I have not had an opportunity to play a lot of games over the past couple of months. I recently wrapped up Indiana Jones and the Great Circle a few weeks ago, and that game took me almost 3 months of on and off play to finish. There is a lot of good stuff coming out this summer, so I didn't want to get into another super long game. South of Midnight came out on Gamepass a few weeks ago and had a bit of hype going around it online. I decided to give it a go, not knowing exactly what I was getting into. 

I was pleasantly surprised by South of Midnight as it turned out to be a really nice adventure game. It really harkens back to an older style of gameplay that I felt was very refreshing. It's a simple, run/jump/fight/explore game that is fairly linear in process. It took me about 12 hours to complete, and I really enjoyed my time with it. 

The game has a beautiful graphical style, an almost quasi-stop motion design that gives me Fable aesthetics. If Fable ever comes out and looks like this game, I would be more than pleased with the aesthetic. The music in this game was also delightful as well, giving me "Tim Burton" vibes where the songs and lyrics played into the scene and narrative. It really incorporated into the gameplay really well.

The game does have some issues. Notably, the combat. While it is good, it is largely stagnant, and you are doing the same thing from the start of the game all the way to the very end. I never felt like the combat was that big of a deal and most instances were quick, so it never really got in the way of the gameplay. 

There was one story element that also really didn't feel cohesive and was sort a sloppily wrapped up at the end of the game. Again, not a big deal, but it just felt a bit weird. 

Overall, totally worth playing. Great vibes with some very touching moments and some fun character design. Worth checking out for a quick game. 

I've been slowly making my way through Indiana Jones and the Great Circle over the past couple of months. I started it back around January while over holiday break and I just wrapped it up this past weekend, taking a small break for the past month or so. This has been a really fantastic game that captured the feel and of the original Indiana Jones movies really well. Everything from the music, to the writing, to the score all nailed the feel and I honestly would love to see this story made into an Indiana Jones movie. 

I need up taking a break in the game because I was striving to get all of the secret collectables, which I haven;t done yet, but aim to go back and do at some point. My only real critique of the game is that I felt the third act (in Sukothai) felt a bit long for me and was mostly the same gameplay mecahnics being brought forth for a third time. Even while exploring that area, I never really felt like I had a good handle on where things were in relation to each other, even with the use of the boat. I think this in part might be due to the forest generally looking the same, but also the traversal areas are much more limited due to the flooded pass area. 

Such a great game though and just makes me want to see and consume more content in this world. 

I've recently discovered that I probably have an inordinate amount of bags for myself. This all arose a couple of days ago when I was discussing with Megan about getting a new bag for my personal laptop. I picked up a new 13" MacBook Air (which is great btw) and decided I need to get a new bag for it to protect it. 

As I began doing some research on this, it occurred to me that I have maybe half a dozen bags already floating around the house that I use in various capacities? Perhaps it's my personal neurodivergent trait here, but each bag I have serves a sort of independent need. 

• I have an old Jansport backpack that might date all the way back to junior high. It's huge, but in incredibly good shape and was definitely from the "Made in the USA" era of Jansport. It is too big for most of my needs these days, but I know as soon as I get rid of it, I will need that space for something. 
• I have a slightly smaller backpack that is from LL Bean that is a day hike pack. I've brought it with me on multiple national park trips and it goes with me on pretty much every vacation trip. That is about the only time I use it though because I don't really need a backpack for most daily uses. It's a great bag, but doesn't have any laptop storage unfortunately. 
• My daily driver is a Chrome Industries messenger bag that I got back in undergrad at college I think? Maybe grad school. It's a pretty big laptop bag that has been my goto bagger work and school for almost 20 years now. It is showing some wear and tear on the edges, but is still in incredible shape and holds just about all of my daily work gear. 
• I have an older canvas Lands End bag that I used for undergrad school that my parents got me years ago. It is floating around somewhere and I really should dig it out. It is another fantastic bag made out of a really durable canvas, but it again doesn't have any laptop storage. For a while it was my goto D&D bag, and I think I might wan to revive it for my TTRPG runs that don't require any digital tools. There was one point when I was using it as my work bag that a banana got smashed in it and it was a paint to get cleaned. 
• Finally I have a Chrome Industries Kadet Mini Sling bag. I picked this up a few years ago for music festivals. I like this bag quite a bit and I should probably use it more for weekend stuff. 
• Bonus Bag: Ahh, I just remembered when discussing the Kadet that I also have a Lunchbox hydro pack, which is a backpack specifically designed for music festivals with a water bladder in it. This I use pretty much exclusively for music festivals, so while it is incredibly utilitarian, it is sort of the perfect tool for a very specific job. 

So, for my next bag I am sort of looking at some options for my small laptop. Again, I want some space to throw just a couple of bags and an additional tablet for RPG sessions, etc. Right now, my front runners are a bit of a surprise as I am looking at a tote bag options. Why a tote bag? Well, I don't really need the long term support that a backpack will bring me. More often than not, I am mainly just carrying my bag from the house, to the car and then back out of the car. Another messenger bag was definitely on the table as an option, but the tote bag with the top opening really caught my eye. The catch is that I don't want something super large. 

Right now it looks like my top options are the Alpaka Bravo Tote and the Bellroy Tokyo Wonder Tote (12L). Both look really nice and I think it will ultimately just come down to which style calls to me the most. 

I've been a Goodreads user for years, almost since the beginning of its inception, and before it was purchased by Amazon. As of late I have wanted to see what else is out there for social apps around reading. As good as Goodreads is, it really hasn't seen any sort of updates to it. The rise of "Booktok" has brought a whole new social aspect to reading that I sort of miss. I used to be part of several bookclubs on Goodreads and at work, but those have largely fallen by the wayside and died. 

I've dipped my toes into a couple of new apps over the past months to see what they are all about. Fable and Tome have seen heavy discussion on my internet circles. I've had Fable for about six months now and Tome for maybe two (it is quite new). 

My initial impressions are kinda lukewarm on both of them so far. They both feature a very modern interface compared to Goodreads, almost like Instagram or BlueSky/Mastodon for the endless scrolling. There is something though rather clean about Goodreads compared to the other two. There is a level of information density that I prefer. Now, part of that might be because I have 10+ years of friends on Goodreads and they are largely still active, but I look at the feeds on these apps and my Goodreads feed is mostly people's book updates. What they have read and what they are reading, whereas my feeds in Fable and Tome are around books, but are not really updates on the books themselves. I see less reviews, less thoughts on specific chapters, and more posts that are people's cozy pictures of them in their living room reading. That's fine I guess, but I kinda wanna have some discussions around a book itself. 

I'm gonna check out Storygraph, but at this point I think Goodreads is still the best game in town. The interface is clean, even with the ads it offers up and it still has the best density of friends and interesting people posting book information. If I'm being honest, I also think the ads are rather good and introduce me to some new books and authors. 

The January Game of the Month over at r/SBCGaming was Metroid Prime Fusion. I have never played this game before and I was rather excited to give it a go. I have not really played any Metroid 2D games with the exception of Samus Returns for the 3DS. I've found that these games share a lot of DNA and I suppose that is just how 2D Metroid games are? If it is I unfortunately have to admit that perhaps 2D Metroid games aren't for me. 

I rather enjoyed the exploration aspects of the game quite a bit, but I found two of the core gameplay mechanics incredibly frustrating. First, while the exploration was rather fun, the investigation for the various hidden areas is a complete chore. Some areas had visual cues to indicate that there was something there, but most of them had no indication they were there. It ended up in me just shooting and bombing the walls for every room that I entered. Even after I found some the the hidden routes, I sometimes still had trouble figuring out what I was supposed to be doing.  It bogged the game down and I had to lookup a walkthrough on more than one occasion.

Second, the boss battles were infuriating most of the time and I often had to go back to the same walkthrough to read about how to game the combat. I finally had to give up on the game just near the section that is in the screenshot of this post when I came face to face with my nemesis in the game and had to figure out how to out run them with little queue on how to actually solve the encounter. 

Perhaps this game is just a product of its time, but I have to admit that it just isn't for me. 

I've really been feeling some nostalgia the past few months for some retro video games. I picked up Master Blaster Zero for my 3DS a few months ago and the aesthetic and gameplay felt really refreshing to me. That led me down the path of looking into getting a retro handheld gaming device. After a long research process I settled on the TrimUI Brick. It is a fairly new device, released this past fall, but has some good reviews. Megan picked it up for me for Christmas and I have been getting some of my retro game time on to some delight. 

Some of the games I have played so far are Super Mario World (of course) and Super Baseball 2020. Over on the r/SBCGaming subreddit they are doing a "Game of the Month", which is a really fund idea to get people to explore games. January's game is Metroid Fusion, which I'll talk about bit more about in another post. 

I'm having a really fun time with this little device so far though. It's rough around the edges though and the software is not very polished. This is definitely a "tinkerer's" hobby with messing with settings. On more than one occasion I've had to hard reboot the device and clear out settings that I've messed up. 

I've made an effort this past year to get back into wearing watches besides just my Apple Watch. My most recent pickup is a Casio-Oak 2100. I'll be honest, I didn't quite like this when I originally got it. The dark color is a bit hard to see at times, but it has grown on my significantly over the past several weeks. It's incredibly comfortable and not nearly as big on the wrist as it maybe initially looks. My only real complaint with it at this point is the Casio App, the is used to sync the timezone. It is simply terrible, so I am not going to be using that moving forward. 

A few months ago I began thinking about picking up a tablet that I could use at the game table to help speed up my GM'ing and gaming process. I hate having to use a full laptop. It's just too big most of the time and I honestly don't want my TTRPG gaming to be so digitally focused. An iPad is the obvious choice here, but I'm staring at computer screens all day at work and want to give my eyes a bit of a break at the table. So I bought a E-Ink tablet. I spent a few months researching the process and I ended up with a Boox Note Air C3, which is an Android based tablet. Since it is using Android, it allows me other install apps, which many of the other tablets like Remarkable don't allow.

So how has it worked out so far?  

The TLDR summary is It's good and I am using it for most of my gaming sessions, but it isn't perfect. It works better as a player notebook than a GM tool and your satisfaction will be largely dependent upon whether the app you are using is well optimized for the E-Ink screen. Super graphic heavy apps don't look great.

I also purchased the color, Air C3, version and in general I am "meh" on the color. I don't feel It really adds much to the experience and I find I have to have the front light on basically all the time. Battery life is decent but I will regularly go from 100% to 70% battery in a single 3-4 hour gaming session.

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If you have been following the gaming news as of late, everyone has been talking about Space Marine 2. I picked it up about two weeks ago, since I am a big fan of the world building. I beat the game last week so, let's talk a little bit about my thoughts. 

Overall, I had a decent time with this game, but I am not quite sure it lived up to the hype that I am seeing online about it "harkening back to an older time in gaming". The campaign was probably 15 hours or so for me to beat. It was fine and a decent linear romp, but if I am being honest, it felt very much like a less rushed Warhammer Vermintide, with just a little bit more ammo. 

The waves of enemies that are thrown on screen at you are cool the first couple of times they happen, and the opening chapter sets a nice tone for the game. By the 30th time it happens though, I just sort of got bored with it. I guess that sorta goes for the combat in general for me as well. Executing a well timed counter results in a cool cinematic, but when you see it for the 60th time, it doesn't continue to impress. I also found the combat a bit frustrating at times because the armor/health management and recovery is not satisfying as it should be. Too often I found myself overwhelmed with crowd control, while simultaneously getting rocked by a ranged attack somewhere offscreen that I couldn't see. 

Bigger enemies just took way too much to whittle down before you could get the "execute" option and the returned armor/health almost never made up for the damage you took to get in close enough to melee them. 

I also found the game surpassingly devoid of combat puzzles through the campaign. There were a couple of instances of holding some zones to open a gate, and one fun instance in the PvE multiplayer where you had to enter some glyphs to attack a drake, but that was kinda it. And also, if this was such a throw back feeling game, where was the obligatory vehicular run and gun sequence?

Overall I felt everything just kinda felt boring and samey at the end and even when the Chaos Marines finally showed up, their tactics and enemy types were almost exactly the same as the Tyranid. I'll leave my final single player thoughts with the fact that I also kinda hated the main character you played as. He is a terrible commander, and that would be fine if not for the fact that they try to redeem him with this camaraderie ideal right at the end of the game. I hated Titus and there were multiple times in the game where he chewed his squad out for making poor choices, but then he deliberately would not divulge mission critical information to them. 

Multiplayer also leaves me really wanting. The PvE chapters are fun, and the concept of having you play as the "B Team" in parallel to the main story mission is a brilliant idea. However, they still have that Vermintide feel to them for me, and out of the maybe dozen sessions I've played I have yet to matchmake with a full party. PvP also is just middling. While it does bring back a Gears of War sort of feel, I don't think I'm fully grasping the combat translation from single player to the multi-player. For example, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to be effective with melee combat in PvP and similarly, does the counter/parry system work at all? I haven't seen it trigger at any point. I believe there are only three or four maps too. On top of all of that the load out customization appears to be different between multiplayer environments? Why? 

Overall, fun game, but I don't think I got a fully $70 worth out of it.  

Wisconsin has 126 marked Rustic Roads covering approximately 760 ​​​miles in 61 counties. Travel at least 10 of these roads and you'll be eligible for a Rustic Roads Motorcycle Tour patch. Travel on 25 Rustic Roads or more qualifies you for a special state certificate.​

We hit up the following roads thanks to a very nice route put together by Driftless Roads USA 

This past weekend we had a nice extended four day trip down to the Hoosier National Forest area in souther Indiana. I have to say that the trip was a complete surprise for me. I had no idea what to expect for the roads, but man they were great. Most of our riding took place in and around the Hoosier National Forest and our basecamp was in Columbus Indiana. The roads were very narrow and very hilly with blind curves all over the place in and out of the hills. If I am being honest, they were perhaps some of the more technical roads I've ever ridden if only for the small hills that made so many blind entrances. 

On Sunday we rolled into Nashville Indiana for lunch and we were pleasantly surprised to find a very charming artist community. I would 100% love to go back and make a basecamp weekend in this are and rent a cabin or something in the Nashville area. The whole thing is only about 200 mile from Chicago so you can get there and back in about four hours. 

I've been on the lookout for a new GPS device for 2019 R 1250RT for a little while now. I have the Garmin Navigator VI that came with the bike, and while the GPS device itself is still working very well, the user experience with the trip planner Basecamp is poor. Basecamp  has good features and I rather like its trip planner, but the application runs so poorly on my Mac that I have on multiple occasions screamed into my computer while the mapping interface stutters along, unable find basic addresses, or just outright crashes. 

Earlier this year my entire Basecamp library became corrupted and I lost all of my ride data that I had saved into the software. Worse still, the backups I had somehow also became corrupted. Thankfully, most of my data was saved externally as .kml files, but I did lose about six months of rides and the elevation data that comes along with those .GPX files. 

I really began to look hard at some alternative GPS solutions entirely because Basecamp is terrible to use. I was hoping that BMW themselves would pull through with their recently announced BMW ConnectedRide Navigator. Unfortunately, the dimensions do not fit in the nav prep on the K1600 or R1250RT bikes.

I've given some serious consideration to the Garmin Zumo XT, which is very well regarded and does not utilize the Basecamp. I was just about to pull the trigger on it when a newcomer emerged with a CarPlay/Android Auto device called the AIO from Chigee. 

They just released a BMW focused version that fits in the existing Nav prep cradle. I received my AIO-5 this past Friday and put a little over one hundred miles on it today, so here are my first impressions. 

Chigee AIO-5 for BMW 

First up, I think it is worth clarifying what this device is and what it is not. It is not a stand alone GPS device. It requires a smartphone connection and consequently a GPS or driving app on the phone. There are at least half a dozen motorcycle focused apps for iPhone, but I am going to focus on Apple Maps and Rever.co on my first impressions here. 

The AIO-5 has no internal battery, so it can only be powered on when connected to the bike. I was able to get it to read all of the data like engine temperature, tire pressure, etc. but I was unable to get the AIO-5 to respond to the BMW Wonderwheel. Looking at the Facebook Group it appears that my 2019 model RT may require an additional dongle. That's disappointing, but not a deal breaker. 

The Chigee interface essentially has two main screens. The first one shows basic speeds, RPM and other data and mimics the dashboard of the new LCD model BMWs. The other shows the screen in a more grid view. Both screens are fine, but the biggest issue that jumped out at me is there is no "light" mode for the background. Everything is dark, which honestly can be hard to quickly read on a full sun day. 

I also noticed that the screen brightness on my device was a bit wonky, dimming randomly at times. It is also super responsive to switching to night mode. Driving through an underpass had the interface in the maps switch to dark mode. This may just be a firmware issue that could just get updated in the future. 

The only other thing that really jumped out at me is that there are way to many touches to jump between the Chigee dashboard and back to a map app running in CarPlay. I think there was probably 3-4 button presses, which makes it difficult to switch if you are driving.   

CarPlay Interface

If you are at all familiar with CarPlay, the interface here is just CarPlay. It's good, but if I am being honest, I don't really like it on a motorcycle. There is just too much going on most of the time and you can tell that the interface is not optimized for a screen this small, with the rider ~3' away. On a motorcycle, I just want to be living in the map interface 99% of the time. The Split View with the music, while cool, is just a distraction on a bike. CarPlay also has a persistent menu on the left hand side of the screen that prevents any app from filling 100%. I wish that could be tweaked. 

Also, CarPlay does not allow you to remove the phone or Messages icons. If I could I would prefer to turn both of those off entirely. I do not want those distractions while on the bike. 

My experience with Apple Maps was fine. I know a lot of motorcyclists online say stuff like "why don't you just use Apple or Google Maps" for your routing, and for running errands or going to work, that is 100% fine. Any sort of multi-point route planning or multi-day trip planning though is not ideal for those apps. For that, I am going to explore other apps. 

The other big observation with Apple Maps is that the text on the screen is just not big enough. This is probably because it is built for a car with a larger screen, but it is what it is. 

Rever.co

I also had a chance to test out Rever.co today, thankfully it did pickup a lot of the slack that Apple Maps left behind. I am going with Rever right now in part because I think it most closely matches the features that I liked on my Garmin. Having both weather data and traffic data on the map to re-route is incredibly valuable for long road trip planning. 

The Rever app looks pretty good, but their CarPlay capabilities are kinda weak. It looks like it is more or less a screen mirroring device, and I was not quite sure how to trigger a ride recording on the CarPlay screen vs the iPhone app. It also was a bit unclear how to request a "twisty roads" ride from the CarPlay screen. 

The iconography though was much better and easier to read than Apple Maps. The Pro version also has some nice features like notifying people when you get home safe and you can set a privacy buffer for your home or any other address. 

Rever also is most attractive to me for the sharing features of maps, etc. 

Overall I want to develop some multi-day and multi-point routing in Rever in the coming weeks and really put it through its paces. I'll test out some other routing apps before the end of the year as well. 

I was having some thoughts the other day that coalesced around this idea of the "Wild World" and this concept of the unknown. It's a fairly common trope in most fantasy worlds that the world is portrayed as an untamed and dangerous place. Bastions of civilization are focused around a handful of cities and alcoves. I alway found the concept of the regarding the world as we know it and how its relates to our fantasy narratives as very interesting.  

In most fantasy narratives it is implied, if not explicitly stated, that the world is mostly uninhabited. There are pockets of dense populations, often times reflected in larger cities, but generally speaking, when your heroes or adventurers are out wandering the world, they are wandering into the unknown, into the wild. Even the established routes between known population areas are portrayed as dangerous. 

I suppose there is a sense of wonder in breaking away from our now common familiarity of travel. We can easily travel fifty miles without much of a thought with modern transportation and, there is little of the unknown wilderness still to traverse in that travel. Of course one has to be careful and not fall into the colonial concepts of barbarians or uncivilized peoples and portraying those as "lesser". T

Bringing this back to our own world though, it really made me think about what the 19th century and earlier must've looked like to most people. Even into the 1800's there were wide swaths of the world that were largely unexplored and you can see this reflected in all sorts of artwork. It triggers a bit of romanticism does it not? To think about our own world and imagine it more wild, one that is perhaps less populated and full of new places to discover. Would such a world be a better place if we brought modern (western) sensibilities to it? Who is to say, but it is fund to imagine. 

Megan and I saw Dune Part 2 a couple of weekends ago in iMax. It has been years I think since we last went to a movie at the theaters. Probably since before COVID if I had to guess. 

The movie was quite good and I really enjoyed the movie experience. As with any movie adaptation there are some changes from the book and I fully understand how those changes needed to be made. In the movie version there appears to be a much larger emphasis on the Bene Gesserit and their role in the whole prophecy. I would've liked to see a bit more of the space guild and the mentat, if only to highlight a bit how there were more forces as play in the whole galactic politics. 

My only other gripe with the movie that jumped out at me was the handling of Chani's relationship with Paul at the end. In the book she was much more aware of the potential political marriage that needed to occur and stayed with Paul. The movie changed this dynamic quite a bit, apparently having the two split up and bringing forth the conflict between Paul's religious war and the longterm identity of Dune itself. 

It's an interesting take. I got the impression from the books series that the Freeman wanted Dune to become green. The movie portrayed this a bit differently for me, and I got the impression that there is a sector of the Freeman who want to be free, but have Dune remain as it is due to their "heritage". I feel Chani would fall into this camp. The movie conveyed a real sense of dread and devastation. The scene where the Emperor's ship is attacked on the Dune surface was a demonstration of a brutal and devastating blow. 

I had a great time though and despite the hight cost of going to the movies, I would like to get out a bit more and go back. The past few years of movies have not aught me at all. As I posted about earlier this year, I am getting a bit burned out on streaming services and subscriptions all over the place. It was nice to get into that whole movie experience, with the popcorn and everything. Here's to the hope that movies can make a bigger impact as we move forward. 

I started reading the ACOTAR series a little of a year ago and the behest of my wife who had been reading these books for quite a while. It was only after seeing the continual clips on TikTok that I decided to give the the series ago, if only to see what the fuss was all about and to connect with my wife on what she was reading.

I liked the first book, but I didn’t love it. I could see the appeal, but as a pure fantasy novel, I wasn’t entirely taken by the story that was presented. I continued on reading the second book and I could see how the writing improved significantly. While working through the series it was interesting to observe my interpretations of the scenes and development compared to my wife. I saw things that she didn’t and vice versa.

By the end of the second book I was hooked. I was really drawn into the world and if I am being honest the love story between Rhys and Feyre was very well written. The overall story was just “OK” for me, but it was the personal moments and the family that she built that really had me invested in this story.

I love that the third book gave us the opportunity to really learn a bit more about the other kingdoms and get to know those characters. The war with Hyburn was a nice topping point to the whole series. In the end I only had a couple of minor quibbles with the final book, and most of those issues arose near the end. The first issue is the sudden reappearance of the Archeron sister’s father. For me it came out of nowhere with no context. I dont even believe Maas connected his coming to Lucien setting out to find the one human queen. The other major issue was that none of the major characters or other lords died at the end of the book. It made for a happy ending sure, but it seemed a bit improbable and removed some of the gravity of the situation.

I was also a bit confused when the other high lords who were able to change into a beast during the final battle. Rhys and Hellion I believe both did this. I though that was Tamlin’s specific power as the lord of the Spring Court? All of the other lords have distinct powers, but if they all can change into beasts what does that leave Tamlin with?

In the end though, this who series was about the relationship between Feyre and Rhys and it had me fully invested. It was touching and quite beautiful and I love how Maas showed how much they actually cared for each other.

I’m not sure if I will continue on to the other books in this series, but I think I am definitely a fan of Maas and her writing, and I will certainly check out some of her other series at some point.

I’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate 3 for the past month or so, since it came out on the Xbox. People have been praising this game since August so I was pretty excited to get into the game. I am a huge D&D and TTRPG fan afterall, so the prospect of bringing that to a videogame seemed pretty exciting.

I’ve just hit Act 3 this past week and I think I am about 60-70 hours in. If I am being honest, I dont think I like this game very much and it almost entirely boils down to the combat.

But before we really get into that, let’s talk about some other things in the game that just don’t seem to connect with me. The game is very heavility influenced by the actual D&D roleplay mechanic system. Unforuntely, that brings all of the similar trappings that come with playing D&D, but without the benefit of having the ability to get contextual information or clarification form your dungeon master. Roleplay is probably my favorite part of D&D and Baldur’s Gate on the whoile does a pretty decent job of this. However, it obfuscates the skill checks and rolls in most roleplay or social situations. I very often will find myself in a conversation which results in a roll, but I have no way to know which character may be most appropriate for the situation or context. Furthermore, when a roll like Persuasion is required I have no idea what the stat for the chracter that I have select is. If the game didn’t explicitly have a dice roll in these situations, I probably wouldn’t care, but if it is going to show me that actual roll, every…single…time at least let me see what my modifier is before I select that as a dialog option.

Contextual clues are the biggest frustration I have with this game. There have been way too many situations where I am walking around the world where combat will just suddenly start, or worse yet, I think it will, and it doesn’t resulting in a conversation that has to preempt combat. Just today I wrestled with a combat scenario against some Githyanki in a hidden library. I must’ve run this combat 6-7 times. After getting obliterated the first time I tried to sneak and get surprise on the enemy for an attack. every single time I would get a spell off and then the conversation would trigger and then waste the concentrate or spell I just cast. I had a nearly identical level of frustration with the combat that occured at the entrance of the Moonrise Towers in Act 2.

I basically had to “cheese” the combat to get an upper hand due to the action economy. Almost every combat has significantly more combatants than your party.

Let’s continue our conversation though on that Githyanki fight and the way it was structured. There were two portals on the sides of the room, summoning in more Githyanki each round. Those portals were placed just sor perfectly to be out of reach of any of my spells like Fireball, etc. This is frustrating game design, because it is almost impossible to know that those exist until you fail at a first attempt of combat. There was no way going into that room to know how to position my characters and accommodate for that specific setup. So many of the combat encounters have this same sort of thing and it is just driving me away from wanting to continue to play.

Let's take a look at my year in gaming on Xbox. I am a bit surprised at this to be honest. I had no idea that I played 43 games. Deep Rock was definitely my most played game this year. I am surprised at my hours for Starfield. I cranked through that game in a couple of weeks and enjoyed it, but fell off pretty hard after the first ending. I didn't make to any subsequent NG+ games. 

https://thegameawards.com/

The 14th annual Video Game Awards (VGA) were on this past Thursday and I have probably watched this show every year for the past eight years or so. It is the only award show that I regularly look forward to and it really is a testament to Geoff Keighley who has organized and promoted this thing since its inception. 

I think there is something important about how the VGA's are approaching the  award show space that really sets them apart from many of the other shows out there. No one is watching the Oscars or Grammys right? They are boring as all hell. The Grammy's if anything should probably be pretty easy to make entertaining considering it is a music focused show, but the format is just straight up boring. 

The VGA's have nailed it though in creating an entertaining show and they have done it by leveraging the value of the entertainment format. It is an awards show first and foremost, but they do an excellent job of getting away from the endless monologue of "thank you" speeches. I think for all of the awards that they gave out on Thursday, maybe 5-8 people actually came up on stage to say thank you. They even had some of the awards given out at an off-stage camera position and it appeared as if the awardees there read from a teleprompter for their thank you speech to keep it nice and short. The worst part of the Oscars is the endless droning of thank you's that no one cares about from the actors, made worse often by their self inflated philanthropic or political posturing. No one cares and it isn't entertaining for anyone. 

The VGA's also do a really nice job of featuring some important awards on the show that others do not. For example, they do an award for accessibility in gaming, which is something that others need to be doing. Even if the Oscars are doing something like that, they aren't putting that on the screen. 

The VGA's fill most of their time though with trailers for upcoming games, which is the real reason why most people come to watch. They also then fill it in with some excellent musical performances from some of the best soundtracks of the year. The Oscars should be doing this exact same thing. Musical performances, seem like a no brainer, but trailers? That also seems like an easy win of self promotion for all involved. Show us trailers for new movies coming out the next year. Better yet, remember all of that cool and fun bonus content that we got on DVD's back in the day? Give us that content for all of the nominees. That stuff is largely gone as a result of online streaming and some of that stuff is great. That would be an easy way to fill in a show with entertaining information that ranges from a technical/artistic insight to simple outtakes and bloopers. People would love to watch that. 

Late into the Halloween game, but I wanted to share this adventure I wrote a few years ago and have consolidated into a proper document for other DM's to run. This takes H.P. Lovecraft's Dagon short story and turns it into an investigation adventure. 

I hope you enjoy. 

Updated: 10/09/2023 - Updated to fix grammar, typos, and some formatting issues. Improved newspaper layout for easier printing.