s playing
We bought a sub to AMC+ via Amazon Prime. You might be able to get it really cheap if the Black Friday sale is running. Talamasca is pretty short (like 6 episodes) so you could easily binge it even during a 1 week free trial that I think they offer.
If you do end up putting time into Mirage, very interested to hear your thoughts. This is the AC title I didn’t buy because $60 for a 20 hour game made no sense to me. I’ve seen it on sale a time or many since, but still have a bitter taste in my mouth over the high cost. Is it worth it?
I’ll let you know, though with everything going on it could be a while.
Also keep in mind I’m the slowest gamer ever. If “How Long To Beat” says this is a 20 hour game, I’ll probably take 50 hours to get through it! 🙂 But I’ll definitely let you know!
I put maybe about 30 hours into My Time At Sandrock and fell off for some reason but it’s such a great game! The desert setting isn’t my favorite but it definitely stands out in this life sim/craft genre. I love how much depth the NPCs have and their little quirks.
I’m also preparing to move soon, we’re getting the new house keys in two weeks but probably only moving in February. So reading about your experience is like seeing myself in a very near future… good luck to us and I hope everything goes smoothly for you.
I saw you finished Winter Burrow. I’m still stuck! I’ve gotten to granite tools and I’m looking for Polywog. I’ll get there but I think I need to focus on it since I keep leaving too much time between sessions and can’t remember the layout of the land. I saw on your Blog that they’re going to add a map and I might just wait for that. I’m directionally challenged!!! LOL!
I can’t imagine how I would remember the location of things if I was playing with a lot of time between sessions honestly lol I had a mental map with a lot of gaps in between some areas haha. But it’s also smart to not binge the game since some stuff can get a bit repetitive.