Reviewlets and updates

On January 30, 2021 By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Reviews, video games2 Comments

There’s a whole lot of Opinions rattling around in my head right now, and if it’s okay with everybody (LOL, it’s not up to you) I’m going to dump all of them into one post. Woo-hoo reviewlet city let’s goooooooo!

I read a fair amount of YA, but until now I’ve not really dipped my toes into middle grade novels, which is a genre I haven’t really touched since I was a Language Arts teacher back in Chicago. The honest truth is that I picked up Matt Wallace’s Bump less because I was interested in it specifically than because I like Matt’s other work a lot and want to support him as an author. And it worked out, as these sorts of reading decisions often do: Bump is about a third young-girl-coming-of-age story, a third of a nonfiction book about professional wrestling, and a third honest-to-goodness Scooby-Doo episode without the supernatural bent, right down to the villain literally having a mask torn off in one of the final scenes.

And it’s delightful. It’s a touch more predictable than I want from my books, but I’m going to let that slide since it’s middle grade and a touch of what comes off as predictability to adults is actually helpful with young readers, and it’s very clear that Matt has kind of been bursting at the scenes to tell a story about wrestling and wrestlers, but I’ve yet to find a book that I thought was hurt by the author’s enthusiasm. This is a much sweeter, more grounded story than anything I’ve ever seen from him before– not a trace of the magic or swords or demons or alternate planes of existence that are all over his other work– and I’m really glad I grabbed it. There’s a lot of Spanish in it but it’s well-contextualized, and I may put it in my son’s hands and see what he does with it.

Plus, that cover. C’mon. How can you see that cover and not want to read this?

I have now read three of Akwaeke Emezi’s books, and I am pretty certain that their The Death of Vivek Oji is their best book yet, although it’s one of those books that is really difficult to talk about very much without spoiling details that ought not to be spoiled. I can say this much: it’s a family story set, as all of Emezi’s books have been, in Nigeria (and how much do I love that I have multiple books by Nigerian authors on my shelf right now? Nigerian literature is the shit right now, y’all, get in on this) and the title character is already dead as the book begins, and the whole story is centered upon finding out what happened to Vivek and learning about his life. Emezi’s writing is as beautiful as it ever was. I had spent most of January thinking that it was going to turn out to be a bit below-par in terms of the quality of the books I was reading, so I’m glad to finish off strong with this and Bump.

The chair continues to work out quite well. I have precisely two gripes about it and they’re both very minor: one, that because the armrests are so adjustable (they can be moved up and down, inward and outward, and can also be set at angles) they tend to feel a little loose, and while the fabric that the chair is upholstered in feels great to the touch and looks like it’s going to be durable (and doesn’t seem to attract cat hair, which I was a bit worried about) I’m used to a slidier leather seat, and I find myself not as able to quickly reposition myself as I was in a leather chair when I feel the need to do that.

Yeah, that’s the bet I’ve got on gripes: the armrests are a little wobbly and my fat ass doesn’t slide across the seat the way I’m used to. It’s a good chair. I’m glad I bought it.

These are the last six albums I’ve purchased, and I’m not sure what it says about me:

I have discovered that I didn’t give the Black Crowes enough credit when I was in high school. That album is magnificent.

The boy is deeply into Greek mythology right now, and we bought him Immortals: Fenyx Rising for the PS5 for Christmas. He ended up not being terribly enthralled with it, but I’ve picked it up recently and … well, I’m having fun with it, I suppose, but it’s going to end up being a 7/10 game or so, and it’s mostly because Ubisoft is such a terrible Goddamned publisher. The game is clearly ported from the PC and still retains tons of PC-centric UI and interface decisions, which is annoying, and Ubisoft has slathered all of their usual “Hey! Want to spend more money?” microtransaction bullshit all over the game, as well as their stupid membership thing that I refuse to sign up for. They do this with every one of their games and I think I’m done buying stuff with their logo on it, because they always manage to make their games shittier in the exact same way. I didn’t spend sixty or seventy bucks on your game so that you can ask me to spend more money every time I turn around.

Also, and this isn’t the game’s fault, it’s a PS5 thing: the damn touchpad in the middle is too sensitive and is too close to the square button. Hitting the touchpad in this game brings up the menus, and because it and the square button are so close together I am constantly bringing up the damn menu in the middle of tense fights, because the square button is dodge and that button tends to come up a bit in combat. Now the good news is that this does pause the action, so it’s not getting me killed, but it’s insanely annoying and now that I think about it I probably can blame the game because there has to be a programming way around this and I can’t believe it didn’t come up in play testing. I kept accidentally throwing myself into photo mode, too, which requires clicking the thumbsticks– never ever map anything that can fuck up combat to clicking the thumbsticks, game— and nah never mind I can totally blame the programmers for this. Photo mode, at least, can be turned off, and the thumbstick thing has been the bane of my existence for years, but I can’t be the only guy with fingers big enough that they’re scraping the edge of the touchpad when hitting square.

I feel like I had something else when I started this, so if I remember what it was I’ll put it here.

As one does

On December 24, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn life3 Comments

The boy is on his way to bed, or at least what we’ve come to call bed one, and so I suppose I can begin safely downloading his Christmas presents. Yes, downloading, and I may very well not reveal the existence of Immortals: Fenyx Rising on the PS5 until he notices it on his own. He and his mom have been reading through the Percy Jackson series together for the last several … months? … sure, let’s go with months, and it’s triggered a moderate obsession with Greek mythology, so he was all over the game. Hopefully it’s actually fun.

Other than that, well, there’s a reason it took until 9:00 to get even a short post up. This has been the least Christmas Eve-ish Christmas ever, and I fully expect tomorrow to be the least Christmasy Christmas ever, and honestly right now I’m fine with both of those things.

Yep, it’s a Spider-Man game

On December 21, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

I don’t know how many of you recall the numerous posts I made about the PS4 Spider-Man game when it came out a couple of years ago, but I went back and forth on it several times only to end up deciding I loved it not on the strength of the gameplay (which ranged from deliberately annoying to phenomenal, depending on what was going on) but on the strength of the story. Miles Morales has been one of my favorite comic book characters basically since his introduction and there was no way in the damn universe that I wasn’t going to end up jumping at this game.

Unsurprisingly, so far, it’s basically the exact same game, only with a few alterations made to account for Miles’ slightly different power set. And I’ll tell you what: at about the hour and a half mark (and it’s important to realize that I’ve also spent some time in the last couple of days playing Marvel: Ultimate Alliance with my son) I was musing to myself that it was kind of tiring how superhero-themed video games had limited themselves so thoroughly to beating up bad guys and causing property damage, and how it was so exceptionally rare to feel like I was saving lives in these games as opposed to endangering them.

Well, uh, there’s a massive set piece that occurs right around the two hour mark or so that put that particular worry to rest rather authoritatively. I’m in damn good hands here, I think. This isn’t nearly as long a game as the PS4 Spider-Man was, so I’ll likely have it done and dusted before Christmas, but I’m pretty damn sure I’m going to enjoy the hell out of it along the way.

In which fun is hurty

On December 10, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

In general, I’ve been really pleased with the PS5 so far. I’m enjoying the hell out of the Demon’s Souls remake, the new Spider-Man game hasn’t gotten a lot of attention yet but I’m expecting to really like it, and I keep discovering new little quality-of-life details that I enjoy, like the fact that it notices and puts itself to sleep if I turn off the TV. It loads games so quickly that it’s honestly kind of ridiculous. I can sit down in the rocking chair I use to play in and be playing a game like twenty seconds later. All of that is great.

The new controller is exactly the wrong size, and it’s the wrong size in a way I didn’t notice until today. I love all the programming touches– the new haptics are awesome, the use of audio is fantastic at least the way it’s done in Demon’s Souls— things like sword swings and hit noises come from the controller as well as the TV and the end result is a lot more immersive. But it’s the wrong Goddamned size, and it’s potentially going to be a problem for me going forward.

This is the PS4 controller:

And yeah! At least on the outside, other than the colors they look damn near identical. But if you compare this to the new PS5 controller above, you’ll notice that the grips are just slightly more rounded on the outside, and I think the triggers, which you mostly can’t see, are positioned slightly differently as well. And while I haven’t measured to check, and I don’t see a lot of difference in the pictures, the four buttons on the right and particularly the circle button feel like they might be positioned slightly farther apart on the PS5 than they are on the PS4. That flat circle they’re set into rather than the slightly more curved surface on the PS5 might be making a difference too.

At any rate, the cumulative effect of the exact size of my hands and what is admittedly a small handful of tiny changes forces my right thumb into a weird position. I have spent maybe an hour today playing– probably not even that long– and I tell you right now that my thumb hurts, right at the joint where it attaches to my hand. I’m willing to believe that the control layout of Demon’s Souls isn’t helping– the two triggers on the right side are mapped to attacks so they get used all of the time, and I think it’s the combination of keeping my index and middle fingers on the triggers (or my index finger moving back and forth) and my thumb on the face buttons and the thumbstick that is causing the problem. I think if I wasn’t using the triggers as often it might not be as much of an issue.

Obviously it’s possible that I’ll get used to it, and I’ll limit my playtime until I know whether that’s going to be the case; if it gets better, we’re all good, and if it doesn’t, the fact that the PS5 currently doesn’t have any 3rd party controllers is going to become an issue. My ability to type is a lot more important than my ability to play video games, and I’m not about to start fucking with my hands. So, uh, “keep fingers crossed” might not really be the best available expression of well-wishes here, but if you don’t mind doing something on my behalf– ask Jesus or something, I dunno– I’d appreciate it.

#REVIEW: The PS4

On December 2, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, video gamesLeave a comment

The PS5 is in place, in the location in front of the new TV where it will likely remain for several years, and … damn, I knew the thing was going to be a behemoth, but it is a behemoth. I’d post a picture of mine instead of this one I grabbed from the Web, but there are cables everywhere and it looks like butt, and this gives you the idea. The thing is gorgeous, with this oddly architectural look that I’ve never seen from a console before, and while I actually haven’t spent a ton of time playing (because downloading all the shit that I need to download takes forever, and I had stuff to do today,) the first fifteen minutes or so of Spider-Man: Miles Morales and the first level of the Demon’s Souls remake are astonishing. I still need to figure out how to get my son’s save games moved over from the PS4, but that’s the only technical hitch I haven’t overcome so far.

I still can’t chase people for shit in the Spider-Man game; it’s nice to learn quickly that I’m not going to be any better at that.

But this post isn’t about the PS5, it’s about the PS4, and it’s specifically about me making this comment: I have been a gamer for a very long time– we had an Atari 2600– and I am fairly certain that the PS4 is my favorite console that I have ever owned. I bought mine in 2014, maybe seven or eight months after the thing launched (I’m writing this without bothering to look up the dates, so if they’re wrong, trust the “seven or eight months” part more) after a couple of generations of being an Xbox Guy (I never owned a PS1, had a PS2 but rarely played it, and bought a PS3 specifically to play The Last of Us, a decision I never regretted) and I never even glanced at the last Xbox generation. We have a Switch but it’s basically for the boy; other than the latest Mario I don’t think I’ve beaten a single game on it.

But the PS4? Jesus. God of War and Sekiro and the Dark Souls games and Spider-Man and Ghost of Tsushima and Bloodborne and Horizon: Zero Dawn and The Witcher 3 which was kind of a pain in the ass but aged well and Fallout 4 and Fallen Order and Hollow Knight and Nioh and Nioh 2, a game I just discovered I have sunk three hundred and fifteen hours into playing. Like, any one of these games could conceivably have sold me the console, and it had all of them.

To be clear, the message here is “If you’re a gamer, and you don’t own one of these yet somehow, you could buy one right now at a low cost and have years of unbelievable games to play before you worry about the next-gen shit.”

Just fuckin’ awesome.

In which Black Friday came early

On November 26, 2020November 26, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy, video gamesLeave a comment

I am officially twenty percent more of a capitalist than I was two days ago, apparently. Wal-Mart is clearly the way to go lately if you want to land a PS5, if only because they’re advertising when each batch of systems is going to go live so that you can be in front of your computer to hit reload and hope you get lucky.

And, well, I got lucky, and I hit reload at the right time, and I don’t actually physically have my PS5 yet but I can pick it up at the store (by which I mean “have them bring it to my car”) sometime between two and six days from now, and honestly I suspect it’ll be on the earlier range of that.

That’s not what increased my capitalist rating, though. What increased my capitalist rating is that I went and fucked around and now I’m picking up (by which I mean “have them bring it to my car”) a new fucking TV tomorrow to go with my new PS5. We didn’t need a new TV by any reasonable definition of that term, but the PS5 can output 4K graphics and our current, several-years-old TV cannot receive them. So.

Now, before ordering this TV, I tried to dig into TV reviews for a while to figure out what sort of TV I was interested in and what price ranges were like (and, honestly, 43″ 4K TVs are so much cheaper than I thought they would be that this is not really a major financial hit) and after a bit of reading and a bit of comparing I realized that TV reviews and car reviews are the exact same thing and I needed to stop reading them.

What do I mean by that?

I drive a Kia Soul. Two cars before my current Kia Soul was a two-door Toyota Yaris, and I need you to understand that I loved my Yaris (I traded it in when I moved out of Chicago and had a child, at which point a two-door car was not nearly as practical an idea as it had been) and I love my Kia. I plan to keep my current car until my son is old enough to drive, give it to him, and whatever car I purchase to replace it very well might be another Kia.

If you read car-people reviews of the Kia Soul, you will come away thinking that it is a garbage car, barely fit to convey one to work, because car people review cars for a living and they have standards that simply push them out of the realm of relevance to the regular car owner, who may well go decades in between cars and for whom anything that is new and up-to-date is going to feel like an enormous improvement.

And TVs are the same thing. Most people do not replace their television sets all that often, and there is simply no way that a 43″ TV at a price range that I’m willing to consider (I ended up spending $279; I could have been convinced to go as high as $500 if I’d felt the advantages warranted it, and I’m not convinced) can compare with the type of wall-dominating, four-figure monstrosities that these guys are used to. I got all worried about viewing angles before I realized that my wife and I sit maybe fifteen degrees separated from each other when watching TV and if it’s an issue we can literally pivot the screen, and it’s not going to be an issue. 43″ is the biggest screen I can get without radically reconfiguring our living room, and it’s plenty big enough. I didn’t even consider a larger size.

(Why a Vizio? The other two TVs in the house are Vizios. I’ve been perfectly happy with both, the price was right, and good user reviews. Good enough.)

Because no matter what TV I get, my standards are going to be “make my PS5 graphics look as good as they can, and don’t feel like a downgrade in any way,” and it’s gonna, and it won’t, and even if it ends up being crappy compared to other 4K TVs I don’t have any others lying around to compare it to.

User reviews appear to be pretty damn solid, especially figuring in the “people are fucking idiots” factor– that guy who literally reviewed this TV at 3/5 stars because it didn’t fit on his console (I’m not joking) is not, in fact, entitled to his own opinion, because his opinion is dumb. Good user reviews are really all I need here. So long as I can avoid the soap opera effect, which drives me batshit insane, we’re all good.

So, yeah. I spent money at Wal-Mart, and they’re the devil, and I spent money on Black Friday sales, which makes me an asshole, particularly this year, and I’m actually going to go to Best Buy tomorrow, even if I don’t plan on getting out of my car and I’m going to go in the afternoon when crowds should be minimal, so obviously I’m a failure as a person on a number of levels. But, man, is the remake of that game I’ve already played and beaten going to look great!

Finally, and in accordance with our most ancient traditions, Happy Thanksgiving.

In which I decompress

On November 8, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

It blows my mind– even given that video games have been one of my primary leisure activities for basically my entire life– just how much of my time I have spent sitting in front of my PlayStation in the last several weeks. I continue to be obsessed with Nioh 2, which I’m playing through again on the (new) highest difficulty level and still has one more DLC coming, presumably in December or January. I’m scared to look, but I bet I’ve got 250+ hours into it by now … which if I choose to look at as a return on my $75 investment, is actually a pretty good use of my money, if nothing else.

I downloaded The Surge 2 on Friday; it’s basically Nioh or Dark Souls except with a techno-organic skin over it. I think I’ve put twelve hours into it in the three days, probably, and I imagine I’m going to go right back to it once I’m finished with this post. I’m actually quite enjoying the book I’m reading right now, but lately I’ve not been able to read during the day. If I’m not working or eating or (occasionally) watching TV with my wife, I’ve got a controller in my hand.

(Note that I did spend my traditional 2-3 hours today finishing my grading and pulling together tomorrow’s lesson plans, and it’s only that short of a time now because since everything is online I’m doing all my grading electronically.)

The PS5 comes out on Thursday; I won’t have one on Thursday unless some sort of miracle occurs, which is fine, because I can’t put the PS4 away until I’m done with Nioh. I will likely buy one as soon as I’m able to, but given how these things usually go that could be next week or it could be months from now. Apparently the plan is that they’re not going to be available in stores at all because of concerns about people waiting in line or camping out and the virus– which I’d be fine with, as I’m doing neither of those things, but it seems what is happening instead is resellers are using bots to buy them and then jacking the prices up online. Whatever; it’ll be a few months before I get bored with what I have, and by that time things will have calmed down.

As of yet, I’m not feeling the sense of relief I was hoping for from the election. I feel better, don’t misunderstand me, but better isn’t good. My wife described all the video games as a coping mechanism, and that’s probably what’s going on. I figure so long as she’s not pissed at me and I’m doing my job at work I don’t have anyone else I need to impress.We’ll see how long this lasts.

Taking today off

On June 15, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn video gamesLeave a comment

I can’t handle the world right now, so watch my favorite YouTuber react to the news that Demon’s Souls is getting a remake for the PS5, and understand that not only did this immediately sell me a PS5 but that my reaction wasn’t much different.