1 Down, 5000+ to Go?

Well, this is surely a landmark event for my current state of gaming life - the state that celebrates my obsession with playing fast-paced, fast result games reminiscent of the early gaming era while pushing aside the one playthrough, long build-up style of game design that is so popular these days. It is funny however that quick payout games are making a resurgence with the battle royale and autochess genres dominating the gaming sphere but it's safe to say that the grandiose story heavy, progression heavy single playthrough games are still the mainstay in today's gaming market if the hype surrounding Cyberpunk 2077 is any indication. So what is the landmark event you ask? Well, I have reached the end of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc via Steam last night! This is all thanks to my recent commitment to focus on "completing" games instead of jumping around between them like a bunny, resulting in all of them being eventually abandoned. I don't even remember the last game that I fully completed... wait, maybe I do, I think it was Final Fantasy XIII several years ago.

Yup, that's an end credit!

As for the game itself, DTHH is a very interesting visual novel that halfway-through seems to have lost its strong, impactful initial direction. It's a copycat of the Phoenix Wright games but Capcom's popular detective visual novel series is truly superior in comparison. The tonal shift towards the climax is definitely rushed and nonsensical though thankfully, the ending is satisfactory enough. I am sure that the old me would have just abandoned this game when the shift happened but not this new version of yours truly! The game took 46 hours in total for my first playthrough and it looks like the hours can be extended even further for completionists. I am however going to skip these extra flourishes because I have so many games to get to! So, I don't know, maybe when I'm in my 60s I can come back to this game and complete all the student report cards and unlock all the monomono presents after I have fully visited all the other games in my absolutely huge, uncomfortably bloated Game Library?

Teamfight Tactics: No Thanks!

Riot Games' autochess variant, Teamfight Tactics, that had just entered open beta on Wednesday is without the doubt the most attractive and polished compared to the rest in this emerging new genre of quite lazy and very random faux-strategic "chess". I played the game for a bit and you know what? It's pretty darn fun! That is... until I was reminded why I left League of Legends to embrace Heroes of the Storm completely - the horribly toxic community, not to mention that HotS is just leagues better gameplay-wise in comparison. Sure, HotS has its share of nasty people but Blizzard is beyond brilliant to allow players to completely turn off all chat and pings. I learned recently that Riot Games also allowed at least for the pings to be muted - one still has to edit a config file to completely turn off chat in LoL for some reason, a feature that should be included in-game - but apparently, they have forgotten to enable this in TFT. After a couple of games, I was caught off-guard when suddenly, my screen got pinged to death during a match by a player who was silent during half the game because his team got beaten by me and suddenly had a string of good luck and started a great comeback. Every time he demolished my team to shreds, I would get the question mark pings all over my screen. Yeah, I was pretty much done at that point. Unprompted sore winners are the worst. Will they ever enable players to mute pings in TFT? I hope so but if not, the game is certainly not worth it when I don't have to deal with that abuse in Valve's Dota Underlords...

I just want to chill playing a game like this and not be exposed to childish behaviors.

Life Is Unthinkable When Death Is a Certainty

One of the benefits of being middle-age, at least for me, is that you get to think about life and death, a lot. Well, to be frank, I have been preoccupied with the inevitability of death as far back as I can remember. It wasn't so much of a fascination. It was more like a realization that fueled the decisions that I have made throughout my life. I recognized from an early age that there is an end to me and I should do everything in my power to prioritize myself so that I don't have any regrets before I expire. The difference now that I have lived 40+ years of my life is that there is a sense of creeping dread that I have not felt in the past whenever I think about my end. I suppose when I was younger, I knew - or perhaps I was hopeful - that there was at least some significant distance before I would eventually get there. That illusion is no longer present anymore.

On some mornings, I look like Hina from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc.

Trying Something New with the Wii U

Ah, exercise. Something that everyone should be doing and it is something that most people just don't do, myself included. The last time I maintained a fitness routine was back around 2015/2016 with the help of Nike+ Kinect Training for the X-Box 360. It was the most viscous training regiment out of all the video game exercise programs that I have tried up to that point but it was also apparently very effective. As I look at the pictures of myself from back then, it is obvious to me now that I looked a hell lot healthier than the way I look now.

The thing is, it has always been very hard to force oneself into embracing an exercise routine. I know that I need it but making it happen takes some convincing because my body knows that there is going to be a lot of pain involved. I have to cheat a little bit to get things going and that is the reason for me to recently pick up Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2013 for the Wii U. I know, it's a very old "game" but it's new to me. Most importantly, having access to this new exercise program seems to help in motivating me to get going because I always like trying new things. As a matter of fact, I think that I am going to start using this tomorrow! It's bad enough that I am getting old. The last thing I want though is to be old and fat. Wish me luck!

Is it your shape? My shape? His shape?

Truck Simulator Battle

As someone who enjoys going through Steam's Discovery Queue whenever I get the chance to, I have seen a lot of horrible games. There are just too many. It's not unusual for me to go through the 10+ titles presented per review session with all of them marked "Ignore" or as Steam used to classy them, "Not Interested". At this point, I am estimating that only 15-20% of all games on Steam are probably worthy to be played and the rest are just pure crap. Every now and then, some of these games are so remarkably horrid, it's clear that the developers may not even be trying, like this one:

An easy way to name a game is to just add Extreme in front of the title.

The Truck Simulator series by SCS Software has been so successful, it spawns many inferior imitations such as this one. What makes Extreme Truck Simulator so over the top however is that pricing discount. Recently released on 02/15/2019, the game is introduced with a 1% discount off its $1.99 price as if it was going to push undecided people to buy the game. I have to hand it to the game's developer, A Nostru, however since ETS has a feature that is missing from SCS' flagship series:

Virtual hands steering the truck!

That's not extreme, it's just realistic! In SCS' truck simulator games, the trucks are driven by an invisible ghost so at least ETS got this part right.