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Fairly Busy Saturday
Nov. 6th, 2021 11:43 pmEspecially right now, when I'm trying to juggle multiple messages and RPs and such. . .on the plus side, I did very well on my to-do list for the day!
1. Either write some more on "Learn To Love Again,"or try to finish up "The Worst Lot In The World": Check – got another page done on “Learn To Love Again,” with Victor having a moment to be thrilled about managing to get back down to Gutknecht’s tower. . .before nearly collapsing because holy HELL did that take a lot out of him. Fortunate Gutknecht and Scraps are both there to help – Gutknecht to get him to a place to sit and a cup of non-poisonous tea, Scraps to sit on his lap and just be a good boy. :) Time to start the “how the magic system in THIS world works” infodump! XD
2. Watch the three OXtra/OXBox videos in my Watch Later and keep up with YouTube subs: Check – got everything I wanted to watch, watched, yay~
A) Started with a quick What We Do In The Shadows video first – because the famous fight scene between Nandor and Guillermo popped up, and I wanted to see the full thing instead of just tumblr gifs. It’s actually a lot shorter than I initially expected, but still pretty satisfying. Guillermo CAN move when he wants to. XD And I still love his outfit in this scene – kind of want to see Victor in it. XD
B) Then it was onto the OXBox and OXtra stuff:
I. OXtra, “7 Games That Think Deleting Your Save is Hilarious” – a list of games that, for one reason or another, like to terrify gamers with the idea that they’ll delete their save file. Most times, this is an idle threat – Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem’s “delete save games” sanity effect, Resetti the mole pretending to reset your game himself to erase your progress in the original Animal Crossing, etc. But every so often, a game will actually take the plunge – notably, a pirated copy of Earthbound will freeze up at the very beginning of the final boss’s final stage, forcing you to reset and find all your progress has been lost; and a legitimately-bought copy of Banjo-Kazooie will ACTUALLY dump your saves if you insist on entering too (absurdly long to boot) cheat codes. Cruelty upon cruelty. Makes me glad my own games aren’t such dickheads!
II. OXBox, “7 Shameless Videogame Ripoffs We Can't Believe Got Made” – exactly what it says on the tin – video games that are so clearly copying another, it’s a wonder that they didn’t get sued. ...Actually, no, the wonder is that one of them got sued AND FREAKING WON (Street Fighter 2 against copycat Fighter’s History – the judge ruled in the latter’s favor simply because you can’t actually copyright basic kicks and punches). But yes, from Pretender basically just reskinning Among Us in a more mundane office setting and getting railed for it (and also for possibly being a bitcoin miner), to Unearthed being a rather lousy Uncharted clone whose hopes of episodic release were cruelly crushed, to Gloom being the worse, more pixelated Amiga version of Doom and getting decent sales from those who couldn’t join the PC revolution, there have been a LOT of obvious rip-offs over the years! I fully expect its own “copycat” in a Commenter’s Edition soon. XD
III. OXBox, “Hitman 3 The Rage vs The Clown | Jane and Mike Tag Team New Elusive Target The Rage” – the start of my evening YouTubery (after my gaming, workout, dinner, and writing), this was a special Andy-less run at the new Elusive Target in Hitman 3 – “The Rage,” aka Sonny Crusher, a terrible former boxer who killed someone in the ring, managed to escape prison, and is now bumming around China setting up street death matches. 47 was hired to take him out, and Jane and Mike were in charge of how it happened! Oh dear. XD We had:
Mike going full Mike with the clown suit and the explosive duck, who spent some time wandering the city in the rain, discovering all the new guards around the area where the target was located, but not the target himself. Finally, he found a way to vault into one of the restricted areas by the arcade, with a view to opening up the side door and trying to trace Sonny’s silhouette – but found it locked, and the key usually there missing. Mike being Mike, he ended up killing of the guards, hiding in the dumpster nearby, and then slipping inside once his coworker had bagged the body and dragged it inside. After another close call in the stairwell was solved by judicious application of screwdriver, Mike lurked in the office for a bit before being discovered – BY THE TARGET HIMSELF. WHOM MIKE, IN A PANIC, JUST WALKED BY TO AVOID STARTING A SCENE. To be fair, all he had in hand right then was a soda can, but still! XD A few more shenanigans ensued, with the pair finding the location of the illegal fights, but getting shooed out by the returned guard before they could get the gate open to get a better shot at the target. (Mike was all for just tossing the explosive duck over the fence, but Jane convinced him that was a bit too MUCH collateral damage. XD) Fortunately, a “story mission” opened up shortly thereafter – Mike, lurking in the back alley again, saw Sonny berating his drug dealer and demanding his money back, and felt that SHE wasn’t exactly a good person and thus blowing them both up would be more than allowed. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to hide in the dumpster in time after detonation (the game kept thinking he was trying to open the door), and so the guards came at him hot – he tried to knock them out, but he ended up dying in the street. Man down, mission failed. :(
Jane, by contrast, decided to go as Pitbull in the snazzy scarlet suit, with an explosive pen because that opened up multiple murders. After getting into position to see the argument between Sonny and the dealer (and killing time until it happened watching the rain run off 47’s immaculately-rendered head), Jane listened to the whole conversation and realized there might be a way to lure Sonny out of his usual zone, away from guards. She followed the dealer back to her place, and was able to sneak into her apartment and e-mail Sonny to set up the meeting. After a quick look at the intel to figure out WHERE she’d set up the meeting (apparently neither she nor Mike was paying attention when the lady said she’d meet the guy by the laundromat), she went over – and discovered that Sonny had brought a couple of guards with him. Fortunately, Sonny then went to a little sitting spot overlooking the main street to smoke, setting up Jane to nail him in the head with the pen from below and get away. UNFORTUNATELY, the curse of the underarm throw hit – Jane gently tossed the pen at someone’s feet instead of launching it into Sonny’s skull – and while it EXPLODED, it did not actually KILL him. (It killed somebody, but I have no idea who). Jane, who had already started running off, had to run BACK and just shoot the guy a couple of times before fleeing the guards and getting on the local train. XD Mission complete, two stars, Pistol Assassin. Many jokes were made about how cross Andy was gonna be once he got back. XD
C) Then it was over to the Subs for Call Me Kevin (back in Spain) and Crab Game! Another one of those Squid Game ripoffs, made with very creepy bulgy-eye models, and with the added complication of some of the games having different level layouts (for example, you could get Red Light Green Light on a slippy ice field, making it VERY hard to actually stop moving when it turned to Red Light). Kevin spent the first couple of games being very good at the “floor is lava” game (mostly because he didn’t really have to move much) and being absolute shit at Red Light Green Light (because getting blown up for moving applies to such little things as being hit by another player (or a flying body part) or even just turning your head), and fair to middling at everything else. The last few games, though, Among Us-style comradery kicked in, and he made a friend – Lucas! They stuck together throughout the last few games, turning squares from green to red in a “cover the area with your color” game, sharing a corner with some other guy during the “fight during the night” game, and even – with lots of encouragement – actually finishing Red Light Green Light. :) And then they got to a “cross these fragile platforms” game, and Kevin TRIED to scout out a safe path for his friend – only to plunge straight into the water. XD And then Lucas did the same, rendering it all for naught. XD Ahhhh, good times! Always fun when Kevin makes a buddy during these games!
D) And then it was time for GrayStillPlays and Brain Love, another one of those mobile “puzzle games” that are – for lack of a better word – deranged. You know the kind – where you have to erase women’s clothing because they’re supposed to be in their bathing suits in the water; where you can draw an extra-long hose all over the screen to put out a fire set by the famous meme girl; where you solve the mystery of the missing oranges by putting a x-ray magnifying glass over a woman’s bra. XD Gray clearly was having a blast with how weird and confusing most of their puzzles were. Hell, there was one about sheltering from the rain that he solved by accident by changing the scene to a car – which promptly started rocking and making squeaking noises. Gray instantly claimed to YouTube that they were trying to get a coffee stain out of leather. XD Oh man. . . Similar ridiculousness (finding a very obvious cheater behind a curtain; slapping the hell out of a guy who cheated on his girlfriend; throwing some woman’s shirt on a zombie to blind it; assembling a very creepy clown-skull-man with boxer shorts Gray simultaneously found creepy and awesome) followed. Oh, you gotta love these things. Gray definitely does. XD
3. Either play Bloodlines and do some Chinatown side missions,or Sims 4 and get further with my house build: Check to the first – I was in the mood for playing more Crystal, and for clearing out some of the Chinatown side quests. And I figured I’d start off with clearing out Mitnick’s final network hub! Had Crystal sneak into the building, pick up the currently-unknown talisman in the first office and shut down the power, send the guards to sleep, get the password for the second security door, hack her way into the vault. . .
But I couldn’t hack my way into the net security folder. It needs a Hacking feat of eight, and no matter where I looked, I could not find the password. And while I did have enough experience to raise my Auspex level slightly, even that would have only taken me to Hacking seven – I didn’t have enough oomph to raise my Hacking feat to the required level. So I ended up backing out and doing some OTHER quests – namely, helping Yukie fight her landshark demon (made good use of freezing the bastard with the convenient canisters of freezy gas), and doing Mr. Ox’s two little quests by harvesting Lin’s eyes from the noodle shop freezer, and planting a bad luck talisman into a guy’s locker before using him to up my blood reserves. Excellent source of XP and items there – by the time I was done with Mr. Ox, I had 23 experience points! More than enough to max out my Computer skill, get another level of Auspex, and even get a little more Firearms skill. Currently parked her by Kamikaze Zen for another go, though honestly I might send her back to her haven briefly first to clear out her inventory – it’s looking a mite cluttered.
4. Get in a workout: Check – another thirty on the bike, though again I didn’t return to L.A. By Night. Instead I watched the following:
I. Finished up WhinyBrit’s look at the evolution of premade families and their lore in the Sims 4 – as I thought previously, the takeaway is mainly “the Sims 4 was shit at lore until Snowy Escape and especially Cottage Living, and now we can only hope they keep up recent trends.” I’m not holding my breath, but considering I pretty much never PLAY with the premades, I also don’t really have a horse in the race, so. . .
II. Watched about half of a video I’d heard about that claimed Victor was the real villain of Corpse Bride – while the person making it had a legitimate point about Victor being able to clear up this mess a lot sooner if he’d managed to spit out that he was engaged to someone else to Emily earlier (tending to run from problems instead of face them head-on is one of his character flaws), she made it clear from the beginning that she just plain hated the movie, and she hadn’t bothered to do her research likely because of that. For example, she mocks Victor for his more 20th-century attitude of wanting to marry for love – it’s Victoria who expresses that sentiment (in a clear “I don’t think it’ll happen but it would be nice if it did” way, yeah, but still). And she says that Victor never brings up Emily being dead as an impediment to them being together – YES HE DOES, VERY CLEARLY, IN THE TOWER SCENE. Ugh – don’t freaking criticize a movie if you can’t be bothered to rewatch it and make sure you have your facts straight!
III. Went onto a compilation of Victor Tik-Tok videos after that to cleanse the palate – nothing special, just clips of him, Victoria, and Emily to various bits of music.
IV. And finished off with a video I’ve watched before of someone’s favorite clips of Victor being cute.
So yeah – kind of a weird workout today. *sigh* I KNEW that stupid “Victor’s the villain” video was gonna annoy me, but I just HAD to see if the title was clickbait and was talking about legitimate stuff . . .
Additionally:
-->Mom and I managed to get an appointment on Thursday for both a flu shot and a COVID-19 booster! So that’s great. :) Normally I get the flu shot at work, but this year they dropped the ball for whatever reason, so I’m just going to one of the local CVSes that can hook me up. Feel a bit better once both those shots are in my arm!
-->We did indeed play beanbags today, mid-afternoon when it was actually semi-warm – and I actually had a really good day, with 2-2-W-W-W! Just got the throws I needed in those last few games. . .Dad got W-W-3-2-2, and poor Mom got 3-3-2-3-3. Ah well. . .we’ll see what happens – Thursday? Depends on the weather. . .
-->And my aunt came over briefly to pick up bread and bring her dog around, as we're gonna be dogsitting him in mid December and thus she wants him to get more used to us. Hopefully nothing goes wrong during that week!
So yeah -- lot going on, but I got all my boxes checked! Now I just have to get onto tomorrow's to-dos:
1. Try to finish up "The Worst Lot In The World"
2. Keep up on YouTube Subs and watch Jon's FO4 "Project Mojave" video, his "Unpacking" video, and his latest FO4 YOLO video
3. Play Sims 4 and get further with my house build
4. Get in a workout
5. Work on tumblr queues
Pretty standard stuff, though you may notice a lot of Jon from MATN in there -- look, he's done a couple of other videos I'm interested in! And Sunday should have enough free time for me to watch them all in -- we'll see, obviously! Night all!
1. Either write some more on "Learn To Love Again,"
2. Watch the three OXtra/OXBox videos in my Watch Later and keep up with YouTube subs: Check – got everything I wanted to watch, watched, yay~
A) Started with a quick What We Do In The Shadows video first – because the famous fight scene between Nandor and Guillermo popped up, and I wanted to see the full thing instead of just tumblr gifs. It’s actually a lot shorter than I initially expected, but still pretty satisfying. Guillermo CAN move when he wants to. XD And I still love his outfit in this scene – kind of want to see Victor in it. XD
B) Then it was onto the OXBox and OXtra stuff:
I. OXtra, “7 Games That Think Deleting Your Save is Hilarious” – a list of games that, for one reason or another, like to terrify gamers with the idea that they’ll delete their save file. Most times, this is an idle threat – Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem’s “delete save games” sanity effect, Resetti the mole pretending to reset your game himself to erase your progress in the original Animal Crossing, etc. But every so often, a game will actually take the plunge – notably, a pirated copy of Earthbound will freeze up at the very beginning of the final boss’s final stage, forcing you to reset and find all your progress has been lost; and a legitimately-bought copy of Banjo-Kazooie will ACTUALLY dump your saves if you insist on entering too (absurdly long to boot) cheat codes. Cruelty upon cruelty. Makes me glad my own games aren’t such dickheads!
II. OXBox, “7 Shameless Videogame Ripoffs We Can't Believe Got Made” – exactly what it says on the tin – video games that are so clearly copying another, it’s a wonder that they didn’t get sued. ...Actually, no, the wonder is that one of them got sued AND FREAKING WON (Street Fighter 2 against copycat Fighter’s History – the judge ruled in the latter’s favor simply because you can’t actually copyright basic kicks and punches). But yes, from Pretender basically just reskinning Among Us in a more mundane office setting and getting railed for it (and also for possibly being a bitcoin miner), to Unearthed being a rather lousy Uncharted clone whose hopes of episodic release were cruelly crushed, to Gloom being the worse, more pixelated Amiga version of Doom and getting decent sales from those who couldn’t join the PC revolution, there have been a LOT of obvious rip-offs over the years! I fully expect its own “copycat” in a Commenter’s Edition soon. XD
III. OXBox, “Hitman 3 The Rage vs The Clown | Jane and Mike Tag Team New Elusive Target The Rage” – the start of my evening YouTubery (after my gaming, workout, dinner, and writing), this was a special Andy-less run at the new Elusive Target in Hitman 3 – “The Rage,” aka Sonny Crusher, a terrible former boxer who killed someone in the ring, managed to escape prison, and is now bumming around China setting up street death matches. 47 was hired to take him out, and Jane and Mike were in charge of how it happened! Oh dear. XD We had:
Mike going full Mike with the clown suit and the explosive duck, who spent some time wandering the city in the rain, discovering all the new guards around the area where the target was located, but not the target himself. Finally, he found a way to vault into one of the restricted areas by the arcade, with a view to opening up the side door and trying to trace Sonny’s silhouette – but found it locked, and the key usually there missing. Mike being Mike, he ended up killing of the guards, hiding in the dumpster nearby, and then slipping inside once his coworker had bagged the body and dragged it inside. After another close call in the stairwell was solved by judicious application of screwdriver, Mike lurked in the office for a bit before being discovered – BY THE TARGET HIMSELF. WHOM MIKE, IN A PANIC, JUST WALKED BY TO AVOID STARTING A SCENE. To be fair, all he had in hand right then was a soda can, but still! XD A few more shenanigans ensued, with the pair finding the location of the illegal fights, but getting shooed out by the returned guard before they could get the gate open to get a better shot at the target. (Mike was all for just tossing the explosive duck over the fence, but Jane convinced him that was a bit too MUCH collateral damage. XD) Fortunately, a “story mission” opened up shortly thereafter – Mike, lurking in the back alley again, saw Sonny berating his drug dealer and demanding his money back, and felt that SHE wasn’t exactly a good person and thus blowing them both up would be more than allowed. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to hide in the dumpster in time after detonation (the game kept thinking he was trying to open the door), and so the guards came at him hot – he tried to knock them out, but he ended up dying in the street. Man down, mission failed. :(
Jane, by contrast, decided to go as Pitbull in the snazzy scarlet suit, with an explosive pen because that opened up multiple murders. After getting into position to see the argument between Sonny and the dealer (and killing time until it happened watching the rain run off 47’s immaculately-rendered head), Jane listened to the whole conversation and realized there might be a way to lure Sonny out of his usual zone, away from guards. She followed the dealer back to her place, and was able to sneak into her apartment and e-mail Sonny to set up the meeting. After a quick look at the intel to figure out WHERE she’d set up the meeting (apparently neither she nor Mike was paying attention when the lady said she’d meet the guy by the laundromat), she went over – and discovered that Sonny had brought a couple of guards with him. Fortunately, Sonny then went to a little sitting spot overlooking the main street to smoke, setting up Jane to nail him in the head with the pen from below and get away. UNFORTUNATELY, the curse of the underarm throw hit – Jane gently tossed the pen at someone’s feet instead of launching it into Sonny’s skull – and while it EXPLODED, it did not actually KILL him. (It killed somebody, but I have no idea who). Jane, who had already started running off, had to run BACK and just shoot the guy a couple of times before fleeing the guards and getting on the local train. XD Mission complete, two stars, Pistol Assassin. Many jokes were made about how cross Andy was gonna be once he got back. XD
C) Then it was over to the Subs for Call Me Kevin (back in Spain) and Crab Game! Another one of those Squid Game ripoffs, made with very creepy bulgy-eye models, and with the added complication of some of the games having different level layouts (for example, you could get Red Light Green Light on a slippy ice field, making it VERY hard to actually stop moving when it turned to Red Light). Kevin spent the first couple of games being very good at the “floor is lava” game (mostly because he didn’t really have to move much) and being absolute shit at Red Light Green Light (because getting blown up for moving applies to such little things as being hit by another player (or a flying body part) or even just turning your head), and fair to middling at everything else. The last few games, though, Among Us-style comradery kicked in, and he made a friend – Lucas! They stuck together throughout the last few games, turning squares from green to red in a “cover the area with your color” game, sharing a corner with some other guy during the “fight during the night” game, and even – with lots of encouragement – actually finishing Red Light Green Light. :) And then they got to a “cross these fragile platforms” game, and Kevin TRIED to scout out a safe path for his friend – only to plunge straight into the water. XD And then Lucas did the same, rendering it all for naught. XD Ahhhh, good times! Always fun when Kevin makes a buddy during these games!
D) And then it was time for GrayStillPlays and Brain Love, another one of those mobile “puzzle games” that are – for lack of a better word – deranged. You know the kind – where you have to erase women’s clothing because they’re supposed to be in their bathing suits in the water; where you can draw an extra-long hose all over the screen to put out a fire set by the famous meme girl; where you solve the mystery of the missing oranges by putting a x-ray magnifying glass over a woman’s bra. XD Gray clearly was having a blast with how weird and confusing most of their puzzles were. Hell, there was one about sheltering from the rain that he solved by accident by changing the scene to a car – which promptly started rocking and making squeaking noises. Gray instantly claimed to YouTube that they were trying to get a coffee stain out of leather. XD Oh man. . . Similar ridiculousness (finding a very obvious cheater behind a curtain; slapping the hell out of a guy who cheated on his girlfriend; throwing some woman’s shirt on a zombie to blind it; assembling a very creepy clown-skull-man with boxer shorts Gray simultaneously found creepy and awesome) followed. Oh, you gotta love these things. Gray definitely does. XD
3. Either play Bloodlines and do some Chinatown side missions,
But I couldn’t hack my way into the net security folder. It needs a Hacking feat of eight, and no matter where I looked, I could not find the password. And while I did have enough experience to raise my Auspex level slightly, even that would have only taken me to Hacking seven – I didn’t have enough oomph to raise my Hacking feat to the required level. So I ended up backing out and doing some OTHER quests – namely, helping Yukie fight her landshark demon (made good use of freezing the bastard with the convenient canisters of freezy gas), and doing Mr. Ox’s two little quests by harvesting Lin’s eyes from the noodle shop freezer, and planting a bad luck talisman into a guy’s locker before using him to up my blood reserves. Excellent source of XP and items there – by the time I was done with Mr. Ox, I had 23 experience points! More than enough to max out my Computer skill, get another level of Auspex, and even get a little more Firearms skill. Currently parked her by Kamikaze Zen for another go, though honestly I might send her back to her haven briefly first to clear out her inventory – it’s looking a mite cluttered.
4. Get in a workout: Check – another thirty on the bike, though again I didn’t return to L.A. By Night. Instead I watched the following:
I. Finished up WhinyBrit’s look at the evolution of premade families and their lore in the Sims 4 – as I thought previously, the takeaway is mainly “the Sims 4 was shit at lore until Snowy Escape and especially Cottage Living, and now we can only hope they keep up recent trends.” I’m not holding my breath, but considering I pretty much never PLAY with the premades, I also don’t really have a horse in the race, so. . .
II. Watched about half of a video I’d heard about that claimed Victor was the real villain of Corpse Bride – while the person making it had a legitimate point about Victor being able to clear up this mess a lot sooner if he’d managed to spit out that he was engaged to someone else to Emily earlier (tending to run from problems instead of face them head-on is one of his character flaws), she made it clear from the beginning that she just plain hated the movie, and she hadn’t bothered to do her research likely because of that. For example, she mocks Victor for his more 20th-century attitude of wanting to marry for love – it’s Victoria who expresses that sentiment (in a clear “I don’t think it’ll happen but it would be nice if it did” way, yeah, but still). And she says that Victor never brings up Emily being dead as an impediment to them being together – YES HE DOES, VERY CLEARLY, IN THE TOWER SCENE. Ugh – don’t freaking criticize a movie if you can’t be bothered to rewatch it and make sure you have your facts straight!
III. Went onto a compilation of Victor Tik-Tok videos after that to cleanse the palate – nothing special, just clips of him, Victoria, and Emily to various bits of music.
IV. And finished off with a video I’ve watched before of someone’s favorite clips of Victor being cute.
So yeah – kind of a weird workout today. *sigh* I KNEW that stupid “Victor’s the villain” video was gonna annoy me, but I just HAD to see if the title was clickbait and was talking about legitimate stuff . . .
Additionally:
-->Mom and I managed to get an appointment on Thursday for both a flu shot and a COVID-19 booster! So that’s great. :) Normally I get the flu shot at work, but this year they dropped the ball for whatever reason, so I’m just going to one of the local CVSes that can hook me up. Feel a bit better once both those shots are in my arm!
-->We did indeed play beanbags today, mid-afternoon when it was actually semi-warm – and I actually had a really good day, with 2-2-W-W-W! Just got the throws I needed in those last few games. . .Dad got W-W-3-2-2, and poor Mom got 3-3-2-3-3. Ah well. . .we’ll see what happens – Thursday? Depends on the weather. . .
-->And my aunt came over briefly to pick up bread and bring her dog around, as we're gonna be dogsitting him in mid December and thus she wants him to get more used to us. Hopefully nothing goes wrong during that week!
So yeah -- lot going on, but I got all my boxes checked! Now I just have to get onto tomorrow's to-dos:
1. Try to finish up "The Worst Lot In The World"
2. Keep up on YouTube Subs and watch Jon's FO4 "Project Mojave" video, his "Unpacking" video, and his latest FO4 YOLO video
3. Play Sims 4 and get further with my house build
4. Get in a workout
5. Work on tumblr queues
Pretty standard stuff, though you may notice a lot of Jon from MATN in there -- look, he's done a couple of other videos I'm interested in! And Sunday should have enough free time for me to watch them all in -- we'll see, obviously! Night all!
