Tourma's Longform Ramblings

So I, like I lot of people it seems going by Steam's metrics, have getting into Fallout thanks to the TV show. The funny thing is, I haven't even watched the show. I just vibed so hard with the hoopla, I had to try one, and the experience is far better than my first time.

The Past-Past

I think my dislike for the western role playing game happened around the tail end of the 6th generation. During the 5th, I owned a Nintendo 64, with it's dearth of RPGs. I think there were three? And the one good one, (Paper Mario,) I didn't recognize was one until later. In my opinion, Quest 64 and...Aydin Chronicles? I don't feel like looking it up, sucked eggs. Seeing all the amazing stuff my friends and family were playing on the Playstation 1 influenced what I got for the next generation.

On my PS2, I bought a lot of JRPGs. Over this generation, I realized a couple of things. While I beat few games, I beat very few RPGs. Also, what gets me is when the world opens up. This happens far later in JRPGs than western RPGs. So for the seventh generation, I wasn't preoccupied with the RPG and went for the Xbox 360.

The Past

It started with rage. Well, not “rage”, but the all-capitals of “RAGE” the id Software game. I bought it on a whim one day at Best Buy for like, $10-15. I had heard from a friend that it was disappointing, but I thought that was in the “I pre-ordered it for $60” disappointing. It might be decent for 10 to 15.

And I was right! The game was truncated and ending more abrupt and unsatisfying than Halo 2's, but it had it's upsides. It looked amazing at the time. I really enjoyed it. Actually, writing about it here made me look up Rage 2, but I don't have it free through PS+, so maybe another time.

So after I finished with Rage, I wanted more western, dieselpunk shooting. The only two games I could think of in this genre were Borderlands and Fallout New Vegas. I had rented Borderlands and fallen off quickly as I was getting my ass kicked, (turns out I was playing Mortdecai and didn't really pay attention to weaknesses, later I played again with Brick and enjoyed it.) So that left me with NV.

It was surprisingly hard to find at the time. Or rather, find for a decent price. I think I ended up at Kmart, where NV was like, $35 still, and Fallout 3 was $20. So I picked 3 up instead.

Mistake.

The setting was not what I wanted. Especially the beginning being in the Vault. Even outside though, the grey-green was meh, I didn't like the gunplay, and it was before I learned one has to have discretion with picking up everything and selling it. Then I ended up in some supermarket and got my ass kicked.

Never played it since.

I think this was the last straw for western RPGs in general. While I did play and beat Mass Effect 3, that the gunplay was like a shiny Gears of War immensely helped. Getting it new for $10 also helped. I enjoyed Dragon Age II and beat it as well...Oh wait, Fallout 3 burnt me out, but DA:O was what had me swear off western RPGs (and dwarves) for years. Anyway, by and large, those were the exceptions to the rule.

I tried Skyrim with a pirated copy on my Mac, and I don't know if I disliked the game, or playing on a computer. Tolerating PC play isn't my strong suit either, though having a bona fide gaming PC has helped.

The Near-Past

Games like Mass Effect Andromeda and ME Legendary Edition, as well as Star Trek Online, Star Wars the Old Republic, and WoW helped break me out of my anti-western RPG shell.

The Present

This game seemingly gets going FAR faster than Fallout 3 did. And is what I wanted back then, and I had an urge for westerns in general now, so it's what I wanted now. The writing's decent. The atmosphere is great. The gunplay isn't the best, but more serviceable than I remember. I took advice on how to get started with NV from https://slime.global/@junebug on following the route given until you get to New Vegas itself and I think that really helped. Both plotwise and not getting reamed by significantly more powerful enemies.

I've seemingly aligned myself with the NCR, though my Socialist-ass still views them skeptically. I just met my first Brotherhood of Steel mofo. I get heavy nazi vibes from their attire, so I'm skeptical of them too. Getting attacked by Caesar's Legion for my hat lessened my opinion of them.

This is also my first real trial of using mods. The game looks better, if still like a 15 year old game. I made sure my companions couldn't die. Faster walking speed. I can't remember what else. It went pretty flawlessly though. I was shocked. Kinda spoiled me on dragging my 360 to play 3.

I did also try Fallout 76 and Fallout Shelter while I was at it. 76 is...alright. Not my thing, though it is pretty. Shelter is still going strong. I have 47 dwellers at the moment. Its fun, and I'm cheap, so they haven't got a dime from me.

The Future

I was already feelingly attention wane by the time I started writing this article, and that was like, a week ago. I haven't turned the game on in nearly that amount of time. But that's how I roll. Games are very rare to get more than a couple of weeks of attention out of me. Destiny and Halo have been the rare exceptions. Speaking of, I'm playing Destiny 2 semi-seriously for the first time since the end of the Season of the Witch. Trying to get the battle pass done before The Final Shape.

Will I come back to New Vegas? I think so, yes. I think I'll pass on 76. But I might get a Fallout 5 if/when that comes out. Guess I could try Outer Worlds too.

But still, Western RPGs are in a much better place with me now. And that's good.

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Or how an already squicky premise has been made worse by time.

Its been a hot minute since the Division 2 came out. I finally bought it, $5 used at Gamestop.

I’ll say this up front, the gameplay loop is actually good. A healthy mix of Bungie’s Destiny and Ubisoft’s open world melange. If you’re unaware, it’s an open world third person looter shooter. It’s absolutely an Ubisoft game, it has that flavor. So your mileage may vary right from there. But the shooting is really solid and the looting works well as a loop. Its not gimmicky like Athem or Outriders either.

That said, the premise and plot are...oof.

The game is set in a post-apocalyptic Washington DC. You play a member of the Strategic Homeland Division, or “The Division” that is towing what’s left of the US. The Division’s very concept is not good. They’re sleeper cells with extrajudicial power that answer to no one but the president. This was made in the early half of the 2010’s. As the Youtube series Extra Credit put it, ‘this might seem fine in the hands of [then president] Obama, but think about it with someone less stable. Like say, Trump.’ Trump had not yet won the primaries IIRC at the point of that video.

Trump was bad enough, (knocking on wood that he stays past tense,) but having access to his own trained Sturmabteilung, (aka SA, the stormtroopers that helped Hitler rise to power that he later annihilated and replaced with the more stable/in his control SS,) seems like a goddamn nightmare. I don’t want any head of state to have this kind of military power. Our military at least ostensibly answers to the Constitution over the president.

It feels like a neocon wetdream. Which fits Clancy pretty well to be honest.

Also, the apocalypse was caused by a worldwide pandemic.

Yeah.

This game has a real Cassandra thing going on with the curse of prophecy.

The game is at least a worst case scenario as opposed to what’s happening with Covid. The Chimera Virus/Dollar Flu/Green Poison was a genetically engineered smallpox variant unleashed on Black Friday. I think by a non-governmental actor. This coincided with the destruction of the internet and a lot of other infrastructure. Still, the game coming out late 2019 and Covid happening a few months later was not a good look. Especially after, “hey maybe the president having this kind of power” happening a few months before Trump.

They make the Division seem like the good guys by making all the people you’re killing thoroughly puppy kickers. Of those whom I’ve come across so far, there are the Hyenas, people that took Mad Max to heart, and the True Sons, who would be Nazis, but they have a black commander so it’s totally not that.

But the sheer amount of people you kill to make the peace seems extreme. I know that’s a gameplay thing, but it’s still uncomfortable.

And then there are people whom I’ve seen that are like, level 5900. Given, if Destiny’s current leveling scheme was retroactive and persistent, mine might be somewhere up there, but the game is also almost 10 years old.

So I don’t know. I’ve got mixed feelings on the whole thing. Glad I didn’t give Ubisoft any money at least.

#TourmaGaming #VideoGames #Ubisoft #Division2 #Destiny2 #Review

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Tried Metal Gear Rising Revegance for the first time. I picked it up a while ago because I was really digging Death Stranding and wanted to play more Kojima stuff, but I suck at Metal Gear Solid games. So this was the compromise.

Overall I rate it...a Platinum game.

I don't mean that affectionately or derogatorily. Its just absolutely Platinum's style with a coat of Kojima story wonk. Platinum has games that they pour everything into. Then they have games that pay the bills. This one feels more the former. I know they got called to pinch hit after Kojima's B team failed at making what they wanted, but I've played Platinum games that paid the bills and this is better than those from what little I've played.

My favorite Platinum game is Bayonetta. Which should make sense, as it was my Game of the Year [That I Played In 2023]. I tried playing it back in the day and got my butt handed to me, so this time around I played on Easy. I wanted to experience the story and titillation. Not banging my head against the wall from sucking at parrying. And I suck and parrying. Dodging isn't that much better for me. In pretty much all games tbh. You'll never hear me bothering with a From Software game.

What got me where I stopped playing and start writing this is that I tried to play on Normal before remembering the above. Compounding my sucking at parrying is that MGR:R parry system is much more nuanced than Bayonetta's. So I'm even less likely to get it right.

On top of that, Raiden isn't really my type.

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My main knock is that it doesn't seem to have a way to adjust difficultly midstory. Not that I'm far at all. I died to the second encounter to the first Metal Gear. I can totally restart and get back to where I was pretty quickly.

So we'll see.

#MetalGearRisingRevengence #MetalGearSolid #Kojima #Bayonetta #TourmaGaming #VideoGames

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I have not done much longform writing these past several years. “Longform” in my case being, “more than a page for fun.” I used to do more. Tumblr allowed it, and I took advantage of that. I got away from the site after the Great Porn Ban of 2018, and everywhere I’ve been since has been a microblogging site instead. So the skill has atrophied.

Sure, I’ve done years in review pretty much every year. On a different site every year I think. I’ve done threads on Twitter, on Mastdon, on Cohost, and now here on Write Freely. But other than that...not really. Maybe here and there, but by and large, writing a lot for fun has been happening a handful of times a year for...a handful of years.

So I’m trying to get more in the habit again. Maybe something more creative will turn up. Maybe the pain in my right pinky finger from typing(?) will go away. I think it might be more due to my phone, but I’m not sure.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about extended chattering the hard way, (“thank” you Meta the Corp,) is to write it out on a word processor first, then copy and paste it into wherever I’m posting it. I have lost multiple pages of writing multiple times when Facebook designs that I’ve got too uppity trying to writes something, upload a photo or three, tag someone, AND change my mood. Gods forbid I try and use all of the aspects of their site. And it’s done that to me on the website on my computer, though also on every possible way to post on a phone. Facebook gets reaaaaaal pissy if you try to use something other than their intrusive af apps, but even the app does this to me.

So yeah...fuck Facebook. :P

I’m also writing this at work, (Hi IT overlords! I know you can look in on monitors without our being aware. Hopefully whatever I’m doing hasn’t warranted your attention,) but I’m not using MS Word. We absolutely have it, but since it can synch with the company’s SharePoint, I’d rather not give the chance. So I’m using LibreOffice Writer for my personal writing. I also installed it because Microsoft, though more usually Adobe, will just take a shit after an update and refuse to boot. I then have to contact IT and they have to do something to get it to work again. It’s a hoot. So I have LibreOffice on here for those times so I’m not without/have to use the shittier online versions of MS Office.

Not being able to open PDFs really sucks, so LibreOffice Draw comes in real handy. Its much easier to edit PDFs on it too since my library doesn’t pay for the paid Enterprise edition of Acrobat. In general I just dislike Adobe. Microsoft can be questionable, but by and large they’re about as good as one can expect from a hegemonic corporation. (Pat on the back for spelling hegemonic correctly, though I lose a finger or two for misspelling corporation.) Adobe on the other hand is just shit. Adopting as many bad practices as possible, all of their products taking way too many resources, etc. I haven’t had an Adobe product on one of my computers since my ‘07 Mac died. I had Photoshop CS4 onto it thanks to to magic of going into Terminal and telling it to not check in with the servers on if my demo time expired or not. I did that with Apple’s iWork suite too.

Apple got me back in the end though. I have a bunch of .pages files from college that I can’t open because my Mac died. Lesson learned. Always save in an industry standard or OpenSource format. I think I’ve found a program on F-Droid that would let me convert them to .docx files, but its been so long I don’t really give a shit anymore. Unless I need something from one of those papers. Yikes did I have to write a lot of papers in college. Don’t mind not having to do that constantly anymore.

As I write this, I have Word open for a thing I’m working on for my job, though it’s far more cutting and pasting than this. By and large, I like LibreOffice. Its the best/least creepy free office suite that I know of. It’s got its quirks, but hey,MS Office is weird af and it’s industry standard. (Much to Google’s chagrin I’m sure, {fuck ‘em.}.) I’m sure there is a fix for it somewhere, but my main complaint with LibreOffice is that the buttons are tiny in comparison.

I’ve shifted it from the default design that was a knockoff of the old MS Word in favor of the alternate design that’s a knockoff of the new MS Word. I’m used to it at this point, so it’s easier to find things this way at this point. It’s not a total 1:1, but close enough for my purposes.

Well, I went to break and lost my train of thought, so we’ll wrap it here.

Remember to save your stuff locally!

#Writing #TourmaPosts #LibreOffice

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It's been a year, huh?

Lots of ups and downs. Lost my grandfather, who was my last grandparent, and my uncle, the last uncle on my dad's side, both this year. A coworker's husband died. Lots of struggles with health for both me and my parents.

Work got a new OPAC/Discovery Layer after 20-odd years. III stopped being a thing and SirsiDynex, those who bought III, stopped innovating on Encore/Sierra. So now we use Aspen/Koha and are paying ByWater Solutions to make stuff for us, so that's cool. We're still getting used to it four months on.

On a 100% good note, I also went to Norway again and visited my best friends. Norway is so amazing. I wish I could move there. I'd be more likely to come out as trans there, that's for sure.

Overall...I dunno. I'm feeling ambivalent to the whole thing at the moment.

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Reading

My reading speed has been shit this year. Had I read everything I started, I'd be only at 18 books. As it is, I finished half that. I don't know what happened, but my reading speed has gone to shit since Covid started. (It was probably the trauma from the global pandemic. ~Ed.) Only year worse than '23 or '20 was '16. I blame politics for that year.

Martha Wells. I read two of her books this year. The self-contained effort Witch King, and the newest Murderbot , System Collapse. I read these two faster than most single books that I actually finished. She is just a superb writer. I super recommend The Murderbot Diaries. Witch King is good too, but Murderbot really hits the zeitgeist for me. ...Pat of the back for spelling zeitgeist right the first time.

the first book that I finished was Leviathan Wakes by S.A. Corey. This is harder sci-fi than I usually read, but I really enjoyed it overall. The mix of hard sci-fi with up to date science, and the mix of Space Opera and Noir is really good. That said, motherfucker's long. I worry I'll run out of steam with doorstops this day and age. Biggest reason I haven't continued to read it. Book one is pretty self-contained, I doubt any of them after that are. I don't have the gumption for 4,000 more pages of one story at the moment.

The surprise hit of the year for me was The Warden by Daniel M. Ford. This protagonist necromancer really vibed with me. The story structure is more akin to The Hobbit than most fantasy, by which I mean it is a series of chronological arcs rather than a hard point A to B. I took to this structure here better than with The Hobbit itself. Ford is no Tolkien, but the book is good all the same. Having the book end on a cliffhanger is annoying af though. I tried to read another of Ford's books and ended up setting it down. Didn't jive with the protagonist...or the story of that one. Hopefully I enjoy the sequel.

The queer solarpunk compilation book, “Fix the World” has also been excellent. I've been reading stories out of it between books and by and large I have enjoyed them. Worth looking into if you want some hopeful Sci-Fi.

Less so for the compilations are the two lit magazines I've subscribed to. Clarkesworld and Interzone. They're good! Just what I've read has been more depressing/cishet/darker than the other books I've read, so they tend to get a story or two read out of each edition and that's it. I'm happy to support them anyway, and a story or two I feel is sufficient for my money. Especially with Amazon screwing magazines over so hard. (If you don't know, Amazon made a thing some years back to digitally distribute eMagazines. Like everything else they do, Amazon took in a sizable percentage of the market. Then this year they decided to drop it. Fucking over revenue for all of them rather hard. Between that and getting inundated with AI shit, it's been a hard year for magazines. Weightless Books has some mag subscriptions on it, and others have Patreons. Worth a look.)

Really, everything I actually finished was pretty good. The classic Rendezvous with Rama, the non-fiction of What If? 2, to the sci-fi schlock of Well of Furies. Just need more of that going into 2024 it seems.

Also, shout out to BookWyrm, OpenReads and the OpenLibrary. Really have helped me get a little further away from GoodReads and Amazon. Here's BookWyrm's “Year in the Books” for me.

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Gaming:

Lotta gaming this year.

Honorable mention as always to Destiny 2. Lightfall was okay, but Season of the Witch has been badass enough to make up for that. Eris for goodhood! That said, in spite of Destiny being #1 on multiple Year in Review things I've received, much of my gaming this year has been elsewhere.

I did 100% a game though! Laura Croft GO. Its rare for me to beat a game, let alone get a Platinum Trophy. I learned that there are games that are super cheap in the “deals” section of the PS store and I got that one for ≤ $0.50USD. It got me to want to play more Tomb Raider, though I didn't. Do have porn of her as my tablet's wallpaper and lock screen, but hey. Anyway, it's an excellent puzzle game. Keep an eye out for a sale and grab it when you can. I picked up Hitman GO on steam, (It's not on PSN,) but haven't played it yet. Sadly, Embracer Group shuttered the studio.

I need to play more of Sherlock Holmes the Awakened. I helped Kickstart it, and only got to chapter 2 before getting distracted by something else. I Kickstarted it initially because the developer, Frogwares, is Ukrainian and they needed help keeping the lights on in more ways than just paying the bill. I forget the initial codename for the project, but I remember it’s a Ukrainian dish that was used as a initial pass to see if someone was a Russian spy, as Russians can't/couldn't (they've probably adapted to this,) pronounce it correctly. Frogwares stuff does have some racist shit in it, but they justify it with fitting the time period and the Lovecraftian side of the story. So, heads up about that.

Another excellent game was Ghostwire Tokyo. It’s an open world game, and a stealth game, neither of which are my forte, but I got to chapter 4 and enjoyed what I played thoroughly. Apparently, the in-game Tokyo is very close to the real thing.

I played a lot of Deep Rock Galactic this year. Of all of the PvE games that have tried to be a Destiny clone, it succeeds the best. I think rather than Anthem, Babylon’s Fall, Outriders, Marvel’s Avengers, etc. where it’s just Destiny + gimmick, Deep Rock Galactic combines two whole systems completely. Destiny + Minecraft is excellent.

Bayonetta was a fun side stop. I also beat this one! On Easy. But I was more in it for the story and titilation. The graphics are alright, but considering it’s an 8th generation port of a 7th generation game running on a 9th generation console, it looks pretty good. I had played Bayonetta back on the 360 as a rental, (RIP rental stores,) but never got very far. Now that I'm less of a tryhard, I've learned the joys of easy mode. I only died a few times this way, and mostly to bullshit. Cliffs, stunlocks, etc. Delightfully over the top and a real power fantasy on easy. I want her tits glasses. I saw the twist a mile away, but it was still played well.

This led me to wanting to play the other games. Thus realizing that Gamestop doesn't really carry used games anymore? Not in-store at least. Gotta make room for Funko Pops I guess. Which took me to my first ever bidding for something on eBay. I did not get Bayonetta 2, though it's still on my list, but I did get Cereza and the Lost Demon. VERY different games for the same series. Which is good. For one, none of the titilazation. Which would be creepy as fuck had they went that route. The game reminds me of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons in that you control Cereza and Cheshire at the same time with each stick, but with combat all of its own and a picture book style that reminded me of Okage: Shadow King. Mostly for the eyes. I'm almost to the third act in it. Should try and finish it off soon.

I'm trying to get into Warframe. There's just so much with it being a decade old that it's hard. The cross save should help. I haven't really found the loop yet. Seemingly its mostly the equivalent to Vanguard Ops, but all the missions are significantly longer. Playing a bit more since I first wrote this, I'm getting a better handle on the currencies and the loop. We'll see how long I persist.

Honkai Star Rail has taken up a lot of my time these past couple of months. Trying to avoid the Gatcha mechanics, (I bet MiHoYo is shitting themselves with CCP's new anti-F2P rules,) but the gameplay and story are compelling, and it's got that mindless grind itch Destiny had been scratching. I still say the end boss fight for Belebog is fucking badass. The Echo of War only captures part of it, but being able to replay it is good. Honk Train is worth your while if you have 30GB free and are not susceptible to gambling mechanics.

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Best of the Year

Book of the Year No contest really. I read it in like, 12 days. Even for a novella, that's lightning fast for me. And Murderbot is Goals.

Best Game of the Year

A game I beat and that got me interested and got me actually playing the sequels. The sheer over the top nature of the game makes it worth the play. Platinum can hit and miss, but they absolutely hit with Bayonetta. Cereza and the Lost Demon get an honorable mention too, though I have yet to beat it. Bayonetta the character is also Goals.

The duality of being transgender, Murderbot and Bayonetta are both goals. :P

Best Thing of the Year Visiting my BFFs in Norway. Even with getting stranded in Boston for the night, it was such an amazing trip. I wish I could do it more often. Or that they could come here. Still, I think about it fondly almost every day.

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That's about it. I talk a lot more about games than books, huh? I guess books are just more personal. No music because I use MusicBee with CDs I've ripped from the library. No Spotify or Bandcamp, or whatever.

Hashtag Salad: #Murderbot #WitchKing #LeviathansWake #Koha #Destiny2 #LightFall #SeasonOfTheWitch #Bayonetta #CerezaAndTheLostDemon #LauraCroft #TombRaider #SherlockHolmes #Frogwares #HonkaiStarRail #WarFrame #DeepRockGalactic #BookWyrm #OpenReads #OpenLibrary #Books #VideoGames #YearInReview #Wrapped #BestOf #TourmaReads #TourmaGaming #TourmaPosts

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Testing

Testing to see how well this federates. Hopefully I'll be able to simply boost on Mastodon and not supply a link.

We'll see!

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