This was a weird week, they promised rain would come, but mostly it was just in shorter spurts, and most of the time it was the same oven of heat that we’ve had for weeks now, I was hoping for a bit more clouds, so that it would be a bit more comfortable. But at least walking in the forest was nice over the week, it’s the only place where it’s comfortable to stay really, since the trees and such cast enough shadow that it’s much nicer to exist. There is also something about walking in the woods that is really calming, that being one of my best memories of the week.

Books

First one for this week was Elementary Particles by Nicola Claire, and I enjoyed this one a lot more than the second one in the series, I think it was something with the constant doom and gloom from the first couple of ones that was taking me out of them, this one was more enjoyable, and the ending was solid if not very surprising.

I also thought I needed something a bit more complex to read again, I’ve been reading a lot of more simple stuff, so I thought I’ll come back to an author I started reading but didn’t come quite off on the right side of Ken MacLeod, the last time I started the engines of Light series, and it ended up being too much of “New weird Sci-Fi” which is a genre I’ve tried multiple times, and never came out enjoying, I’ve tried Jeff Vandermeer and China Mievillé and it always ended up just not being enjoyable for me. So this time I have started one that is hopefully more up my alley with Newton’s Wake by Ken MacLeod, and it took a bit to get into the writing style, but being about 100 pages in it feels like I’m more along for the ride now, and I’m starting to really enjoy it quite a bit. I’m going to go into some of his more political works as well, as I have two series that I heard were more politically rich as well on my to read.

Games

Since it’s been quite a thinky week at work, I’ve struggled with wanting to start playing SMT4 at the evening, it needs a bit more focus, and when I’m feeling kind of spent in the evening I just don’t have the spoons to play that, so most of the time I’ve been on a dragon quest this week.

I’ve been really having a lot of fun with Dragon Quest 4: Chapters of the chosen on the Nintendo DS. I’ve now played through the opening chapters, and after 15 hours of playtime gotten control of the “Main Character”, so far I’ve been having a blast with the game, mostly it’s quite clear what is to do next, some time a bit unclear because it’s based on an older RPG. It feels really fun though, and the simple combat and the cheery nice visuals does make for a game that is really nice to relax with after a day of too much thinking.

I’m playing DQ4 on my miyoo mini plus, and some times I forget to charge the little thing, and then I have to play on something else, so I’ve also started Dragon quest 7 on my 3DS as a game in between, and it’s also fun, but the fighting does feel a bit more sluggish with the 3d and all the animations and stuff, also moving around on the overworld is a bit annoying since my shoulder triggers are not quite working, so I can only turn left, and it’s very temperamental if it is registering a turn or not, but most of the time that’s not a huge issue, it’s still quite fun so far at least.

I also spent some time on saturday, going through my list on my switch and look for some game that sparked joy in my quite large collection of stuff, but wasn’t really successful, I played a bit of Rift of the necrodancer and some Taiko no Tatsujin but not for that much, it seems like Dragon Quest is where my heart lies for the moment.

Misc

I’ve been having a lot of podcasts in my playlist for weeks now, and I finally managed to get down to only be 1,5 weeks behind (30 episodes) on stuff, which is pretty nice, I have kind of told myself to not download anything outside of my feed before I get down to 20 but we’ll have to see how well I’m doing on that as time goes on. I’ve added post games to my rotation, a nice podcast about videogames, which really has been fun to listen to, and taken Lingthusiasm off of the list, the last episodes just hasn’t been interesting to me, and I never have felt like I wanted to listen, the hosts can be a bit too chipper when I’m not in the mood for that, and I’ve left it on download if I see an episode that interests me, rather on the automatic one.

I’m not quite sure what has left me on this retro track in my mind lately, it might be to prepare for the RAMpocalypse, it does seem like anything bigger and newer probably will be off limits for a while, I don’t put aside that huge of a budget for games, as it hasn’t really been necessary, and if prices keep going up, I might just be focusing on older stuff, and even more on indies than what I have been.

I’ve also started to get a bit back into sudoku variant puzzles again, and it feels nice to be solving some grids again, I enjoy the work of slowly untiying the puzzle and seeing it all come together, it’s just a very satisfying kind of puzzle to do, I will see if I continue on with it this week, it’s something that I’ve always quite enjoyed, but have fallen off of for a while.