Matthew Supert

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.