#also it’s always less ads on my pc than my phone. what’s up with that

[arsonistman]

Did Spotify up their amount of ads again or does it just hate me? Istg it barley goes 1 or 2 songs before I get like 3 ads

[tjemegames]

HSR: 2.5.1 AS, 2.5.1 PF, & 2.5.2 MoC Recaps

Hello there, the time for yapping is here once again! Since only the same eight or so people tend to read these, I don't think we need a wall of disclaimers this time around. Going forward you should really only expect to see them when I’ve implemented formatting changes or have something important to mention that pertains to the entirety of the recap post.

2.4 turned me into a slightly casual gamer: dedicated subsections for my casual gaming activities have been added to minimize some of the reintroduction redundancy that was happening in the last recap.

As always, apologies for the image distortion: long photos and Tumblr do not mix well.

You know the drill, lengthy rambling about my endgame experience is under the cut!

2.5.1 Apocalyptic Shadow

Gamer's Instigation is probably my favorite endgame title out of all the ones we've had so far (let's go, gamers!) I'm a big fan of AS, as we know, and this cycle's challenge did not disappoint. I got my twelve stars within a total of four challenge waves!

I tried my hardest to avoid resetting in my first run of stage IV, but even after doing stage III and rereading the enemy details I still needed to feel out Phantylia's mechanics to get a better grasp on the best way to defeat her efficiently. Aventurine's battle was rather cut and dry, so his side only took one attempt.

Aventurines battle was also quite fun. Imagine if his normal boss mechanics allowed for a cumulative dice score across your teammates (the energy buff would probably have to be RNG-based or default to the teammate that contributed the most points in order to counterbalance that), but it would make for a much more enjoyable time when fighting him. It’s been months and I'm still salty about the White Night Chronicles MoC XII—there simply was no reason for that to have been as difficult as it was for me back then. I just…

Anyway, here are the builds I used for IV-I:

Phantylia's battle wasn’t hard, it just required a bit more focus and planning to complete. I did my run with a sustain because I misunderstood the HP situation for defeating the flowers; I interpreted it as the flowers would restore Phantylia’s HP after popping, rather than restoring my team’s HP. In hindsight I shouldn’t have understood it that way because that’s not how the flowers work in her Echo of War, but for some reason that didn’t click at the time. Either way, I got it done with relative ease which is all I’m really asking for these days.

These are the builds I used in IV-II:

Pretend you didn't see Aventurine's sphere—there simply was no better choice. It is what it is, and I will not be addressing it further.

The first 800 jades down (whoop whoop!) I desperately needed them because Feixiao bankrupted me on her way to my roster. It’s my penance for betraying Danny boy.

AS Casual Gaming

AS is way too fun for me not to drop back into it over the course of the patch. I tend to get inspired by runs that I’ve seen on Discord and end up motivated enough to try for better clears and/or test out different teams. This is where I’ll be dropping my ramblings about those attempts. Unfortunately, due to image limitations, I won’t be able to include any build showcases in this section. I did consider making a secondary post specifically for this reason but ultimately decided that it wasn’t a big enough deal to be necessary (if I’m wrong about that, please do let me know. I’m down to yap for as long as y’all are down to listen.)

Chasing a better clear with my original team lineup:

Popped back into the game about four hours after my first round of attempts to start the process of trying for a better clear. The last time I was score chasing in AS I kept a close track of my reset count since it was over the course of a few days, and I kept switching back and forth between my phone and pc. This time I stuck to one day and one device so the detailing is a bit less extensive.

Even though I’ve used DHIL in basically every endgame cycle, I still manage to fumble his gameplay from time to time, my first round of tries being a prime example of that. With that in mind, I figured that taking on Phantylia’s side would be my best shot at increasing my overall score. I set my sights on a 100 point increase and went to town.

First three resets: +66 points, bringing me up to 7260

Next two resets: +4 more points, bringing me up to 7264

Final five resets: no points, DHIL managed to die twice—don’t ask me how that happened because I genuinely do not know

70 points of improvement on the second side. I don’t know if 100 overall points is within reach, but I’ll refocus my efforts on Aventurine’s battle and see what, if anything, can be done there.

First and only three resets: no points, I was hoping that there was a work around with the weakness-locked dice but there wasn’t

Barring making my entire team even faster to get more turns, which I don’t have the relics to do at the moment, this appears to be the end of the line for this clear.

Not a bad set of attempts overall. I was able to get my score up to a grand total of 7264 points within thirteen resets. That’s 138 more points than last AS—didn’t see that happening if I’m being completely honest, some of my builds have actually gotten worse since then. Either way, I’m happy enough with this score to forgo attempting a sustainless clear. Let’s be so for real, my account is not currently in the place to even humor sustainless clears. I’ll file that thought away for later down the line.

Getting Jingliu's Revenge:

Remember a little earlier when I said I was still salty about my experience with White Night Chronicles? Well, since I wasn't having the best of days, I decided to head back into AS so I could feel vindication in the form of beating up Aventurine.

Now, you may be thinking, "TJ, you've already gotten your revenge on Aventurine with Boothill like three times since then." To which I would say yes. However, pew-pew gaming him to death just isn't enough to quell the insatiable beast that is my pettiness for this situation. That being said, I called upon my slightly benched, 35% crit rate having Jingliu to finally enact my revenge; the fact that it's been over five months and I still haven't been able to get Jingliu to 50% crate is actually so painful. I had a whole arc where I was farming wind set Pela and did not manage to get a single replacement piece for Jingliu that entire time. I hate that I love this game.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I regeared Jingliu, rallied the troops (Bronya, RM, & Natasha), and set out for battle:

Victory is MINE! 3608 points is pretty damn solid—my Boothill team only managed to get 73 more points during their run. I feel like I can finally move on from this without any lingering resentment or regrets (yippee!)

Closing Thoughts

That just about wraps up AS for this patch. I was wrong with my guess of having to beat up Yanqing this cycle (a well-deserved break after the 2.5 continuance) but I do hope to see him in this mode sometime in the future. I’m looking forward to seeing what all they manage to incorporate into AS after this patch because the new boss mechanics were both refreshing and interesting. I’m someone who actively likes this mode, so I can only imagine how much of an impact the new features had on those who don’t typically care for it. I hope that they continue to mix up more battles like this in the future.

2.5.1 Pure Fiction

No video for Volubility since I couldn't get past eleven stars: I recorded one but it's not worth posting since I didn't even come close to a full clear. I don't want to waste my time editing and making a thumbnail for content I'm not proud of. Additionally, since I wasn't able to finish and I've since done MoC in between my myriad of PF attempts, I lost the ability to save my build showcases for the aforementioned recording, meaning that I would've been missing an entire section of my video. Truly unfortunate, but it is what it is.

I genuinely had such a bad time trying to do this. I spent far more time than I would've liked trying to twelve star and it sucked just about every bit of enjoyment that it could've out of me. I thought I would have a better chance at beating it after a couple weeks away and doing some character upgrades but apparently it just wasn't in the cards this patch. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Closing Thoughts

720/800 jades is painful but I have no choice other than to accept it and move on. If I somehow manage a miracle before the 2.6.1 reset, I'll be sure to pop in here to provide an update. Otherwise, that's all from me on PF.

2.5.2 Memory of Chaos

No video for Scalegorge Tidalflow either. I did manage to get all twelve stars, but my mental health is currently kicking my ass, so I just don't have it in me to bother with it (or this post really) before the patch ends.

Quick summary off the dome since I didn't write any notes when I did my run; Boothill continues to pay his dues. Feixiao is fun to play with—I might need to pull Robin or build Moze though because I don’t have a proper third slot for her team. I thought I could clear floor XII quicker than seven cycles, but a few rounds of casual gaming did not yield better results. No showcases because I forgot to make them before giving PF another try and I'm drained.

Closing Thoughts

MoC was fine. The exo-toughness mechanic is interesting, and I hope I get a chance to explore it more when I'm feeling better. All 800 jades have been added to the savings for DHIL's cone.

Alrighty friends, that's it for this post. Sorry about the quality drop; my brain is being a nuisance and I'd prefer to put this out now while I have some motivation left to do it—there’s no guarantee that I would've finished it at all if I decided to delay it further. Not my best yap but it’ll do for archiving purposes.

I hope everyone enjoyed the 2.5 endgame cycle (to the best of their ability)! I'll be back in about six weeks when it's time for the next one of these.

[theprettynosferatu]

Empty

She tried not to listen, she really did-- but the neighbors were making it legitimately impossible, with their shouts and laughter and the kind of raised voices that usually were a telltale sign of being high. She could have closed her windows, but it was a hot night and besides, she had become strangely invested in the whole affair despite herself. The whole conversation was, in its particular way, fascinating. In fact at some point Andrea had to assume this was some sort of strange performance art titled: How long can four people hold a conversation without ever uttering a single interesting thing?

    Topics ranged from “how drunk X was on Y night”, “stories of dumb shit I did while drunk”, “my crazy ex” to the masterful synthesis that was “how drunk my crazy ex got and what she told X on Y night, who also was so drunk.” Andrea had little choice but to admire the commitment to mediocrity. One would think that given a group of four and three hours, statistically speaking something interesting would come up sooner or later, even if by accident: maybe a drunken political statement, or one of those drug-induced metaphysical revelations that made dumb fucks go “woah, that’s deep, man.” Just… anything not related to getting wasted and crazy women. Anything of substance at all. The world was full of situations to have a right chat about, but the neighbors bravely steered away from them all with the skill of an Olympic skier dodging trees. These fuckers were doing triple helixes over anything of substance and sticking the landing every time. It was a thing of utterly depressing beauty.  

    She felt so alone. She tried telling herself that the quartet of banality next door were an anomaly, a particularly vapid sample of the general population, but she knew better. She was the anomaly. Most people simply didn’t give a fuck about important things, and when they did, they usually spouted misinformed, simplistic, braindead takes regurgitated from some online poster or another. It hurt. People had always told her “oh, you’re so smart!”, or “damn, how do you know about that?”, or “girl, you’re brilliant!”; they all meant it as compliments, but they sure didn’t feel positive to her. Sure, she smiled and cloaked herself with false modesty when she encountered such statements, but she knew very well that when she walked into a room chances were she’d be the smartest person in it. It was terrible.

Listening to the neighbors she wondered if they could ever know how she felt. Of course they couldn’t. They couldn’t know what it felt to dumb down their speech, knowing that saying what was truly in her mind would be a waste, for the listener lacked the basis to comprehend a complex, nuanced idea. They couldn’t know how it felt to be treated like living fucking wikipedia by everyone, because apparently googling shit was harder than asking the smart girl. They couldn’t even fathom what it was like to try dating: trapped between posing men that tried to impress her with facts and trivia and pointless debate and nice guys who served a purpose for a while but inevitably became boring and frustrating as they failed to understand her over and over again.

Sometimes she felt the only ones that could relate to her were strangers online, which added to her frustration with her chatty neighbors on their terrace. How on Earth was she supposed to relax and edge looking at good content with that bunch spewing nonsense three meters away?

A part of Andrea was slightly worried about her online habits. It was true, no doubt, that she was spending more and more time looking at her phone or her PC, sleeping less and less, often going to work with barely a couple of hours of rest to keep herself semi-sharp. Not that her work required more than the ability to filter out the inane bullshit around her and mastering the art of suppressing the urge to reply to all business emails with “This is meaningless. This contributes nothing to human growth or prosperity, and our jobs shouldn’t exist. Thank you, fuck you, bye.” Sadly, she couldn’t afford to tell everyone to go straight to Hell and get gangbangd by demons, so she endured in silence and occasionally used her smarts to make herself invaluable to the company. 

...And now she was thinking about work. Fuck. Miserable in the office, miserable at home because she would have to return to the office. That settled it. She was going to have her goddamn escapism and if the chatty neighbors naged to hear something, hey, good for them. She logged on, and the world melted away.

   It felt like home, much more than her apartment, her city, or even the house in which she had grown up. All those were places of loneliness; the site was a community, a sort of self-actualized society playing by rules that made sense, with a purity of purpose lacking in everyday life. In the website everyone could be whoever they wanted to be, paradoxically free within the limits of the screen. It was all performance to some degree, of course. People chose and curated what they posted, how they reacted, who they followed. It was something like psychological self-design: you looked at what you had chosen and the site suggested similar things, more of what you enjoyed but maybe slightly different, slightly more extreme, slightly darker. Every now and then you discovered a new side to your kink, your body reacted to something unexpected and unthinkingly you hit that “follow” button and the site would learn a little bit about you that you yourself didn’t know, and like a skillful dom subtly pushing their sub it shifted your limits and tastes just a little bit at a time… Andrea liked that: It felt like the site knew her, understood her in ways that sometimes shocked her, toyed with her mind and libido and existed only to give her a safe haven from a grey, dull world.

That particular evening the site welcomed her with an animated caption. Oh, she loved those. Anything could be turned into the most perverted of ideas just by the skilful addition of a few words. A simple sexy swimsuit picture, the kind that barely was worth noticing suddenly became a call to embrace the patriarchy, to expose her body, to destroy her boring life and be reborn as something else. It was the power of language: it got inside her head more than anything else, because thoughts were built on language itself-- to read was to let some foreign mental being colonize her brain, just for a little while. To read was to surrender and let someone else’s thoughts inside her. It was a profound intimacy, a sort of consensual mind rape. 

She let the words and images wash over her as she rubbed her needy cunt under her shorts. It was all fantasy, of course, but she couldn’t help mouthing along to the words. “I’m just a fucktoy”... “Good girls obey”... “Good girls never cum”... “Toy always on display”... “I don’t need a mind, I need cock”... “Good girls make more good girls”...

If she had been truly aware of herself, she would have noticed the slight changes, the way the words made more and more sense, the way time shrunk and twisted and hours passed without her even noticing, the way she was refusing herself the release of an orgasm. Good girls edge. God girls never cum. It was all fantasy, that much she knew; but her body was soon covered in sweat and drool and the need to blur the line between fantasy and reality. 

One content creator had a special effect on her. She had no idea who he was, or where he was from. She only knew he understood her, even if she had never dared to dm him. He was inside her, she was sure of it with the certainty of madness. He teased her mind, molded it, chose the exact words and images to make her feel weak and docile and slutty… and she loved it. She loved him, loved the image she had built of him in her head: she saw him as a somehow strange, not quite human being; a ghost in the site that haunted it and her, like a living virus feeding her addiction.

Dawn caught her by surprise. She had no memory of anything except edging and feeling empty and dumb and horny and needing to be useful, used, abused. She had been scrolling through His page and at some point everything had gone… blurry. It was a first for her, a line crossed: she would go to work with no sleep at all, just because she was edging her needy pussy like a mindless animal. That realization only made her spend the last hour before work playing with her big, sensitive tits, just to be sure she wouldn’t accidentally cum at the last moment. She didn’t even shower, and went to the office smelling of sex, sweat and arousal.

The day went in a haze. She got home fully prepared to collapse on her bed and let the sweet, sweet arms of Morpheus take her away. Then her phone pinged. She knew exactly what it was: Andrea only had notifications enabled for a single creator on the site. It could wait. She could look at it after sleeping. She should, in fact. Yes, that would be the smart thing to do. Oh, that idea hit her like a train: yes, it would be the smart thing to do, but wasn’t it more fun to do the dumb thing? The slutty thing? Her eyelids felt heavy like tombstones, and yet she reached for the phone.

There exists a place, or a state of existence most people only experience briefly: the liminal area between sleep and wakefulness, where judgement is eroded and the boundaries between dream and reality become a blur. Usually, a person either falls asleep or snaps awake immediately and so they don’t explore that most peculiar mental space. Andrea, on the other hand, found herself stuck in it. She read the new story by the Creator, but she wasn’t sure if she was following the plot or even making sense of the words at all-- rather, it was bypassing her conscious self altogether as images, words and situations lodged themselves in her brain. Where they dreams, memories or fiction? It was impossible to tell. She saw herself wearing tight leather pants and heading into a bar. Had she done that? Had she read it? She felt some stranger’s cock in her mouth, and remembered her heart swelling with pride at being a good, useful little fucktoy. No, that wasn’t right. That was a caption, wasn’t it? It felt so real, though… She tasted the lips of her best friend as they watched degrading porn together and Andrea rubbed the girl’s cunt over her panties and whispered “don’t you want to be a good girl like her?” No, that hadn’t happened. That was a story by the Creator, right? One of the more popular ones? She couldn’t focus. If it wasn’t real, it should have been. She should have broken her pretty little innocent friend and turned her into a living fucking fleshlight… 

She edged, drifting between what was real and what wasn’t. The difference was insubstantial, and the need to become an empty vessel for the words was too strong. She didn’t cum. The idea never crossed her mind, and she stopped right at the edge on reflex. Good girls didn’t cum. She was a good girl. Or she should be? Maybe? It was too confusing, her mind and the Creator’s work melding into a single, twisting spiral…

Birds heralded the dawn once again, and once again Andrea was welcoming the new day by drooling and edging, humping the air and letting the Creator’s words and images wash over her, eroding her mind like the tide eroded rocks until they were smooth, slippery, featureless. She felt less and less like herself, if indeed there had been a real “self” there to begin with. She wasn’t so sure anymore. Wasn’t she an act? Wasn’t she performing always, even when she was the only audience? Did she even have a core, a solid thing she could call “Andrea”? Every minute it became harder and harder to find. Maybe it had never been there at all. Maybe it had been a particularly devious illusion, and there had never been a “self”. Maybe the only thing inside was emptiness, her personality just the result of an accumulation of experiences and situations, like mold growing on a tree trunk. Now, edging it all away, she realized there was no tree trunk at all. There was nothing there, which meant anything could go into that space. “Andrea” could mean anything. And the Creator’s words told her exactly what it should mean.

In the end, she had no one to blame but herself. The fact was that she edged and refused sleep and so, her mind broke. Sometimes things are as simple as that. Andrea would have liked the simplicity, if she could have appreciated it. As it was, she skipped work and edged herself into a deeper, almost meditative state of blank arousal. Andrea didn’t exist. Andrea had never existed. Andrea was whatever the site said she was.

Andrea was a cunt. Andrea was dumb. Andrea was empty. Andrea was slutty. Andrea was always horny. Andrea never said no. Andrea lived for cock. Andrea did anything to make men cum. Andrea had no limits, no morality. Andrea could be whoever made a particular cock cum. Andrea had no core, so she could become anyone. Anything. She was empty, and only cock could fill her: it was her purpose, her obsession, her God. All this came to her with the certainty of religious revelation. The Creator had told her so. She started to believe that they, whoever they were, made content just for her. The Creator was in her head, and was guiding her to the proper Path, to more profound enlightenment in the heaven that was complete, slutty submission.

She must have slept at some point, taken micro naps, perhaps-- or perhaps she was so far gone that sleep and vigil had lost all meaning, the duality destroyed by her new, elevated awareness. Dream and reality were the same thing, so who cared if she was asleep or awake?

Days and nights came and went in a mist of pleasure and emptiness. How long had it been since she had slept? She didn’t care. All she cared about were the voices. They were talking again, loud again. She didn’t quite understand what they said and didn’t much care. In another life she would have been annoyed, but that Andrea was long gone. Instead, a new idea popped in her head. A simple, shining, overriding thought: there were four cocks that needed to be worshipped. 

Andrea showered and did her makeup. She liked what the mirror showed her: a slutty, eager, glassy-eyed slut with a vacant, lustful expression. Her instincts told her the men next door liked trashy girls, so she became trashy. She could feel the curse words surging inside her, her neediness and shamelessness taking hold. She looked for trashy clothing, and failing to find anything appropriate she grabbed her scissors. Anything could be trashy if you cut it short enough, added a big V-neck, carelessly chopped away whatever made the outfit respectable. She was sloppy. Sloppy was good. Sloppy was trashy.

In the end what she created could barely be called clothing: it was the bare minimum to cover up her nipples and her pussy. She was dripping, and she felt the juices visibly running between her legs added a certain charm to the outfit. No one could confuse her for anything other than a cock-hungry whore. No one could ever respect her while she wore that. Good. Respect was bad. Only cock mattered.

She knocked on the door, hard. She needed to serve, needed to be useful, and needed it without delay. She hadn’t planned ahead at all. She didn’t need to: once she was inside she knew nature would take its course. Her nature, the primal lust of an animal in heat. They would use her, and if for some reason they didn’t want to, she’d just edge and become a different kind of slut until she was good enough to deserve their cum. She was nothing. She could be anything. The door opened and the man made no effort to hide his surprise as his eyes instantly were drawn to Andrea’s tits. Good. A man that wasn’t scared to be a man, to see her as the fuckmeat she was.

“I hear you are having a party. Mind if I join in?”, she said. The man was taken aback. It took him a little while but finally he recognized her from fleeting encounters in the elevator. He stammered a bit, but let her in.

The rest of the guys were already drunk, laughing on the terrace. They looked at her like hungry beasts as the host awkwardly introduced her as “the neighbor”. Suddenly, there was silence. She could feel them struggling with themselves, with the idea that they shouldn’t take any cunt they wanted, with a million social norms crashing against the embodiment of free sexuality before them. Fine. She’d take the first step. She took a beer from one of the men’s hand and downed it before sitting on his lap.

“Fuck, that’s good”, she purred. Yes, trashy felt right. Felt fun, at least for this set. She would become someone else for others, she knew-- but subtlety wouldn’t work here.

“You know”, she added nonchalantly, “I’m on the pill.” One of the men managed to mutter something like “Uh… that’s good?” 

Andrea smiled.

“It is good. Because it means you can fill my slutty cunt with your warm cum, if you want. Or I can swallow it all for you… or drool it on my tits! Oh! You can cum on them directly! Or on my face! I just need your cocks! All of you! Use every fucking hole, treat me like the cumrag I am! Gangbang me, pass me around, slap me, make me say disgusting things, make me shove bottle up my tight asshole! Please… use me. Make me feel useful. Make me feel like a complete fucking whore! You, grab my tits… I feel your cock hardening under me… why don’t you take it out? All of you, please, let me see those beautiful cocks! I exist for them!”

They got the message. Still, Andrea had to make sure of one thing. She looked at the host.

“You. Take your phone out. Make sure you film every little detail”

He pulled his phone out and pointed it at Andrea. He gestured that it was recording. She smiled.

“Hi! My name is Andrea Jackson… and today you’ll all see what I truly am” 

Did you enjoy this story? You can support my work at patreon.com/prettynosferatu

[kylos]

Finding high quality film/tv rips, saving the large files, and screencapping them are half the battle for gifmakers when setting out to make a gifset. Here’s a little guide on this process, including my advice on

Where to download stuff

Where to store your movies/shows

Screencapping programs

Making gifs as HQ as possible, including tips for picking out what to download when you have multiple options (not all 1080p rips of the same movie or tv episode are the same quality and I explain why)

Why screencaps of 4k movies can look weird and washed out and how to fix that

and more

✨ You can find my gifmaking 101 tutorial here and the rest of my tutorials here.

Where can I download movies and shows?

First off, I prefer direct downloading rather than torrenting stuff because it’s faster and with torrenting, there’s more of a risk. Other people downloading the same torrent can see your IP address. This means movie studios can find out you’re downloading their content and can send you a warning letter. The download speed also varies depending on how many other people are seeding it. I would only do it if it’s your only option and you have a VPN or something.

This is THE best guide for pirating I’ve ever seen. I use it for finding sites for books, music, you name it. The part of the guide you’d want to look at is where it says Direct Downloads Link (DDL) sites. My favorite place is Snahp. These ddl sites will have links to their movie/tv rips that are typically hosted on one of these two sites: google drive or mega.nz. You can download stuff from both of those sites for free, but with mega, they have a 5GB file download limit unless you have a premium account. I personally pay the $5 a month membership for mega because it’s worth it imo. You can buy a subscription through the mega app found on the iphone app store (so you’re billed through apple and it’s less scary than giving a random site your credit card info lmao) and as for androids I think mega has an app on there too.

So basically, if you go to http://snahp.it, they’ll have rips for different movies and shows.

You click on the movie title and it’ll take you to a page where they have links for the video which they have uploaded on a variety of sites (including mega).

How do I make my gifs as HQ as possible?

It’s best to gif things that are 1080p. And usually the higher the file size, the better. A really important thing to note is that not all 1080p bluray rips are the same. The piracy groups that rip these files take uncompressed .mkv rips from discs that are anywhere from 10gb to like 50gb, and then run that through video converters to compress the file down so that they’re 2-8gb. Sometimes when that happens, the video quality goes down a LOT. The same goes for TV episodes. One rip could be 800mb, the other could be 3gb and both could claim to be “1080p” but the quality would be NOTICEABLY different. Your best bet is to always pick the rip with the highest file size.

I’ll show you an example with this scene from You’ve Got Mail.

I downloaded 2 different 1080p rip versions of the film. Both claim to be 1080p, but one is 2.41 GB and the other is 9.75 GB. After taking screencaps, it’s obvious that there’s a BIG difference in quality.

(these pictures are best viewed on desktop tumblr)

When it comes to Blu-ray rips, download remux versions of films and shows if possible. Remux means .mkv files that are uncompressed and straight from a Blu-Ray disc. Giffing remux rips cuts down on the possibility of seeing pixel-y effects a LOT in my experience. It’ll take a bit longer to download than typical 1080p rips but it’s worth it imo.

For TV episodes, if you can’t find a Blu-Ray rip, uploads with the word AMZN in it are usually the highest quality and your best bet (unless you see another upload that’s higher in file size - again: always try to pick the highest file size). 'AMZN’ means they’re from a person that ripped the episode from Amazon Prime Video.

Also, even better than 1080p is 4k (2160p). I only really recommend this though if you know you’re going to gif something up close and crop it a lot - like if it’s a big 540x540px close-up gif of a person. You’ll REALLY see the difference if it’s a 1080p vs 4k rip in that situation. I usually don’t bother with giffing 4k files unless it’s the case above because my laptop lags when taking 4k screencaps and it takes longer to load them into photoshop (4k screencaps are usually about 60mb each!)

⭐️ Another thing that’s important is making sure that when you actually make your gifs, you set them to the correct speed (.05 for movies and most shows, and .04 sometimes for reality tv and live broadcasts). Here’s my gif speed guide. Having the right gif speed is really important for making a gifset HQ. You don’t want it to look too slow or too fast.

What’s your favorite video player to take screenshots with?

MPV player, hands down. And I’ve tried a TON of programs over the years. I’ve tried KMPlayer and found that it added duplicate frames (and even missing frames) which is horrible, and I’ve tried GomPlayer which is.....I’m just gonna say it, I’m not the biggest fan of it. It’s a little overly complicated in my opinion and it has ads. If you like these programs, more power to you! Use whatever you’re comfortable using. I just like MPV the most because it doesn’t have ads, it’s simple, you can take sequential screencaps with a keyboard shortcut, and it can play 4k movies.

Screencaps I take of 4k 2160p movies look so dull and washed out, like the colors aren’t right. Why is that?

That’s because your computer can’t handle HDR 4k video files. It probably can handle SDR 4k video files, but unfortunately, 99% of 4k rips out there are HDR.

[picture source]

Now, HDR displays just fine on computers that have 4k-HDR capabilities, but most older computers don’t have this ability. Having said that, MPV - the video player I mentioned above can take a 4K-HDR video and fix the colors/lighting in real time so it displays correctly AND take screenshots of it with the fixed colors. If you have an older version of MPV, make sure you download the newest update for this. In my general gifmaking tutorial, there’s a portion on how to install this program on macs. I also just made a video tutorial on how to install it on pcs here!

High quality TV and Movie rips can take up a LOT of space on my computer. Where do you store your files?

I store them on external hard drives. External hard drives are like flash drives but they have a MUCH higher storage capacity. You just plug them into your computer via a usb cord when you need access to the files and it’s that easy. I have two of these Seagate 4TB hard drives in different colors so I can easily pick out whichever one I need. I have silver for my movies (because it makes me think of “silver screen” lmao and it’s easier for me to remember) and then I just have a blue for shows. Now, external hard drives of this size can be $$$$ but it’s worth it imo. Look out for when they’re on sale.

What’s the size limit for gifs now?

It’s 10mb! It used to be 3mb and then last year Tumblr upped it to 5mb. Some gifs initially had distortion because of Tumblr’s switch from the .gif to .gifv format, but they’ve fixed the problem AND increased the upload limit to 10mb.  Just make sure not to add any lossy to a gif.

Lossy is basically a grain you can add to a gif to lower the file size down. Gifmakers (including myself) used to use this as a trick to get the file size down under 3mb. However, since the .gifv update on Tumblr, any gifs with Lossy added will look distorted like it’s a gif made on a phone app or something.

_________________________________

That’s it for this guide! Again, feel free to check out my other tutorials on photoshop, how to center subtitles, download hq movie trailers, and more ✌️

UPDATE 6/23/20 ⚠️

I’ve gotten an ask about this problem 3 times since I’ve uploaded this tutorial, so I thought I’d add this in. If you are experiencing duplicate and/or missing frames in mpv, it is a glitch with the latest version of mpv. download an older version like 0.29.0. this happened to me on my mac and downloading an older version fixed the problem.

[mackjlee9]

Corpse x Kuudere!Male!Reader

Masterlist

(M/n) was watching anime peacefully in his room, having fun all by himself, enjoying his free time and catching up with one of the best anime he's ever watched...

When his phone started to buzz nonstop next to him on his bed. He groaned and paused the chapter, grabbing his phone and going to his messages.

One of his good friends, who's also a youtuber, was spamming his phone, his texts popping up as they were being sent. Most of the messages were him typing (M/n)'s name, like a whine, and he probably was whining like a baby because the lack of attention from the (h/c) haired male.

And while he stared at his phone the texts were still popping in his screen, he decided to type a question mark, nothing else, just a '?'.

With that simple and vague response, Felix texted back less than ten seconds later.

Felix;

Come play among us with us.

;Who's 'us'?'

He was about to leave his phone aside when another reply showed up. That dude types so fast wth.

Sean, Sykkuno, Toast, Rae, Lily, Charlie, Corpse, Poki and I.

(M/n) had a mental debate, deciding whether he should play with them or keep watching his anime, and he made up his mind, but Felix anticipated what he would be doing, because he sent another text.

I wasn't asking if you could, I know you're watching anime, now come play with us for a while.

It's the beta ver btw.

Letting out a soft sigh, (M/n) got up from the bed and went to the separated room where his computer desk was. He sat on his chair and opened discord reluctantly in his pc. But even if he wasn't feeling like playing at the moment, he could never refuse what Felix tells him, and that's because he cares deeply for the male.

While he waited for the invite link, he opened Among Us, making sure he was on the Beta Version as Felix told him. He glanced at discord, he saw what Felix said was the code of the lobby, and clicked on the invite displayed in chat.

(M/n) put on his headphones and joined the lobby, everyone was talking about him, Felix was probably telling them something about the male joining their game. They were expectant about listening to you, and the reason was because of Corpse, ever since he met them they always felt anxious about hearing a new person's voice. Of course, (M/n) was oblivious to that information, mostly because his world swirled around anime and manga, with the occasional videogame.

Everyone saw him standing still, but nobody was saying anything, so Sean talked first.

"Hey, (M/n)," now the anticipation grew.

"Hello, Sean, and hello everybody, nice to meet you," even if Felix previously told everybody who he was, he did it again, a blank expression on (M/n)'s face the entire time he introduced himself.

He added the fact that (M/n) had a YouTube channel, and his content was (gameplay/art/covers). Somehow, corpse found him really interesting, especially after Felix said something along the lines of 'He's a kuudere too.'

Sean backed him up and laughed, saying how weird it was to have a friend that behaved like usual anime characters. But (M/n) didn't found it funny.

Nor offensive honestly, he just sighed deeply.

"Can we play the game?"

The rest instantly agreed, and the match started. (M/n) did his tasks in complete silence despite the proximity chat added onto the game, and he could clearly hear and see Corpse following him, trying to get his attention over and over again.

"(M/n)." He called him while the male was fixing his third and last wire, still having two more tasks left. He just hummed as a response, and that made Corpse really happy, "You wanna be my friend?

His task closed as he finished it and he moved his character a step closer to Corpse's. (M/n) stayed silent for a moment before humming again, adding a 'Sure,' and walking out.

Corpse kept following him everywhere he went, like a loyal puppy trailing behind his owner, and the rest started to tease him for doing so. Corpse felt his face getting warm, but just laughed everything they said as if it was nothing, and continued on following the male he just met.

Even when the impostors killed him, he followed him as a ghost, feeling content about (M/n) avenging his death.

Back in the lobby, Corpse decided to run around (M/n) again and again, and that action made the kuudere male chuckle. Corpse's chest fluttered at the sound of his soft laugh and he wondered what was happening to him.

And he made the mistake of muting himself for a moment and comment that to his stream.

Let's just say, after that game, there was countless amounts of fanart of both them.

[sixeyesgojo]

Dear Elli,

it’s me, Nie. Gosh, I suck at letters

First of all, happy birthday!

It’s been a little more than a month since we met. According to Tumblr at least but somehow it feels muuuuuuch longer.

I remember it clearly: the way I read your Best Friends series (there was only one part at that time) and commented how I wasn’t sure whether I found it sweet or hot. Turns out, you thought the same! And then I (playfully) suggested that you ‘could always split it into two parts’. And girl, you clowned me by deciding to go with 5 parts instead.

I also remember talking you through your first shadowban because damn, I felt bad because the same happened to me 😭😭😭

Furthermore, I was surprised when you followed me first, I was like “They really wanna follow me? omg” 😳😳😳

I really felt like a little girl who just got her birthday present or something, that was soooo exciting lmao

Don’t really remember who dmed who first but I love the way we sent each other weird songs (key word: Nicki Minaj Starships) AHAHAHA

It felt like we’re riding the same wave.

The way I complained about people calling me a Gojo anti? Not iconic of me but you editing that high school Gojo onto my forehead surely was iconic as hell!

Let’s see, what else do I remember?

Ah yes, the way I attempted to become nun-nie after reading one of your smuts (I think it was the Toji escort one) but failing after.... 10 (!) minutes or even less... embarrassing 😖

Our endless talk about our WIPs (and us struggling with writing) and me cackling whenever you went “IS IT ANGST???” at mine. But that was not one-sided because I also questioned whether I could withstand the heat in your smut 🥲🥲

Prime example: You writing Best Friends part 3 while you told me about it and I was like 🥵🥵🥵🥵 but also laughing because we were looking for Domain Expansion names for the Reader and all I contributed was “Is ‘Blast of Divine Intervention’ Jesus’ ultimate technique?” 😭🤧

Okay, so here’s another random memory I remember but I don’t have any idea how we came to talk about it:

Candy. I recall telling you about how I didn’t like Candy Corn but that was already mid-convo??? And at some point you said something about “disc-shaped” candy and my illiterate ass read “dick-shaped candy” and that literally had me googling dick-shaped candy aksdhakdhasjkd

Also, our constant “Oh, what time is it??” in dms HAHAHA

At some point I memorized that you’re 6 hours behind me and even added your timezone to my phone (this is real love ❤).

Not to be horny on main but... The times we talked about domming Gojo bye

Wayyy too many times... not that I mind tho HAHA

Thank you for being a friend to me. Over the past few weeks we’ve grown so close - I never would have thought because I didn’t expect to find any friends on here but wouldn’t have it any other way. Thank you for talking to me & making me feel at ease ♥

Remember, you can talk to me at any time - I signed up for it.

Now let me smooch you hehe 😚

In conclusion:

Dear tumblr user @megumifushi​ , I love you very much and I hope we can continue creating funny memories in the future 💙

Also, here’s a funny convo we had in the first few days of talking:

Me: Girl, see you in hell

You:  omg ok 😖

Me: Hope we’re in the same district

You: HAHAHHSAHA  DISTRICT? what in the hunger games 💀

Me: I wanted to say department actually but my bye-lingual brain

You: no it made sense I just love that you thought the devil would care enough to organize our suffering 😖😖😖

Me: No, hell is an offfice and we have to work agonizing hours

(P.S: I sound so dry here because I can’t use emojis when I chat on Tumblr on my PC... even for this letter I had to go back and forth between PC and phone to add emojis  OASJSJCJc)

Signed with love,

Nie 💜

[ravenbrenna09]

Jij Verliest - Chapter One: Clip #3

master list previous: Zaterdag 12:41

...

Zondag 18:31

Even on days when he wasn’t streaming, which always seemed to be Sundays, Robbe still ended up at his desk. 

Next to his bed—and maybe the couch on their weekly movie nights—his desk chair was the most comfortable thing in the apartment. Of course, that was on purpose. Every day, Robbe sat at his desk working on something. Between streaming and editing or doing his homework, Robbe spent a lot of time sitting at his desk, in front of his PC, or working on it. His computer system itself had two monitors. Whenever he was live, one monitor would hold his game and the other would have what he needed. Generally, it had the chat open but he also used it for Google searches occasionally. 

Now, he was doing homework with Yasmina through Zoom. Normally, Robbe would get out of the house and meet up with Yasmina at the school’s library or at a coffee shop. Today, however, Robbe stayed home. She and her family had taken a week-long trip to Morocco to see her family and wouldn’t be back until Saturday, but because of their test on the 10th, the two of them couldn’t wait until she returned to study for it and had decided to meet up virtually. 

But there was another reason Robbe stayed home: Thomas.

As Robbe scratched out his incorrect work and sighed, Yasmina glanced at him through the screen. Settled in what Robbe assumed to be a guest bedroom, Yasmina had her binder in her lap. She wore a blue hijab and a cream sweater. Copying down the last piece of his problem that he knew was correct, Robbe snuck a glance at the clock on his computer.

18:32. Robbe sighed. He’s late.

“Is everything okay?” Yasmina questioned, raising an eyebrow as Robbe looked up at her. “You seem a little tense.”

“I’m alright,” Robbe started. He ran a hand through his hair and let out a sigh. “Just realized that I forgot to distribute the negative from the first integral so I have to rework the problem.” Yasmina nodded her head in understanding. She placed down her pencil and moved to grab her phone, which she had been charging off-screen. “If you want, you can continue. It should only take me a minute to catch up.” 

“It’s okay,” Yasmina replied, not looking up. “I’ll wait for you.” 

Robbe nodded his head, returning his work. 

Before he turned in the assignment on Wednesday, he would certainly need to rewrite it. All he had to do now was finish the assignment. As he went on, his handwriting was getting increasingly ineligible. He heard Yasmina say she was getting a drink before she rose from the bed. By the time he finished the problem, Yasmina sat down with a bottle of water and adjusted her hijab in the camera. 

“Did you say that you got three-fourths for part A?”

Yasmina turned, looking over her homework. “Yes. Did you get something different?” 

“No,” Robbe said. He boxed the final number and let out a sigh. “I was just checking to make sure that I had done it right.” Yasmina chuckled, placing her binder back in her lap. “Why does he have to be so particular about everything? I swear, I’m probably going to get more points counted off because it’s not the exact format that he wants than I would if I actually got the problem wrong.” 

“He’s an old math teacher who has been doing this for so long that he probably doesn’t even remember,” she said, shaking her head. Robbe felt like ‘old’ was Yasmina being nice. Their professor was ancient. “Of course, he’s going to be particular about everything that we do.”

There was a knock on the door, light and rhythmic, and Robbe let out a “Yeah?” to let whoever-it-is know they could come in. The door opened, revealing Milan standing in the doorway with an apron around his waist and a concerned look on his face. “Zoë and I are making dinner if you want some.” 

“I might end up bringing it in here so we can still work. We still have a lot left to do.”

“Okay.” Milan moved to step out. He glanced down at the box of Thomas’s things that Robbe had sealed last night and paused. The silence hung in the air around them and Robbe waited nervously for Milan to speak up. Then, he finally did, glancing at Robbe. “Any word from Thomas about being on his way?” 

Robbe let out a sigh, running a hand through his hair. His fingers caught against the tangled strands and he pulled his fingers free. “No,” Robbe said, avoiding Milan’s concerned gaze. He glanced back at the assignment that was pulled up on the second monitor. “I haven’t heard from him. But, he said 18:00 in his message yesterday and he’s already thirty minutes late. I’m sure I’ll get a text soon saying that he is on his way or that he’s going to have to cancel…” Robbe trailed off before adding, “Again.” 

Milan stepped out into the hallway, nodding. “Don’t worry. I’m sure he’ll be here soon.” Before he disappeared completely behind the closing door, he added, “I’ll let you know when the food is ready so you can come get some!” 

“Thanks, Milan,” he replied. For a moment, Robbe didn’t think that he heard him, but he heard Milan murmur back a response, muffled by the door. Robbe turned back to his desktop, his eyes finding the next problem. He was beginning to scratch it down in his notebook when Yasmina coughed lightly, getting his attention. She had her arms crossed over her chest and a protective look on her face. “What?”

“Is everything okay?” Yasmina asked. 

“Yeah,” Robbe replied. “Thomas is supposed to come to pick up his clothes. This is the third time he’s sworn that he was going to come get them and, as you just heard, he’s already thirty minutes late.” He let out a sigh and continued writing. “I just want him to come and get it over with. The box of his things has been sitting here for two months now.”

“Maybe you can ship it to him?”

“Yeah, I’ve offered,” he said, feeling frustrated with Thomas. “But all I got was ‘I’m perfectly capable of coming to pick up my things. Plus, I want to see you.’” On the other end of the screen, Yasmina rolled her eyes, putting her binder down. “I just don’t understand why he’s so insistent on seeing me when he picks up his things. I’d rather avoid all the awkwardness.” 

Robbe’s phone beeped and he reached for it, already knowing who the message was from and what it was going to say. 

“It’s only awkward if you make it awkward,” Yasmina pointed out. 

“Yeah, I guess,” Robbe said. He unlocked his phone, finding the message at the top of his notifications. Letting out a sigh, Robbe said to Yasmina, “It’s Thomas.” 

Thomas: Sorry, can’t make it. Can I come on Tuesday? There’s a big upcoming trial and I lost track of time working on it.

Robbe let out another sigh, tossing his phone onto the desk. “Canceled again?” Yasmina guessed. Robbe raised his eyebrows and Yasmina mirrored his expression, giving him a knowing look. She sat back, shaking her head. “I don’t get some men. How is it so hard to come by and grab a box? It just seems like he wants to extend your pain.”

“Yasmina,” Robbe started. “I don’t think that’s what he wants to do.”

“What’s the other explanation, Robbe?” Yasmina asked. It didn’t take a genius to see that Yasmina was angry. Robbe didn’t blame her. He was certain that his best friends and all of his roommates shared her frustrations. But Yasmina had always been unwaveringly blunt in her opinions and fiercely protective of her friends. “All he has to do is swing by and grab a box of clothes. It should only take a minute. Maybe less! But he’s canceled on you three times now and insists that you have to be there.”

“I don’t know,” Robbe admitted. “I want him to pick up his stuff so it feels like I can move on…” He trailed off, biting down on his bottom lip as he did so. His eyes drifted over to the box, all taped up and ready.

“So tell him,” Yasmina suggested. “Tell him that he has to come and pick up his stuff next time or you’ll… I don’t know, donate it! It should not take two months for a box of clothes that you could’ve shipped to him in no time.” The girl sent him a comforting look as Robbe sighed. “You should be allowed to move on and you can’t do that with a pile of his stuff sitting on the floor that he’s refusing to pick up—”

“Technically, it’s in a box—”

“Still, Robbe,” Yasmina interrupted. “You deserve better than someone who is making it hard for you to move on for his own selfish reasons.” She paused, tilting her head to the side and letting out a sigh. “And frankly, he’s delaying the end of it. That’s why he is taking so long. If he was going to try and stay in your life, he shouldn’t have broken up with you.” 

Robbe let out a sigh, knowing that she was right and turning back to his phone. There was a message forming in his head at a breakneck speed and he quickly typed out the words onto his phone—Yes, you can come Tuesday, but you need to pick up your things then or I’ll donate it or something. This is ridiculous, Thomas. You’ve canceled three times now and you’re the one insisting that I be here when you can pick up the box from Milan or Zoë or Lucas. I could just mail it to you. I’m sick of this. Come get your things Tuesday. 

But as he moved to press send, his thumb hovering over the button, his eyes darted over the unsent message. He sighed, running his hands through his hair. No, he thought, promptly deleting the message. He might be angry, but it wasn’t like him. Once the original message was gone, he typed another and hit send.

Robbe: Yes, Tuesday is fine. Good luck on the trial.

next (Maandag 15:11)

[ducktastic]

2020 Gameological Awards

Over on the Gameological Discord, we have an annual tradition of writing up our games of the year not as a ranked list but rather as answers to a series of prompts. Here are my personal choices for the year that was 2020.

Favorite Game of the Year

I didn’t know what to expect when I walked into Paradise Killer. I knew that I liked the vaporwave resort aesthetic from the game’s trailer and figured I was in for a Danganronpa-style murder mystery visual novel with an open-ended murder mystery at its core. Those assumptions were… half-right? The game definitely plays out like the exploration bits of Danganronpa set on the island from Myst but with far simpler puzzles. What I didn’t expect was to fall so deeply in love with the environment—its nooks and crannies, its millennia of lore, its brutalist overlap of idol worship, consumerism, and mass slaughter. It makes sense that the world of Paradise Killer is its strongest feature, since the cast of NPCs don’t really move around, leaving you alone with the world for the overwhelming majority of your experience as you bounce back and forth between digging around for clues and interrogating potential witnesses. And despite what the promo materials indicated, there IS a definitive solution to the crimes you’re brought in to investigate, the game just lets you make judgment based on whatever evidence you have at the time you’re ready to call it a day, so if you’re missing crucial evidence you might just make a compelling enough case for the wrong person and condemn them to eternal nonexistence. Am I happy with the truth at the end of the day? No, and neither is anybody else I’ve spoken to who completed the game, but we all were also completely enthralled the entire time and our dissatisfaction has less to do with the game and more to do with the ugly reality of humanity. I’ve always been of the mindset that “spoilers” are absolute garbage and that a story should be just as good whether you know the twist or not and any story that relies on surprising the audience with an unexpected reveal is not actually that good a story, but Paradise Killer is a game about piecing together your own version of events so I feel that it’s vital to the gameplay experience that people go in knowing as little as possible and gush all about it afterwards. Just trust me, if the game looks even remotely intriguing to you, go for it. I’ve had just as much fun talking about the game after I finished it with friends just getting started as I did actually solving its mysteries myself.

Best Single Player Game

I honestly missed out on the buzz for In Other Waters at launch, so I’m happy I had friends online talking it up as Black Friday sales were coming along. The minimal aesthetic of his underwater exploration game allows the focus to shift more naturally to the game’s stellar writing as a lone scientist goes off in search of her mentor and the secrets they were hiding on an alien world. It only took a few hours for me to become completely absorbed in this narrative and keep pushing forward into increasingly dangerous waters. In Other Waters might just be the best sci-fi story I experienced all year and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys sci-fi novels, regardless of their experience with video games.

Best Multiplayer Game

Look, we all know this year sucked. 2020 will absolutely be chronicled in history books as a fascinating and deeply depressing time in modern history where we all stayed inside by ourselves and missed our friends and family. It was lonely and it was bleak. Which is why it made my heart glow so much more warmly every time I got a letter from an honest-to-goodness real-life friend in Animal Crossing New Horizons. Knowing that they were playing the same game I was and hearing about their experiences and sending each other wacky hats or furniture, it lightened the days and made us feel that little bit more connected. Sure, when the game first launched we would actually take the time to visit one another’s islands, hang out, chat in real-time, and exchange gifts, but we all eventually got busy with Zoom calls, sourdough starters, and watching Birds of Prey twenty-two times. Still, sending letters was enough. It was and still is a touching little way to show that we’re here for one another, if not at the exact same time.

Favorite Ongoing Game

Zach Gage is one of my favorite game designers right now, and when I heard he was releasing a game called Good Sudoku I was sold sight unseen. The game as released was… fine. It’s sudoku and it’s pleasant, but it was also buggy and overheated my phone in a way I hadn’t seen since Ridiculous Fishing (also by Zach Gage) seven years ago. Thankfully, the most glaring bugs have been fixed and I can now enjoy popping in every day for some quick logic puzzle goodness. Daily ranked leaderboards keep me coming back again and again, the steady ramp of difficulty in the arcade and eternal modes means I can always chase the next dopamine rush of solving increasingly complex puzzles. It’s not a traditional “ongoing” game the way, say, Fortnite and Destiny are, but I’m happy to come back every day for sudoku goodness.

Didn't Click For Me

With Fortnite progressively losing me over the course of 2020, finalizing with my wholesale “never again” stance after Epic boss Tim Sweeney compared Fortnite demanding more money from Apple to the American Civil Rights movement (no, absolutely not), I dipped my toe into a number of new “battle pass”-style online arena types of games, and while Genshin Impact eventually got its hooks into me, Spellbreak absolutely did not. With graphics straight out of The Dragon Prince and the promise of a wide variety of magic combat skills to make your character your own, the game seemed awfully tempting, but my first few experiences were aimless and joyless, with no moment of clarity to make me understand why I should keep coming back. Maybe they’ll finesse the game some more in 2021, or a bunch of my friends will get hooked and lure me back, but for now I am a-okay deleting this waste of space on my Switch and PC.

"Oh Yeah, I Did Play That Didn't I?"

I remember being really excited for Murder By Numbers. Ace Attorney-style crime scene investigation visual novel with Picross puzzles for the evidence, art by the creators of Hatoful Boyfriend, and music by the composer of Ace Attorney itself?! Sounds like a dream come true. But the pixel-hunt nature of the crime scene investigations was more frustrating than fun, the picross puzzles were not particularly great, and the game came out literally a week before the entire world went into lockdown which makes it feel more like seven years ago than just earlier this year. I remember being marginally charmed by the game once it was in my hands, but as soon as my mind shifted to long-term self care, Murder By Numbers went from hot topic to cold case.

Most Unexpected Joy

I was looking forward to Fuser all year. As a dyed-in-the-wool DropMix stan, the prospect of a spiritual sequel to DropMix on all major digital platforms without any of the analogue components was tremendously exciting, and I knew I’d have a lot of fun making mixes by myself and posting them online for the world to hear. What I didn’t expect, however, was the online co-op mode to be such a blast! Up to four players take turns making 32 bars of mashups, starting with whatever the player before handed them and adding their own fingerprints on top. It sounds like it should just be a mess of cacophony, but every session I’ve played so far has been just the best dance party I’ve had all year, and everyone not currently in control of the decks (including an audience of spectators) can make special requests for what the DJ should spin and tap along with the beat to great super-sized emoji to show how much they’re enjoying the mix. Literally the only times my Apple Watch has ever warned me of my heightened heart rate have been the times I was positively bouncing in place rocking out to co-op freestyle play in Fuser.

Best Music

Only one video game this year had tunes that were so bumpable they were upgraded to my general “2020 jams” playlist alongside Jeff Rosenstock, Run the Jewels, and Phoebe Bridgers, and that game was Paradise Killer. 70% lo-fi chill beats to study/interrogate demons to, 20% gothic atmospheric bangers, 10% high-energy pop jazz, this soundtrack was just an absolute joy to swim around in both in and out of gameplay.

Favorite Game Encounter

It’s wild that in a landscape where games let me live out my wildest fantasies, the single moment that lit me up in a way that stood out to me more than any other was serving Neil the right drink in Coffee Talk. Over the course of the game, you serve a variety of hot drinks to humans, werewolves, vampires, orcs, and more, all while chatting with your customers and learning more about their lives and relationships. The most mysterious customer, though, is an alien life form who adopts the name Neil. They do not know what they want to drink and claim it doesn’t make a difference because they cannot taste it. Everybody else wants *something*. Neil is just ordering for the sake of fitting in and exploring the Earth experience. It’s only in the second playthrough that attentive baristas will figure out what to serve Neil, unlocking the “true” ending in the process. Seeing the typically stoic Neil actually emote when they tasted their special order drink? What an absolute treat that was.

Best Free DLC of the Year

It’s still only a couple of days old at the time I’m writing this, but Marvel’s Avengers just added Kate Bishop, aka Hawkeye, and THANK GOODNESS. Almost every character in the game at launch just smashed the endless waves of robot baddies with their fists and that looks exhausting and uncomfortable. Hawkeye (the game calls her Kate Bishop, but come on, she’s been Hawkeye in the comics for over 14 years, let’s show her some respect) uses A SWORD. FINALLY! Aside from that, I’m just having a blast shooting arrows all over the place. She and Ms Marvel are the most likable characters in the game so far, so I hope they keep adding more of the Young Avengers and Champions to the game, and if the recently announced slate of Marvel movies and tv shows are any indication (with America Chavez, Cassie Lang, and Riri Williams all coming soon to the MCU), that seems to be what Marvel is pushing for across all media

Most Accessible Game

Nintendo is, first and foremost, a toy company. They got their start in toys and cards long before video games was a thing, and they still do more tests to ensure their video game hardware is childproof than anybody else in the industry (remember how they made Switch cartridges “taste bad” so kids wouldn’t eat them?). This year, Nintendo got to rekindle some of their throwback, simplistic, toys-and-cards energy with Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics, a Switch collection of timeless family-friendly games like Chess, Mancala, and Backgammon, along with “toy” versions of sports like baseball, boxing, and tennis for a virtual parlor room of pleasant time-wasters. The games were all presented with charming li’l explainers from anthropomorphic board game figurines, and the ability to play quick sessions of Spider Solitaire on the touch screen while I binged The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix made Clubhouse Games one of my most-played titles of the year. Plus, local play during socially-distant friend hangs was an excellent way to make us feel like we were much closer than we were physically allowed to be as friends knocked each other’s block off in the “toy boxing” version of Rock’em Sock’em Robots.

"Waiting for Game-dot"

I get that everyone loves Disco Elysium. I saw it on everyone’s year-end lists last year. I finally bought it with an Epic Games Store coupon this year. This year was a long enough slog of depressing post-apocalyptic drudgery, I didn’t want to explore a whole nother one in my leisure time. I’ll get to it… someday.

Game That Made Me Think

Holovista was an iPhone game I played over the course of two or three days based on the recommendation of some trusted colleagues on Twitter and oh my goodness was I glad that I played it. What starts as a chill vaporwave photography game steadily progresses into an exploration of psychological trauma, relationships with friends and family, and the baggage we carry with us from our pasts. In this exceptionally hard year, I badly needed this story about spending time alone with your personal demons and finding your way back to the people who love and support you. Just like with Journey and Gone Home, I walked away from Holovista feeling a rekindled appreciation for the people in my life.

[twisted-lies]

hi kokichi! id appreciate a kin match up! i’m adding this after i’ve written the whole thing, and it turned out a lot longer than i’d plan. if this is too much for you let me know and i’ll shorten it as needed! thanks for running this blog, and i hope your day - evening - night is going wonderfully.

i have a light and cheerful personality. i’m also shy, so i mainly speak when spoken to. ive had the same group of friends for as long as i can remember. i can’t say we’ve gotten so close we know everything about each other anything like that, but when i’m with them it’s just a comfortable place i can relax. my position in the group would be the ‘baby’ of the group. i don’t really like being called a baby, but i can’t think of a better term for that haha. but, everyone in the group is very nice to me. i get a lot of physical affection from everyone there, and they’ll buy me pretty much anything. of course, i’ll attempt to return the favor when i can. but not having much money myself, i’ll usually make them something. i’m messy with most things, so it doesn’t turn out as good as i’d like it most the time but they still seem to appreciate it.

outside of that group, i consider myself pretty friendly. i invite girls i think would have fun with us to join our group outings, as well as people i think just need a friend. it isn’t uncommon for me to get denied though, and i’ll continue trying unless they told me to stop asking all together. besides that, i get overwhelmed in social situations easily if im not the one leading them. i can also be really emotional, i don’t handle yelling well and failure of doing anything is really overwhelming for me. i find crying in front of other embarrassing, but it’s not uncommon for me to do that.

i have pretty negative sides to me though. i can occasionally be kind of manipulative and spoiled. i love getting gifts, it makes me feel like someone really cares about me. i keep every gift i get and i kind of hoard them. but, if there’s something i’ve had my eye on for a while that’s where i can be manipulative. most people would do anything for me if i act nice to them or smile at them, sometimes people feel bad after seeing me cry. as a result they’ll usually buy me a gift out of pity, appreciation, even sometimes just to get me away from them. of course, i appreciate these gifts all the same but every time i look at them i feel guilty. this is usually when i’ll take what money i have and buy them something i know they will enjoy. while the usual reaction is feeling guilty i will admit i’ve kept some pretty expensive gifts while not doing anything in return.

as first impressions, people mostly see me as child like and emotional. the emotional part is pretty true. i cry easily, especially when i fail something or can’t meet my own expectations. the hardest things for me to deal with are goodbyes. even if it’s just someone moving a town over i get really close and attached to them the second i hear they’ll be leaving soon. every time someones left, it’s been pretty abrupt. i’ve been told it’s probably because they don’t want me to be sad, or they don’t wanna see me cry. but it just hurts more. sure i’ll cry, but at least i’ll get too legitimately say good bye. even if i barely know someone, everyone is pretty fine with being affectionate with me. some people treat me more like some cat than an actual person, which can make me uncomfortable sometimes. the most extreme case is being pulled onto the lap of someone i just met, in a diner no less. it was embarrassing, and i’m sure it looked ridiculous. while i’m very short myself, sitting on top someone whose only a few inches taller than me probably looks awkward. i put a fair amount of effort into my appearance, usually going for a ‘cute’ loook above anything else. this usually includes big hoodies with thigh highs or a cardigan and a skirt. people have told me i have delicate features, but i’m still confused if they meant it as a insult or compliment. for now my goal is to improve myself, i understand that i won’t always make the best choices and that i’m not that good of a person sometimes. so i’ll work hard to be a better friend to those i know and welcome people who may be lonely.

as for my interests, i enjoy technology. that’s vague, but what i mean is everything i do usually happens on the internet. i have my phone on me at all times, and sometimes i’ll digitally doodle and stuff like that. id like to make an app one day, maybe an app that’ll help people like me. i’m kind of a scatter brain so an app to help people stay organized would be great. i know there are many like that out there but i would like to make a unique one. i also like building PCS, they’re expensive though. i’ll make/help someone make them if they bought all the parts for it. basically, anything to do with tech i’ll love. i also play in band, percussion to be specific. i also collect things such as old knickknacks, but that’s mainly because it’s a family tradition. i also learned how to clean fragile things like that. i’m unsure on whether or not this will help you, i’m an INFP when it comes to MTBI personality types.

wehh, this ended up so long im sorry about that.

I kin assign you with...

Kokichi Ouma

Firstly I thought of Kokichi Ouma, Kokichi is usually presents himself as cheerful and happy infront of the others. He probably has the same friend group for a while basically like DICE. His appearance was made to look more like an innocent like child or in your case "baby" If he's with the right people he could probably get a lot of affection, which is something he overall just craves as well. He probably could also buy you something if you ask him, most likely not just doing it out of the blue. He tries to make friends sometimes and ends up getting denied easily though, Shuichi being an example towards the very end of the game. Though of course he didn't really stop trying until after the 4th trial I believe. He could probably get caught off guard if he isn't the one starting a conversation which could overwhelm him, but he won't show you that. He usually ends up crying when yelled at even if it's crocodile tears, he could also just over exaggerate it so you don't know if it's real or fake. He definitely has a manipulative side, using his innocent looking looks to his advantage to try and get what he wants, which he usually can end up succeeding. He can definitely be seen as child-like as well. If someone he knows is leaving he'll probably do his best to spend time with them before they do leave.

Chihiro Fujisaki

Secondly I thought of Chihiro, Chihiro is definitely a sweet and cheerful person. Though they can be pretty anxious at times. They'd probably tend to stick to people they know just so they'd have some sense of comfort. Theu definitely would be called baby by their friends and they'd probably buy them a few things. Chihiro obviously doing their best to give what they can back to them. Even if it was something after they cried. They'd probably also give Chihiro a lot of affection to make sure they know their loved. They're pretty friendly and if they build up enough courage they'll probably talk or invite someone to hang out with them. Chihiro can get overwhelmed easily and especially in social situations. They're pretty emotional too and can't really handle being yelled at and probably get upset over their failures. Chihiro doesn't exactly like crying infront of others though it's not uncommon for them. Chihiro can definitely be seen as child-like and emotional and probably can't handle goodbyes very well. Chihiro loves anything to do with technology! Whether it be coding or just straight up making something all together if they're able too.

Ibuki Mioda

Lastly I thought of Ibuki Mioda, Ibuki is definitely more of a cheerful or happy person she'll like to stick to people she knows, but will definitely branch out and try to be friends with anyone she thinks need it. She'll also be pretty persistent about it untill she's told to straight up just stop. She probably recieves a lot of affection and gives a lot in return. Whenever someone gives her something she'll do her best to return the gesture with a small gift or something she makes up on the spot. Though some of her attempts can come out pretty messy. She definitely can be seen as child-like as well due to small outbursts she may get. Ibuki will hate staying goodbye to people and will get clingy or really affectionate and probably be upset for a while once they actually leave. She probably also takes a good amount of time into her appearance due to multiple piercings and her hair. She also loves music and will do pretty much anything she can that will revolve around it. She's also probably a hoarder of things.

I hope you're satisfied with your results!

You don't have to worry about it being long, I've had multiple about this length or longer so it wasn't a problem! I hope you have a good rest of your day, evening, or night as well!

[kuwaitwebdevelopment98]

Why Your Business Should Upgrade to a Responsive Web Design Sooner Rather Than Later

Why should my business have a responsive web design?

Responsive web design has become the go-to solution for businesses who want a user friendly interface and higher customer retention. If your company has come this far without taking advantage of all the benefits it has to offer, you may have already begun to see lower visitor numbers and a disappointing conversion rate.

As a responsible business owner, you'll probably need convincing before paying to upgrade your web presence to one that includes responsive design. However, by opting in you'll soon see a return on investment that will make it worthwhile. In a nutshell, responsive design is just better than what has gone before and in order to keep up with the competition, you'll need it too.

Responsive web design is crucial for the majority of businesses because it allows your users to achieve their goals quickly and smoothly. The important elements of your website can be pulled up on a smart phone and appear as a fully functional version of the original, complete with all the utility you'd offer to customers on a laptop or desktop computer. If you fail to provide a mobile-friendly experience like this for your visitors they won't hang around, they'll simply click away and complete the action or purchase on a rival site.

Unhappy customers are not good for business and neither is going up against a major search engine. Google have recently confirmed what many insiders have suspected for some time - sites that are not optimised for multiple users will slip down their search rankings. Google bases their rankings on how useful a page is for the query a user has entered, plus the utility of the site - for example, can a user complete the action they would like to?

Your page may be completely relevant to their search, but if visitors cannot access the content easily across a number of devices, your site may receive a less than positive review and be placed lower in the search results. If your company is reduced to a second or third page entry you'll lose a considerable amount of traffic, as people naturally select links from the first page.

Google have also pointed out that companies which have a single responsive website - rather than one standard and one mobile version - are far easier for their bots to discover, because there is just one URL. click here now Kuwait Web Development

If your site is responsive and ready to service mobile customers, you can take advantage of many tools and helpful apps like the click-to-call button, this enables a web user to make a voice call to your company immediately. Potential customers can also read reviews about your business or even find you in a busy place using Google Maps, both keenly relevant to the needs of mobile users.

Branding is one of the ways in which we build a relationship of trust with a customer and keep them coming back for more of the same. This is pertinent to responsive design for two reasons, firstly, people do not feel confident in a site they cannot easily navigate and second, in order to create a uniform brand you'll need responsive design to produce a consistent web appearance; however your clients reach you.

In today's market there are only a handful of reasons why a company may choose to stick with static design on their web page. Those who do not rely in any significant way on web traffic to drive sales, or those who have few competitors, or those who have already looked into responsive design and found it was not right for them. For everyone else, if you want to stay ahead of the curve, responsive design is the only way forward for your website.

Responsive web design features

Until recently web designers created different pages depending on where they would be viewed, a tablet for example has a different screen resolution to a laptop, and so the content would be optimised for viewing on that particular device.

However, responsive web design has revolutionised the way in which users look at the internet, it has created an across the board experience allowing us to view pages on a PC, smart phone or notebook in exactly the same way. When they build a site, designers use the same coding on any number of resolutions, giving every device the same degree of functionality.

Responsive web designers believe that their clients' web pages should be accessible to every visitor, giving them an optimal experience, regardless of the device they using. This kind of intelligent response to a web user's actions keeps your company relevant in an ever changing online market place; it boosts your e-commerce figures and makes visiting your site an enjoyable experience.

In technical terms there are three key features of responsive web design, the secret ingredient is generally considered to be media queries. These are filters added on to the CSS or Cascading Style Sheets, affecting the look and feel of any individual page. CSS is a highly useful tool for web designers, but by tagging on a media queries adaption, the process of resizing, rendering and orienting a page becomes far easier.

Another linchpin of responsive design is the flexible layout, this is based on a grid formation, ideal for formatting margins, positioning the key elements of a page and getting the spacing just right. This means a designer is not limited to a certain number of columns, they can choose as many or as few as is appropriate for the page. A flexible layout also removes the need to work out the layouts and text size based on pixels.

Instead, designers use percentages which enable them to adopt a far more fluid approach to producing each page. Pixels work well in photographic images, but are a clumsy tool to use over a number of devices. One pixel may be expressed as three dots on a phone, but ten dots on a desktop, changing the quality of an image considerably between devices.

The third component of responsive design involves the use of CSS or a dynamic resizing function to create flexible images, videos and other content. Text can flow relatively easily as the containing area resizes, but in order to spread this across more complex segments, web designers need to use different techniques. Dynamic resizing gives a web designer greater control over how a page behaves and enables them to add or remove components as needed.

Taken a whole, these multiple technologies mean visitors can enjoy the feeling of familiarity, regardless of what device they happen to be using, or will be using in the future.

When a mobile user changes from landscape to portrait mode, the intuitive design will ensure the page gets bigger or smaller. Furthermore, each element, be it an image, textbox or video will also resize itself to correspond with the different dimensions.

If you have ever tried to access a website and discovered that it was almost impossible to navigate around without shrinking and enlarging the text or buttons, you'll understand why responsive design is considered good practice for the majority of website owners.

Responsive web design Vs Mobile web design

Until quite recently, mobile web design was considered far more relevant to modern consumers than it's responsive counterpart, this approach sees designers using smart phones as a starting point and upgrading the technology progressively, through to notepads, desktop computers and beyond. This method meant that companies needed two websites, one for their mobile pages and one for PC users.

In the early golden years of mobile web design, there were a number of reasons why experts thought that web applications should always be designed first for use on a mobile device. Most important of these was the prevalence of smart phones and the fact that their popularity was continuing to skyrocket. By creating a platform that favoured these millions of users, companies could promote their service or product to what was seen as the next generation of computing consumers.

Secondly, mobile design was said to foster a cleaner concept without room for extraneous elements or unnecessary page clutter. In a screen the size of that on a mobile phone, there simply is not enough room to crowbar in extra buttons and widgets - instead, a design team had to focus on what was actually needed. By giving users a clear route to what they want, it was assumed that their experience would be better, faster, leave them more inclined to return or convert them into a paying customer.

Mobile applications were thought to have far more utility than PC based software, what users expected from their laptop paled in comparison to the capabilities offered on smart phones. From a digital compass, to gyroscopic effects, touch screen inputs and voice control, designers hoped to build on these tools to produce modern web design that was not limited by the constraints of a PC.

Although there are pros and cons for the adoption of a mobile site to run parallel to a main site, responsively designed pages are ideal for retailers who want a robust, homogenous website with plenty of utility for every user. A single site also simplifies marketing campaigns; there is only a need to manage one site and one SEO strategy. Therefore, a website which features responsive design can save companies time and money, but also provide a seamless, convenient way for customers to shop.

Responsive web design statistics

When a team of designers build you a responsive website you know it will adapt intuitively to whatever device it is accessed from, but where is the evidence that proves this is a factor in commercial success?

The content marketing company, Brand Point, found that over 90% of consumers buying decisions are affected by visual elements. In other words, if people land on your site and like the look of the place, they are more likely to stay and buy.

Screen resolutions are changing all the time as new devices reach the market, web developers Spyderweb found that in 2010 there were just 97 unique screen resolution sizes, but by 2013 that figure had leapt to 232. The only way of tackling this increase is to have a responsive website that is optimised for every customer, whatever device they favour.

Customers are driven away by high wait times and pages that take too long to appear; even way back in 2009, 47% of people expected a load time of just two seconds on a webpage. In a study carried out by cloud service providers, Akamai, it was also found that 40% of web users clicked away if they had not gained access to a page within 3 seconds. That is a pretty slim window of opportunity, and it's fair to assume that people's expectations have increased since this study was compiled.

Although external factors like a lack of Wi-Fi or 4G can also affect wait times, the importance of speed for business sites cannot be underestimated. Wed designers can write code for your responsive site that makes it selectively load the elements needed, or even bring in graphics at a later stage.

Design matters because it can have a huge impact on the number of new visitors to your pages, these are people who have reached you through typing in a specific search criteria and decided to click on the link to your site. Web designers, Domain7, have reported that in the case of their client Regent College, there was a leap of 99% in unique visitors after a revamp of their responsive web design.

If your mobile pages leave an unpleasant taste in the mouth of your visitors, they are far less likely to view your entire organisation favourably, and they'll tell their friends. Industry experts at the Search Engine Journal discovered that 57% of people would never recommend a company that had poorly designed pages, strengthening the case for a consistent web strategy that performs the way your customers want it to - wherever they happen to be.

[defectivenancydrew]

MID Review (finally)

Now that I’ve had a while to reflect on MID, I feel like I can give an honest, spoiler-free review. This turned out to be a much more in-depth review than I had planned on doing, but you can just read the italics at the end of each section if you just want the gist.

Controls: Okay, so for like the first fifteen minutes (or however long it takes you to adjust), the controls are frustrating. Once you get used to how to move (and it is still point-and-click), you’ll be fine. The only thing that I still didn’t have a solid grasp of by the end of the game was moving Nancy’s head around with the right mouse button--it might have helped to slow the mouse down for this function. That being said, the controls offer a lot to the game. The environments and navigation feel more realistic, and instead of jumping from scene to scene, Nancy slides through the space. It’s weird at first, but it’s ultimately superior. (Just for kicks, I went back and played a bit of LIE as a comparison, and the jumpy movement felt so weird after the smoothness of MID). Controls get a 8/10 for the steep learning curve and the more realistic movement.

Graphics: They’re not that bad, okay? On high render, the environments actually look really good and the characters are decent (low render is an understandably different story). Given the technical reasons behind the graphics looking as the do (full 3D render here versus painstakingly painted video files before), I don’t think that they’re really that bad. Puzzle renders and zoomed-in items/POIs really shine, appearing arguably better than previous games. It’s also important to consider what SCK/STFD look like compared to SEA--MID obviously looks better than SCK/STFD, but it has room for improvement. Just like the development team refined the graphics on their proprietary engine, they will refine the graphics on Unity over time. Again, looking back to the first three games, there is a huge jump in graphics quality between each game, indicating their ability to improve quickly. I’m willing to best that the next game (yes, I believe there will be a ‘next game’) will look much better than MID, and so on from there. Character renders are not as great, but this, too, is likely to improve and is probably also due to the fact that it’s 3D and not a painted video file. Their movements may be awkward, but the fact that they are mo-cap means that they may improve in future games. The only real gripe I have about the characters is the lack of facial expressions. Graphics get a 7/10 for up-close realism and room for improvement.

Performance: If you have a gaming PC or a relatively new device, you should be golden. The game runs smoothly at high render on my 2018/i7/SSD PC, but has some lagging issues at high render on my 2014/i5/HDD PC (issues that all but disappear by adjusting to low render). For those with older PCs or PCs with less processing-power, you may have to deal with way-off lip-syncs and choppy cut scenes if you also want to see the best possible graphics. The game only crashed once on my older PC (and it was more likely due to unrelated background processes I was running), but the autosave feature prevents crashes from being anything more than a brief annoyance. Performance gets a 6/10 for high requirements and the Sophie’s Choice of graphics or speed.

UI: I love the sleek, full-screen appearance and minimalist inventory/phone bar. If I had to ask for any improvements here, I might suggest that the inventory collapse into a bag icon when it’s not in use. UI gets 10/10 for maximizing space and minimizing distractions.

Environment (independent of graphics): HeR definitely stepped up their game (heh) on this front. While there are arguably no more locations to explore than in SEA, the environment is far more expansive and cohesive. You feel like you are in a small town (Salem), and you have the freedom to explore all the relevant places without jumping around or magically transporting. There’s only one location that is distant from the town center, and Nancy travels via car to get back and forth, which adds a dose of realism. We have our usual forest navigation (though it is mercifully straight-forward, unlike DOG or CAP), with the added bonus of looking around and using it to get from one place to another. The game makes good use of each space, though it’d be nice if there was more to do in certain lesser-used locations. Some of the locations really only seemed to be present to flesh out the whole environment--which is fine--but it’d be nice to utilize those locations a bit more. And when graphics are set high, the environments are quite stunning. The lighting and weather also do a good job of reinforcing the current atmosphere in-game. Environment gets a 9/10 for cohesion and light usage.

Characters (independent of graphics, story): This is probably one of the spots where MID won me over. Not only do we have eleven (11!) official characters, we have background characters that make the setting real! I didn’t count, but there were probably 10+ background characters that were present for minor commentary and realistic liveliness. For the first time in a Nancy Drew game, I wasn’t questioning where the rest of the world was. Yes, their movements were awkward and if your computer couldn’t handle the graphics, then their lips were flapping in mysterious ways, but they moved around and interacted with each other in semi-human ways. It is absolutely baffling to me that there are people who think there were too many characters. For one thing, we as fans asked HeR for more characters and that’s what they gave us. For another, the game never felt crowded. There were seven characters that were considered “main” that you interacted with often, three side characters that you interacted with occasionally, and one character that you only interacted with once. If they hadn’t been fully-formed characters with solid backstories, I might be persuaded that the number was an issue, but almost all of the characters were fully- or mostly-developed. Characters gets a 10/10 for quantity and quality.

Puzzles: This is probably the one facet of the game where it is most clear that HeR listened to fans’ requests. We asked for more realistic puzzles that were integrated into the game play and not totally irrelevant. That’s what we got. For some people, I think this made it seem like there were fewer puzzles, but I think there were just as many as before, it just wasn’t always super obvious that you were solving a puzzle (and they all but eliminated chore-type puzzles). The cooking mini game and serving mini game were both fun, nostalgic time-wasters in the best of ways. Another nice thing about the puzzles was that they weren’t super difficult as long as you were paying attention, so there wasn’t any need to google solutions or get frustrated. Puzzles get a 9/10 for fan service and perception (after all, perception is reality).

Story: MID really shines when it comes to the story line. The game delves into the full history of Salem, rightfully choosing to discuss topics that were always skirted in earlier games (prejudice, discrimination, slavery, torture, etc.). My only issue regarding the presentation of history is that a lot of the learning is optional, and can be easily ignored or missed. The actual story line of the game is well-established and doesn’t have any gaping plot holes (at least that I noticed on my first play through). There are multiple crimes to solve, multiple items to recover, and thus multiple endings/outcomes to achieve. I can’t go into too much more detail without spoiling parts of the game, but suffice it to say that the story has depth and gravity that might even place it ahead of previous games. Story gets a 10/10 for more mature themes and multiple, successfully interweaving story lines.

Dialogue: While the content of the dialogue is great and forms the foundation for much of the story, it loses me in presentation. First, the line-by-line captioning system is awkward at best, and a monologue behind at worst. I see no reason not to present the player with sentences or paragraphs at a time as before. Second, dialogue options are not so much options as dialogue tasks. You have questions you can ask, but there is no choice of how to ask them or how to respond to an answer. For the most part, you are just choosing the order in which to ask things. This, in my opinion, is a step backward from the previous games, where Nancy could be optimistic, pessimistic, direct, or passive-aggressive. Lastly, there is a strange lack of subject in Nancy’s sentence structure at times. She says “should do xyz” instead of “I should do xyz,” or “wanted to ask about abc” instead of “I wanted to ask you about abc.” While this isn’t really too weird in the context of modern speech patterns, it is still a little awkward. There are examples of this in previous games when Nancy speaks to herself, but never in dialogue with other characters. Again, this isn’t a big deal, but it crops up enough to make it noticeably strange. Dialogue gets a 6/10 for solid content and poor presentation.

Music: At first, the music seems to be nothing special; the main theme is quiet, unassuming, and a bit repetitive at times. But much like the rest of the game, it gets better as you progress. The music in Luminous Infusions and at the end of the game really stick out as great pieces, although the rest of the tracks are also very well-composed. There is thematic continuity between tracks and the tracks also reflect the game’s current atmosphere well. The music, while from a new composer, is still reminiscent of the old games, particularly the mystical tracks in CUR. I’m hoping HeR releases a soundtrack for MID in the future, but I do know there are no current plans for an official soundtrack (though you can find unofficial ones on YouTube pretty easily). Music gets a 10/10 for quality and cohesion.

Nancy: Nancy finally sounds like the late teen that she is meant to be! Nancy is witty and assertive, no longer speaking with the voice of a thirty-year-old and expressing the thoughts of a thirteen-year-old. The new voice actress is just what Nancy’s voice needed, in my opinion, though I have admittedly been a supporter of replacing Lani since about DED/GTH (don’t get me wrong, I love Lani and she will always be the classic voice of Nancy in my head, but I could also admit that her voice was losing its spark and pep). It takes a little while to get used to the new voice, but once it stops sounding different, it’s easy to fall in love with. Another great aspect of Nancy 2.0 is that she’s willing to get into it with other characters, even if they are in a position of authority. Nancy has always been an assertive character who stands up for what is right, even if it’s not easy to do. We see the return of this kind of Nancy in MID, and I hope we don’t lose her in future games. The only thing that I found a tad bit odd was how sugar-sweet Nancy was toward Deirdre. I like how their relationship was updated in order to model more appropriate/healthy female friendships, but it is a little weird considering the canon interaction model set forth by ASH and DED. Nancy’s other relationships have also matured and improved. Nancy gets a 10/10 for assertiveness and expressiveness.

Physical Copy: Well, almost two weeks after the release date, I finally got my physical copy of MID. This is unprecedented, as I always received physical pre-orders the day of or even the day before release. The long wait drove me to buy the digital download, which I didn’t mind doing, but this could be very frustrating for those not willing to pay for the game twice. I was disappointed to find that the disc art is just a copy of the cover art (which is minimalist at best), and not a characteristic color like the other games. The box art seems like it was put together at the last minute, not unlike the cover art. If it weren’t for my compulsive need to own all of the physical copies, I probably would have skipped it. Physical copy gets a 1/10 for slow delivery and lackluster appearance.

Weird Things to Complain About: Yes, there is one background character whose voice sounds like it was recorded on a Motorola Razr, but she says one sentence that you don’t even have to listen to. Yes, some of the background characters are overt clones, but we’ve never even had background characters to complain about before. Should there have been more to do in the Hathorne House or other one-off locations? Yeah, probably, but we were given a ton of locales to visit. The characters were always bobbing around and breathing, but--surprise!--this is something that real humans do. Did their feet/hands occasionally meld with other objects or the environment? Sure, but why were you looking at their feet during a conversation? Admittedly, Teegan sometimes looked like she was trying to scare off a bear or prepare for flight, even I can’t argue that that wasn’t odd. But for the most part, these are minor, petty issues. There weren’t gaping plot holes, there was actually a mystery to solve (looking at you, MED), and we got a lot of the things that we asked for over the years. There is always room for improvement, and this game is certainly no exception. I expect that the next game will make refinements based on our feedback and be even better. HeR completely changed the Nancy Drew game formula, but they used our input as a guide. They’ll take what we say about MID into consideration with the next game, and hopefully over time we will see the same level of improvement we saw from SCK to SEA. They started from scratch, and even though they had five years to work on it, the first time you try something new is almost always the worst. I don’t condone the way they treated us over the hiatus or how they treated their own staff, but I don’t think it’s time to abandon ship yet. If you play this game with nostalgia goggles on and a closed mind, you’re going to hate it, you’re going to ask for a refund. If you go into it with an open mind and excitement for something new, you might just find that you like MID more than you’d care to admit. Weird things to complain about gets an 8/10 for minor oddities that should be expected in a pilot endeavor.

Conclusion: Change is inevitable. If you were around when TMB came out, you might remember the absolute uproar that came with the UI change. People threatened to walk away from the series because of the new menu screen and bulkier interface. If you’ve played the original SCK and STFD, then you know how drastically the games improved over the span of a single year. And compare those games to SEA and it’s clear that the games are always improving. But you have to start (or in this case, restart) somewhere, and MID is our new starting point. The games will get better, and we’ll still find things to complain about (like we always do), because there is always room for improvement. There’s no point in lamenting about how good the game would have looked on the old engine, because that misses the point. The old engine could not deliver what we as fans desired. It could not handle more than six characters or more than eight hours (this is being generous) of game play. It couldn’t give us more expansive environments or smoother navigation. The new engine gave us all of these things, but sacrificed a bit of graphics. Big whoop. I’m willing to bet that none of us got into the games for their graphics, especially those of use who became fans early on in the games’ history. Bottom line? HeR gave us a good game. Not their best game, maybe not even one of their better games, but it’s certainly better than MED or SCKR. And hey, at least we finally got the game. Midnight in Salem gets an 80%, an admirable B-, because the effort and progress is there, but there are definitely things that they could have done better.

[obviouslyelementary]

Routine - Reddie

This fanfic is for my friend @kourank-nerdyrobots because they are a cutie I love you <3

--------------------------------

Before Derry, before receiving that dreadful call from Mike just before his show, getting sick and having to cancel it; before going back to Derry, remembering his own friends, eating some delicious Chinese food and getting spooked by lucky biscuits; before finding out that Stan, one of his best friends in the world, killed himself out of fear of what could come; after almost giving up on all his friends, almost leaving to probably have the same fate as Stan, and then coming back and helping them defeat the motherfucking evil clown shit; before all that, his routine was simple.

He had never been a guy to care much for his health. He started smoking as soon as he got into high school, probably out of Beverly's influence; he drank a lot of booze during college, enough to leave any sane six foot guy turned over with extreme nausea; his bathroom was the cleanest part of his flat, which was awful because it was always dirty and disgusting and as soon as he got enough money the first thing he used it for was to hire a clean up lady at least once a week; and he ate way too much fast food and noodles, more than he would ever admit.

And after he became famous, rich, and started to do shows all the time, it got even worst. His routine went from lazy college student to rich asshole. He barely cooked any food, always preferring to ask from a restaurant nearby. He went out for drinks all the time with his manager or his friends from work, which also added to his liver problem later on. Nothing he couldn't manage, but he could have avoided some runs to the hospital if he had drank one beer less or something. He also never stopped smoking, although he did hide it after the 2000s because people didn’t think it was cool anymore, and his drinking habits got worst and worst, not to the point of no return, but certainly more than he would have ever wanted it to. And of course, he either slept two hours each night or twelve, which also wasn't good for any human being.

Basically, he continued being the mess he had always been, but worst, since he didn’t have anyone to correct his ways, or try to. All his friends fed into his addictions without any solution, and thus he didn't care about his well being at all. He had always been bad at taking care of himself.

But then, Derry came. And with Derry, something magical happened. Something beyond Richie's wildest expectations.

And now, oh now his routine was awfully different.

Now, apart from days after shows, he tended to wake up around eight o'clock, nine the latest if he had had a rough time sleeping the night prior. He made the bed, fed the dog, the cat, and changed into sweatpants and a tank top for a quick run around the neighborhood. It usually lasted from twenty minutes to forty, depending on how much he was feeling it in the day, but he found that time enough to keep himself in shape. He would return home, let the cat wonder in the backyard while he walked the dog around the block, and then he would return, put the cat and dog inside, and head for a shower.

After a shower, he would change into comfy clothes and make himself some breakfast. He would open the windows and let the air inside, even if it was raining because it felt good, and he would eat breakfast while checking some news on his phone or some comments on his work. When he was finished, he would wash the dishes and head to his office or bring his PC to the living room, sit on the couch and work on his scripts for the next shows he had in mind. He would work until around two, when he would get up and either cook some lunch or ask something somewhat healthy for himself. He would also feed the dog and cat again, and play with them a little while he waited for the food to arrive, or after he ate his lunch. Then, he would lay down on the couch, and the pets would lay around him usually, the dog next to the couch and the cat behind his legs, and he would watch a game or some TV series he liked for around an hour or so, so then he could go back to work.

The routine was neat and simple, and he actually loved it. Richie never thought he would become what sexist men called a 'caged animal', but truly that was the best way of life. He was able to do everything he enjoyed without getting stressed, and he had plenty of time to relax and play with the pets or just be lazy around the house. And then, he just had to wait for night to come, to cook some dinner for two.

Oh yes, two. Around seven he would begin to make dinner, something simple and sweet, maybe some wine to go with it or just some juice or soda, nothing big. He found out that he loved cooking, specially when someone else would enjoy it with him. It felt so nice, to do something so simple and yet so sweet to someone he loved so much.

Richie usually knew when someone arrived, because doggie Stan got mad about it, barking and wiggling his little tail all over the place. Specially when it was his daddy who was coming home. Richie always cooed at him because he too could feel his own imaginary tail wiggling. He was completely in love, and he couldn't really deal with it very well yet.

That particular night, he decided to make some simple chicken with potatoes for dinner, and while they were in the oven, he came home. Stan started barking like a mad dog, running to the door with his tiny paws making sweet sounds on the wooden floor, and as the door opened Richie saw the briefcase being placed down and the puppy being picked up. Fuck. Richie felt like he was thirteen and stupid every time.

"Hello Stanny, how was your day? Did daddy take care of you? I bet he did" Eddie said, standing by the door with his fancy suit and his sweet smile as he kissed and petted the little puppy dog, letting him lick his face just a little. "Awn I missed you too honey, I missed you too."

From the depths of the house, a loud meow was heard, and Eddie laughed as he got inside the house, closing and locking the door behind himself and letting Stan down to the floor. He pet him once more and then focused on the cat, who walked to him slowly, tail high in the air, meowing like crazy.

"I missed you too honey, come here" Eddie cooed, and the cat meowed louder, standing in front of him and then jumping up to his arms. Eddie laughed and held the cat close, hugging it gently, petting it slowly. "Yes I missed you too Penny... yes I did" he said, kissing her head while she meowed and rubbed her cheek against his, making him chuckle with fondness. He pet her a little more and put her on the ground, before looking up again and smiling. "Oh. You're here too then."

Sometimes Richie forgot he even existed when Eddie got in the room.

"I sure am. You know I never leave the house anyway" Richie said with a chuckle, and Eddie rolled his eyes with a fondness that made Richie's heart almost combust. Eddie took off his suit, the tie and undid a few buttons to make himself more comfortable, before he walked all the way to Richie and looked down at him.

"I smell chicken" he said, and Richie nodded.

"Yeah that's what they say I smell like" he said, and Eddie let out a chuckle and shook his head before leaning further down, tilting his head and oh.

Richie would never get used to it.

The kiss lasted a second and Richie still managed to blush somehow. Eddie pulled back, stretched and yawned, before turning around and taking the clothes he had removed.

"I'm going to take a shower and I will be right back" he said, leaving the room and walking inside, and Richie just watched him, wondering for the ten billionth time how the hell he had managed to be this happy. He didn't know, but he sure as fuck loved it.

When Eddie returned, now with sweatpants and one of Richie's large merch shirts, looking all comfy and smelling so good, they sat down for dinner and talked about their days. Eddie fed the animals and cleaned up their duties while Richie washed the dishes, and they went to the couch to enjoy some time together, watching some movie or series they liked. Richie sat down on the couch with Eddie between his legs and they talked about a bunch of nothings, and sometimes they kissed, and it felt fucking amazing.

Then, Eddie would get tired and they would go to sleep, and sometimes they would have sex and sometimes they would just talk or sometimes they would just sleep, but it still felt nice, in the same amazing way.

And in the next day, everything would repeat itself: waking up, jogging, cooking, working, cooking, spending time with Eddie, and this routine seemed... perfect.

Richie never thought he was a man of routine, but honestly, he loved it.

He simply loved it.

[shikai-the-storyteller]

Been feeling under the weather all day so I finally started SWSH and put a couple hours into it here are some of my initial thoughts:

Chairman Rose: Welcome to the world of Pokemon! Me: Oh you’re definitely the bad guy. I’m definitely gonna have to kick your butt at some point I just know it

Ok first of all I just want to say I frickin love the poses I can do for my trainer card and the SECOND I saw this one I actually shouted “YES” out loud. Everyone, meet ya girl Orion. (I’ve since updated my shirt and tweaked a few things but I forgot to take a picture of that).

I love all the starters, but Soccer Is My Life so Scorbunny won me over (Grookey was a close second though)

I’m weak to bunny fistbumps.....

Hop is a sweetheart and I already know by the end of this game I'm gonna be crying...Hop you're trying so hard to be the best like your bro but I've been playing this game since before you were born, YOU HAVE NO CHANCE....

Hop's mom and my character's moms as soon as Hop and I are gone: FINALLY let's go have ladies night *high-fives*

Leon: *appears with his stupid ad-riddled cape and white booty shorts over white pants look* Me: gosh I can't believe how much smut I've seen of this dude on twitter Me after playing the game for 15 minutes: Oh he’s a handsome idiot, that’s why.

I booked it to the first clothing store I saw to change outfits, why you killing me with expensive fashion stuff SWSH???? Let me be a cheapskate in this game I’m begging you I DON’T WANNA PAY $20 FOR A SHIRT IRL OR IN A VIDEO GAME

It was actually super cool seeing all the gym leaders walk out an get introduced but for a moment I was like “Oh shoot am I gonna fight them all here??? Right now??? I mean I totally could but that sucks that I don’t get to go to different cities / gyms” and then the celebration ended and I was like “Oh ok then” lmao.

Which also begs the question: did all the gym leaders (minus one) just come on out specifically to walk across the stage and show off? Man no wonder Goth Gym Leader dude stayed home, I would’ve too

I forgot fighting gal wasn’t in this game.... :( I’m sorry fighting girl you were really cute but unfortunately the Galar Unicorn was also cute and I need me one of those

The only reason I know this dude’s name is because everyone ships him with Leon. His sly smile is really cool and I instantly liked him because he seems like he’ll be a fun character (also I have a dragon trainer bias) but then he whipped out his Rotom phone and took a selfie and that cracked me right up

Marnie was so much sweeter than I thought she'd be omg???? I'd die for you sweet goth girl

Bede (or as I like to call him, the Pink British Bastard): OHOHO YOU THINK YOU'RE TOUGH ENOUGH TO DEFEAT ME? Me, oneshotting every single one of his Pokemon: yeah dude

Man I can tell I’ve been playing too much BOTW because my first reaction at seeing the wild area was “Wow that’s kinda small”

I did discover the other half of it later though so I’m somewhat mollified. I love the concept of it though! The only downside is if I see 10 of the same Pokemon in a bunch of grass I’m a little less-inclined to explore that section.

I wasn’t too impressed with the Dynamaxing thing when I first saw the ads for it but it seems fine (I still prefer the Mega-Evos though). I encountered one of the “Special” Raids while nyrooming around the Wild Area too so that was fun.

I'm always worried about under-leveling so I wound up dinking around in the wild area WAYYYY too long and over-leveled my starter and every other pokemon I had lmao

Speaking of, here's my current team layout:

I swapped out my Yamper a bit ago because I found a yellow glowy one and I already feel super bad.....Yamper I love you but GOOD STATS....

I genuinely feel HORRIBLE about switching her out for this new dude I'M SORRY COMPETITIVE POKEMON BREEDING IN XY HAS RUINED ME FOR POKEMON I'LL TRY NOT TO DO THIS TOO MUCH

Me seeing a tympole: Juliana!!! :D The same tympole: *zooms towards me at terrifying speeds* Me: JULIANA NO

I keep stopping Scorbunny (King Kazuma) from evolving because I DONT WANT MY BABY TO GO THROUGH HIS GRUMPY TEEN PHASE YET HES SO CUTE

The curry minigame things are so much fun please let me cook more  in video games I love it...

I think my biggest complaint so far is I wish soft-resetting was faster. I love all the “we’ll heal your Pokemon!” folks and the wandering Pokemon, that’s cool (and the little details like the Key Item Escape Rope and the reminders on the map of where I’m supposed to be going at the moment) and the instant access to the PC box. 

UH OK ONE MORE THING: I JUST RAN INTO AN EEVEE AND UHHHH THAT”S NOT WHAT YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO SOUND LIKE LITTLE BUDDY, DO YOU NEED TO SEE A VET?

Man that’s a bummer, I actually loved Eevee’s old cry. I’m assuming this was a switch after Let’s Go Eevee / Pikachu.

Wild Budew: *uses Worry Seed on my Yamper The Game: Yamper acquired Insomnia! Me, laughing hollowly: Me too

It’s gotten to the point where my Pokemon are so over-leveled I’m legit worried they’ll stop listening to me THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE...WHY DID I DINK AROUND IN THE WILD AREA FOR SO LONG...I’m actively avoiding trainers / pokemon battles trying to get to this dang gym

Milo: Can’t wait to see you at the stadium! :) Me, with my severely over-leveled team and OP fire-type starter Pokemon: Haha yeah....me too

Me: FINALLY the Gym is in sight! Hop: Actually you need to go somewhere else first! Me, shaking him by his shoulders: HOP YOU DON”T UNDERSTAND, I HAVE SIX MINOR-GODS ON MY TEAM I NEED A BADGE TO CONTROL THEM

“All companies running ads are owned by Mr. Rose” oh yeah he’s definitely a bad guy

Aw the little Grass-gym mission is cute, that’s a kinda fun new addition to the gym battles haha.

WHY are the NPC trainer dudes at the Grass gym so CUTE

Aw Milo is cute

“You can now catch Pokemon up to level 25!” ONLY 25??? You’re killing me SWSH

I like that the badges are all pieces of a puzzle! Neat little detail.

[tvbuddyreview-blog]

Why DO YOU NEED TV Buddy CASTER?

TV Buddy Caster can be a answer that may be for yourself if you’re fed up viewing your displays on the mobile phone, tablet pc, laptop, or computer. It is one of the very best approaches so that you can link with your loved ones members, particularly when they love viewing films or enjoy playing games. It’s honestly probably the best answer for you personally in every condition. Before I only say an excessive amount of, though, you might probably need to know what TV Buddy Caster is, so what exactly is TV Buddy Caster and what exactly would it do?

TV Buddy Caster is a internet streaming product that’ll ensure it is to enable you to supply all of your favorite videos, music, and game titles in your TV. Additionally, this device is incredibly straightforward to set up and is also much cheaper in comparison with most of the other internet streaming products around. This device allows you to source over a huge number of apps through your cell phone, tablet, notebook computer, or personal computer so easily that some people even feel that this is certainly some type of sorcery.

However, if you’re still on the fence about this product or service reading all of the reviews folks have for doing it, then I hope that this information will enable you to choose permanently. But you could also be thinking reasons why you would need this system, so here are some factors that may explain to you reasons why you will need TV Buddy Caster.

•From childhood, we were always told to never placed our confronts to close to any kind of display because we were shared with that it would damage our eye sight. And therefore continues to be to be real and it is a well known fact. Which also includes our tiny monitors like our cell phones and our TVs. Because both injuries our eyeballs, how is the large monitor any far better from my mobile phones? With our telephones getting this kind of little display screens, we’d have to get it even closer to our face, which brings much more damage to our view in comparison to seeing your best displays in your TV utilizing TV Buddy Caster. With your tiny screen for too much effort may even bring about headaches, which I am positive you don’t want to get.

•I’m sure that many people here loathe finding any kind of commercials whenever we’re viewing the most popular shows or taking part in our game titles. Nicely, if you do loathe obtaining ads, then you should get TV Buddy Caster because it has the perfect solution to suit your needs. It doesn’t demonstrate any kinds of advertisements when you’re seeing with TV Buddy Caster, which ultimately contributes to a lot more exciting and less getting frustrated with of the advertising you’re obtaining.

So, if you currently have some problems with your eye-sight but still want video nighttime to be every single night, you need to get TV Buddy Caster considering that I’m positive it’ll aid you with your eye sight far more than your little tiny cell phone display. And in case you’re also the type of person who absolutely hates ads, then this item is definitely for you personally.

[mannatea]

Pokémon Shield: A Review

DISCLAIMER: THERE WILL BE SPOILERS HERE!

First, my credentials/gaming history, so you can see if my opinion is valuable to you or not. I would like to make it clear from the start that I do not consider myself a ‘gamer’ by any stretch of the imagination. I’m a filthy casual at best.

I’ve been playing video games since I was maybe eight or nine years old. I’ve always enjoyed dabbling in a variety of genres, and have a great appreciation for the work that goes into creating each and every game, no matter the intended audience. Some of my all-time favorite titles include Tales of Symphonia, Fire Emblem (7), Final Fantasy IX, Legend of Dragoon, Chrono Cross, Tetris, Bust-a-Move, Project Gotham Racing, Ecco the Dolphin (PC,DC), Roller Coaster Tycoon, Harvest Moon (N64/PS1), World of Warcraft, and of course our beloved Pokemon!

I started with Pokemon Red, and enjoyed it immensely, but Silver stole my heart and my imagination. My brother and I used to sit at the kitchen table with guide books open and notebooks at the ready to craft and create new, extremely cool teams. I sank an unbelievable amount of hours into that game, and into Pokemon Stadium (1 & 2), Hey You! Pikachu, Pokemon Puzzle League, and even Pokemon Pinball. Unfortunately after Silver, my interest waned. I was an adult by the time Emerald debuted, and while I was initially charmed by it, found my interest waning quickly. I bought and played Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, SoulSilver, and Black & White, but didn’t beat any of them. I felt like the magic had…disappeared somehow.

But when X and Y released in 2013, I binged on Pokemon X, beat it, and for the first time since childhood started breeding a competitive team just for the heck of it. I also found myself really enjoying Pokemon Sun a couple of years later (though the post-game of breeding didn’t really do it for me this time).

They lost me with Ultra Sun/Moon. I wanted to like them, really, but it was too much of a rehash, and too much handholding (like the originals were, and I could only stand going through that once).

Now here we are with Pokemon Sword and Shield. They released just a few days ago (15 November, 2019) and the controversy has been wild. It seems to me that everyone has some kind of very strong opinion, and a lot of people are very angry.

Pokemon has always been one of my favorite franchises, but my history with the games is far from spotless so I like to think I can manage a mostly unbiased review, though of course everything in this post is my personal opinion.

Here’s what I’ve done in the game:

40 hours played.

200 pokemon in the pokedex.

Main story and post-game story completed.

I played with no specific self-imposed rules and was not spoiled for hardly anything before I started playing.

The Game’s Introductory Sequence [8/10]

As is standard for the franchise these days, the game flings you into the world with little fanfare regarding customization. Rather than the intro being a dialogue of sorts between your character and a professor, you are now instructed to choose what you look like (from a sparse few options) after typing in your name.

The first ‘cinematic’ is pretty boring, but I think the attempt at immersion is genuine enough (the idea being that your character is watching Leon’s broadcasted fight on your new smart phone). My character has a better house in-game than I do in real life. I’d kill for all that storage in the kitchen!

My biggest gripe with the introduction is that it reminded me too much of Sun & Moon’s introduction—in the worst of ways. I wouldn’t say it’s slow-paced, but the constant interruption by other characters is about enough to make a person rage-quit. Luckily I’ve been blessed with a lot of patience; it makes tedious content easy to bear (so long as it’s not difficult), but even I was feeling antsy before the first hour of the game was up, just because Hop and Leon never shut up and I was chomping at the bit to Explore.

Considering this is the first thing a player experiences…I really feel it could have been improved, especially the dialogue, but there were a few really positive things about it, too. The outdoor BBQ was a nice touch (considering everyone knew we’d be going off on Adventures in the morning and all), the game does let you avoid having to learn how to catch a pokemon (your mom slips a few pokeballs into your bag at one point without telling you and if you use them to catch pokemon, Leon will not teach you how to do it later), and I feel like as far as introductions go, this one was fairly short when compared to Sun and Moon’s introductory period.

While I’m being positive, the game plops you down into an idyllic little English countryside and not only do you get to enjoy that aesthetic, but the Slumbering Weald is probably one of the prettiest/most charming places in the game, and you get a peek at it early on!

 The Starter Pokemon [5/10]

I’ve experienced worse? I wasn’t spoiled for any of the starter pokemon’s evolutions starting out, and while I didn’t exactly hate any of them, I sure didn’t love ‘em, either. I named my Scorbunny “Chad” on the assumption that he was likely to turn into a chad, though I’m not sure that accurately describes the pokemon I ended up with. Clearly modeled after soccer players, my Chad is a cocky all-star jock. They went all out on his Pyroball animation but Double Kick can see itself out of my house. No love in this club.

I just really wish I found any of these starters or their evolved forms to be charming, but they’re not. Rillaboom is basically George of the Jungle but 3% less of a himbo, and Inteleon is Greninja’s younger brother in accounting.

 Gyms, Gym Challenges, & Game Balance [6/10]

This is probably one of, if not the, most debated topic over at Reddit. Is the game balanced? Are the gyms too easy? Are they making this game for 5-year-olds suddenly?

Eh. I do think the game is, perhaps, Too Easy, but a game being easy isn’t a shortcoming in and of itself. Check out my section on the story and characters for more on this topic, but I’ll post the short of it here, because it’s relevant: if the gameplay is going to be easy, we either need an option to make it more difficult, or the characters, story, and world have to carry the game in such a way that the easy gameplay still feels fun.

Shield had, uh, none of that going for it, unfortunately. The plot is lackluster (more about this later), and the gameplay wasn’t able to pick up the slack. In other words, the gameplay didn’t make the game feel Substantial in any way.

Which is kind of bad, considering Dynamaxing is a new feature!

The biggest issue for most people was the Experience Share. It’s turned on by default and there seems to be no way to turn it off. You get insane amounts of XP for defeating and catching pokemon, and your whole team seems to level pretty evenly even if you only occasionally use some pokemon in the party.

I personally played the game with the default battle option (where it asks if you want to switch out to a new pokemon when the enemy is going to send out a new one) because I barely remember half the pokemon in the game’s typing. Knowing the name of what’s coming next doesn’t always help me. (How’s that for an embarrassing truth?)

I personally liked the experience share, though I feel having the ability to toggle it on/off (or even on for certain pokemon and off for others) would have been ideal. The idea with having it on all the time is that your team will level fairly evenly so you’ll be able to switch in any of your six pokemon to battle without having to struggle through leveling some of the weaker ‘mons up individually. Additionally, it enables you to easily replace a pokemon on your team mid-game if you so desire. And I did (I replaced my shiny Orbeetle with regular cotton candy Rapidash).

My team at end-game was as follows:

Cinderace (Chad)

Greedent (Moriah)

Thievul (Penelope)

Liepard (My)

Corviknight (Octavia)

Rapidash (Calliope)

As you can see, I have no grass pokemon, no water pokemon, and no electric pokemon. I have two dark types. My move coverage mostly sucked throughout the game, because Thievul had 3 dark moves, and My had 3 normal moves. I’m an official idiot, thanks for coming to my TED talk. Usually I can struggle through no matter how garbage-tier my team is, and this game was…no exception.

I steamrolled the first few gyms and their challenges even though I wasn’t vastly overleveled for any of the content. After the ghost gym (which was easy for me with my dark types) I’d say the difficulty level went up slightly, mostly because my brain has refused to hold type advantages/weaknesses that came after Gen1. I feel like most original type weaknesses made some kind of sense to me and I was never able to incorporate dark and steel into that mix, let alone fairy.

At any rate, once you fight a pokemon once, the game will tell you if your moves are super effective against them or not. I remember people complaining about this feature when it was added (in Sun/Moon I think), but I like it. It doesn’t actually help a lot if you don’t know what the moves do/aren’t looking at move power/effects, but it’s useful for my sieve of a brain in a pinch.

Hop as a rival was almost never challenging. He always starts with the same pokemon, and his team is fairly easy to sweep. That might be kind of the point, but I wish you could have encouraged him to take the starter that’s strong against yours for a bit more of a challenge. Yeah, it’s not much, but it would have been something. Marnie is a better rival than Hop in the sense that she’s actually a better battler, but I swept her team pretty easily too, every single time we fought.

The only real challenges in the game were fighting Raihan (I only had one very weak fairy move and no ice to counter his dragons) and Leon (he definitely outleveled me). On Leon I had to use revives and potions!

The gym challenges started off as pretty cute (herding Wooloo, pipe puzzle maze) but quickly grew into lazy boring doldrums (basically gauntlet fighting of one kind or another). I guess I’d say ‘nice try’ for these and say I don’t really care if I see them again or not unless they’re going to actually give it a real go.

Overall, the story part of the game felt balanced enough for me personally but if I’m being completely unbiased: it was too easy to get levels. I could have wandered around less/caught fewer pokemon as I journeyed and enjoyed more of a challenge, but I just…gotta catch ‘em all, y’know? Most people do! GameFreak should have known this and designed accordingly.

The big issue with game balance feels like it comes…after the game, and I don’t mean the post-game so much as the Max Raid Battles that require other people, but the NPC trainers you can battle with are legit trash at what they do, which kind of forces you to find other trainers, but…

 Online Compatibility & Features [3/10]

So I think the rating speaks for itself, here. The interface is confusing, the stamps are annoying, and the ability to see other players but not interact with them in any meaningful way is rage-inducing (and not just because of the FPS drops).

X/Y had a better online system!

Sun and Moon was better!

I don’t know why we regressed. I’m glad they kept the “wonder trade” (renamed to random trade, I think), because I always did enjoy doing that, but the GTS was the best idea they ever had and they abandoned it for random trading? I don’t want to trade with randoms? If I wanted to do that, I’d just do a random trade in the first place!!! The inability to put what you’re looking for into the stamp that people see? Oversight. Or just bad design. Probably both!

I’ve never hated a pokemon online experience more than this. I’m just astounded by how bad it is. I tried to join max raid battles last night and kept being told the event was over, but the stamps just…didn’t refresh? For HOW LONG? I can’t even tell you because I don’t know, and I couldn’t find a way to manually force them to refresh. It’s like they update every 15 minutes instead of every 15-30 seconds (which they should if I’m browsing for trades to make or battles to join). There are ways around this (according to Reddit) but the interface should be intuitive and easy to use by default.

C’mon, guys, you can do better. This is legitimately embarrassing in the year 2019.

 Music [5/10]

There are some really magical tracks in this game, and there are some really terrible tracks. It doesn’t feel at all cohesive or thematic. I absolutely hated the gym battle remix; it was worse than the regular gym battle music. I feel like the gym battle theme would have really caught on if they didn’t have any other synth sounding tracks in the game, but they kind of do, so it blends in instead of sticking out as a bop.

Notable nice tracks were Hulbury, Glimwood Tangle, Slumbering Weald, and the desert route (which I can’t remember offhand). Some of the better music reminded me of the soundtrack for Tales of Symphonia, which is high praise coming from me. Unfortunately for every good track there were probably 3 forgettable ones.

There wasn’t anything particularly engaging when it comes to the music here, but it’s at least passable.

 Graphics, Design, and Animation [6/10]

I should clarify that this is 6/10 for a pokemon game, not in general. I don’t expect flashy realism in a pokemon game and neither should you. The graphics are adequate most of the time, but the animation leaves a lot to desire when you look away from the pokemon that feel like they were Chosen Ones (and received a lot more attention).

Rapidash, for example, is using the same base model and animations it’s been using since it’s been in 3D. I’m not going to claim since Stadium, but holy cow the animations are for sure the same as they’ve been since at least X/Y for all the older moves. I’m not impressed.

The characters all have dopey expressions on their faces always. The models just use one talking animation loop and it almost never changes. The main character still looks on like a smiley face emoji when turmoil occurs, and though this isn’t as bad as it was in Sun/Moon, it’s still…kind of jarring?

The Wild Area looks kind of bad sometimes, and some areas in the actual game were lackluster compared to what they should have been. Ballonlea is the town you step into after walking through the (honestly) magical Glimwood Tangle, and it’s this charming fairy wonderland…with two houses and a stadium the size of two billion football fields. Uh. Okay? You’re telling me they destroyed how much natural habitat to make this gym? It just doesn’t jive with the scenery/theme out there, especially considering Opal’s theatre is tiny. And it’s not just that I think the game is lacking thematically (though it clearly is), but there’s this…laziness to the design when it comes to places like Ballonlea. It could have been SUCH an enchanting town to explore, but it was two houses with nothing important in them and a sports arena that feels completely at odds with its surroundings. (In this town you do learn that an NPC you spoke to earlier was a ghost, but it’s not as if this is very important information/goes anywhere, really.)

Spikemuth, for all its flaws, was at least memorable. I can’t say the same for most of the towns in this game. I really enjoyed the music in Hulbury but you best bet I had to look it up to remember the name of the town! Time is partly to blame. We don’t spend a lot of time in each town, and we have no real reason to go back to them aside from visiting the nearest Pokemon Center to heal and rest up. But I would argue that, beyond that, the individual designs just…don’t feel memorable because they’re not memorable. The names are mostly meh (every time I see Ballonlea I think of Bologna for some reason), but without anything else to connect to the place as more than just a place…there’s no reason to remember any of it.

Like the music, these are all passable, graphics more than animation, animation more than design, but that’s all there is to it.

Camping and Cooking, Feathers and Fetch! [4/10]

I don’t actually have a lot to say about this. It’s a cute idea, and it’s fun maybe the first ten times that you do it, but then it’s just really boring. The game is terrible at explaining how to create different curry dishes, but it’s almost idiot-proof. I’ve yet to fail at it.

But I’m not sure I care about it, either?

You get like 1/100th of the amount of berries you need to cook while you journey along, so it feels disproportionate. I dunno. Just not a fan.

Playing with your pokemon is the only real joy that comes from camping, but its fun is limited. When you’ve tossed the ball a few times, or watched Liepard smack the feather toy a while, it has that, “Okay, I’ve seen it!” kind of feeling to it. That doing well at cooking can heal your party/cure status conditions is incentive to do it, but it’s faster to just fly to a pokemon center and run back on your bike most of the time than to pitch a tent with your ‘mons.

I feel like there should just be…more you can do when you’re camping together. I’m glad Pokemon Amie is dead (it was cringey), but it felt more personal than this.

I wish I had more to say about this feature, but it felt tacked on and lackluster after I camped a few times.

 Dynamaxing, Gigantamaxing, and Max Raid Battles [4/10]

The urge to give this a zero was high, but I am making an effort to be balanced.

That said, I hate dynamaxing. Gigantamaxing is almost the same thing, it’s just Worse Somehow. Until yesterday I thought they were basically the same thing (and that some pokemon just got extra cool dynamax forms). As it turns out, they’re not the same thing at all! Or rather, they are, but they’re also not?

Dynamaxing makes your pokemon grow large and gives it these generic MAX moves that it can use in combat (Max Knuckle, Max Flare, Max Strike). It lasts for three turns and then your pokemon reverts back to its regular ‘ol self.

Gigantamaxing is when your pokemon grows a little larger than large, gets a special Look, and gets the same generic MAX moves (but with special effects added to them). Oh, and better stats.

At least, that’s how I understand it.

Both are great for Max Raid Battles, where you team up with NPCs or other players and take down huge dynamaxed pokemon that are out in the wild.

Neither is a fun feature as part of the actual gameplay. I guess as a gimmick it works all right, but just like Z-moves it has a long annoying animation sequence, and like Mega Evolutions only some pokemon get to gigantamax (everyone else is just a pleb, I guess). I dunno. I just didn’t find the concept very engaging…maybe because it seems evil and wasteful in-universe, and this is more or less stated in the game itself, but what-the-hell-ever, we’re just going to keep doing it ‘cause it looks cool!

It’s just too goofy a concept for me. Maybe if Dynamaxing doubled or tripled their size, I’d find it more understandable and more aesthetically pleasing? I hate seeing my pokemon, or the opposing pokemon, grow 50+ feet tall and scream at three billion decibels.

(For the record I never liked Mega Evolutions or Z-moves as a concept, so it’s not like I’m nostalgic for a different gimmick. That said, at least I’d accepted Megas as a thing, and Z-moves were overall not too groundbreaking or gamebreaking.)

The design of dyna/gigamaxing is to connect it with specific places so that you can’t just max your pokemon in every battle and sweep every team you fight against, but it still feels like it gets used too much. I’m currently at a point where I find having to dynamax feels like a chore.

Considering this is what the game tried to sell itself on in the initial trailer…? Yikes? I don’t know. I think some people are more ‘okay’ with the concept of dyna/gigantimaxing than others, and I think I’d be fine with it if we only had dynamaxing. Introducing both just feels like overcomplicating things for no real reason, and maybe also poking a little hard at the hornets’ nest that is the competitive community.

Because now you have to go out and grind gigantamax pokemon to catch one, so it forces you to do the thing you might not like to get a pokemon that can do the thing you don’t like, because it’s objectively better in combat? But really, who knows? Maybe these overpowered phenomena will end up banned, anyway.

Despite my disdain for this release’s gimmick, I do think Max Raid Battles are pretty fun, at least…when I’m not getting my ass completely kicked while some NPC trainer’s Eevee is using Helping Hand… It’s actually pretty enjoyable when you can somehow find other people using the y-comm and take on a gigantamaxed pokemon with the help of actual human players. But y’know…good luck using that…lol.

Overall I think the biggest downfall of Dynamaxing/Gigantamaxing is that it doesn’t really add anything of substance to the game. I don’t think it makes it more fun. It’s also not necessary for max raid battles (this could be a phenomena we don’t understand yet that randomly seems to affect wild pokemon, just like with the UBs—hell, Anabel and Looker could return and claim this is all related to that stuff and I’d probably find that believable enough). So what does it add? Flavor? Culture? Nah. It’s just kind of there.

 Post-Game: Is That All? [3/10]

Post-game in Sun and Moon was the Alola version of the Battle Maison, breeding, and a somewhat lengthy (for a post-game) story where you assist Interpol agents Anabel and Looker in hunting down and capturing Ultra Beasts. The plot was somewhat woven into not only Sun and Moon’s storyline (Lusamine’s shenanigans), but also borrowed from the Sapphire/Ruby reboots and X/Y. If you didn’t already know Looker from Ruby/Sapphire/X/Y, or Anabel from Pokemon Emerald, you’ll still probably find them somewhat compelling/interesting as characters. Also, they did a really good job in Sun of making circumstances seem dire—of showing instead of telling you how dangerous the UBs were and how important it was to protect the people of the towns and villages you’d visited throughout your adventure.

Shield has… Max raid battles, a battle tower, and…breeding. Oh, and a storyline about the legendary dogs that barely makes any sense and is plagued by really irritating new characters.

The terrible truth is that the post-game of Sword/Shield is embarrassingly bad. You’d think they’d want to outdo themselves with every release. Sun and Moon hit it out of the park with their post-game content. Most people enjoyed the hunt for UBs, or at least the characters of Anabel and Looker. Sword and Shield have…. Sordward and Shielbert. DID I STUTTER?

They’re terribly designed characters, and so insulting as to not really be any fun at all. The Pokeball Guy mascot is Actually Fun; these dudes aren’t. They’re barely even villains? It was an excuse to try and pull what Sun and Moon pulled, but it didn’t work. I never felt like anyone was in danger at any point, probably because magically everyone was evacuated before I even arrived on the scene to stop Sordward and Shielbert’s vile schemes. :U Oh, and because I felt little or no connection to any of the towns I visited along the way, let alone the gym leaders. Maybe if these guys had showed up partway through the game and we sort of knew who they were already, this wouldn’t seem so out-of-nowhere, but it was, and that made it even worse than it had to be.

When it’s all over, you get your legendary dog (I named mine Goodest Boy), but it wasn’t a fun storyline at all. Who are these guys? Why should I care about them? I cared about Looker and Anabel because they came onto the scene and showed that they cared about each other as people (and showed it, multiple times). These guys? They wreaked havoc and didn’t even go to jail. At least Rose went to jail!

I don’t think the post-game is terrible so much as I think it’s underwhelming, especially considering what it came on the heels of. I don’t expect More More More from every game, but I do expect improvements to be made. A decent post-game storyline is all I was asking for, and I didn’t even get that.

But there’s the tower and you can breed pokemon and train EVs and all that stuff more easily now, so…

 Characters, Story, and Worldbuilding [4/10]

Let me put this as delicately as I can: I’m not a fan.

I could easily rant about bad character writing, bad stories, and weak worldbuilding for hours, but I’ll limit myself because 1) this is a pokemon game, and 2) nobody really looks for exceptional characters here.

As I said earlier, I feel like Sun and Moon did it Better. Most of the main characters in Su/Mo were likable, interesting, had a fun design, or were amusing. Not so in Shield.

Hop has a terrible name (literally a million names to choose from and they picked this?), but the biggest crime he commits is that he doesn’t get a satisfying story arc at all. When he got down about himself I had hope there would be some cool development, but there wasn’t. He ended up getting his crap together and making a Team and Picked a Strategy (which still involves sending the sheep out first I guess). And then randomly in the post-game decided he was going to be a professor…lol.

I felt like 20 different people wrote that plot, because it was terribly cobbled together and didn’t flow at all. Natural progression would have been nice.

Marnie barely has a story and barely develops. Piers seems to kind of have more ‘meat’ to his character but not a lot is done with it.

The gym leaders are otherwise really meh. Okay, so Nessa and Sonia are pals. Gal pals. Pals that are gals. Gals that are pals. Great. I don’t think we ever see them talk so it doesn’t matter. Melony has a son…and it’s just a nod to the other game where her son is the gym leader instead? Boring.

Bede is an asshole with a sob story who doesn’t really get redeemed but gets the redemption option anyway. They could have REALLY done something amazing with this guy but chose not to. His backstory is actually pretty interesting! But they didn’t utilize it worth a damn. And also he was right about the mural soooo…

Sonia was maybe the best character in the game, and that’s just from a technical standpoint. She had development, she developed, she grew as a character. Emotionally, though, I felt detached from her. Maybe it was being called a child all the time that did that? I’m not sure. I get that the protag is a child but I’m living independently and doing well for myself so maybe have a little respect idk… Especially when the first 2/3 of the game you’re told the adults will handle things, and then randomly you’re interrupted every fifty seconds to take care of other people’s nonsense. :|

In fact, I felt emotionally disconnected from pretty much every character. I didn’t really like or feel for anyone. Hop came the closest (feeling guilty about losing a battle cause it might make his brother look bad), but the bad dialogue options and inability to actually cheer him up was frustrating more than anything.

There are zones that are breathtakingly lovely (Slumbering Weald! Ballonlea! Glimwood Tangle!) but all the rest are more or less forgettable. The characters are connected to the world…sorta, but there are times it feels like they force-connected them through dynamaxing and dialogue accents instead of trying to make characters who naturally fit into the world. Like I talked about before, Opal’s gym felt completely disconnected from the reality of her environment. She lives there for a reason. Doesn’t the stadium’s presence jar her? How many fairy pokemon lost their homes when that thing took away tens of acres of forest? What’s the story here? Or anywhere for that matter?

Spikemuth was a waste of space but at least it felt like an attempt to show us a poverty-stricken area… Unfortunately it all fell flat the second they used two models for Team Yell! Team Yell could have been really cool, especially if they’d had different models with their names (challenged by Team Yell Grunt Sierra/Troy/Nellie/whatever), and the same team yell outfit/clothes/paint on. Then we could see these are just regular guys and gals from this poor area who want to cheer on their hometown girl!!!

But that was a weakness throughout the game, because Team Yell were all gym trainers, and all shared models…just like all the other gyms. It felt lazy to me. The outfits can be the same, but way to go making all the models literal clones. That’s just laziness.

The villains are all meh. Rose? Of course he was a villain. The problem is that he’s not a villain for being a capitalist pig or anything. He’s a villain for wanting to fix a power issue that’s 1,000 years from happening. Meh motivation. If it was 50 years away then we have a compelling villain! But no, not 50. A thousand years from happening. And he can’t wait five fucking minutes.

Oleana was boring.

Leon was exactly the person he was the entire game…

The taxi service is a cute idea, and a nice gameplay addition, but it doesn’t really add anything to the world because they didn’t make the effort to integrate it.

Anyway, I’ve rambled enough.

The short of it is this: I walked away from this game not really caring about the world or any of the characters. I don’t even have a favorite character. I can’t remember the last time that happened to me. YIKES.

The Wild Area [8/10]

I don’t want to cover this for too long, because I feel it’s been done to death, but the Wild Area is what the whole game should have been. Or at least, more of the game. I don’t expect we’ll ever get a fully open-world pokemon game EVER, but this foray into the true 3D tells me that it could be a lot of fun, actually, even in somewhat constrained environments. (Oh, and with a good map.)

I enjoy the idea of the Wild Area, but I think its usefulness is limited without the appeal of having more pokemon patched into the game later. Until I get sick of it, though, it’s a pretty neat concept, and it makes hunting for new pokemon to catch a little more fun than it usually is. I like that they kept the overworld pokemon in this area as well as on the routes you have to travel; it feels like more of an adventure to dodge a huge Steelix and scoot closer to see what that yellow thing is in the grass you can’t quite make out. :)

Basically: fun concept that is enjoyable for now but has limited enjoyment. As far as negativity goes, I don’t have much to complain about here that I didn’t complain about in the Online Compatibility section above.

The Pokemon Themselves [6/10]

I was challenged by @hijauindah to list my top five favorite new pokemon from the game, so here we go!

Nickit (cute design!)

Boltund (smooth, well designed—not too cluttered)

Ponyta/Rapidash (MY LITTLE PONY… I think Rapidash could look better, but I’m just glad they cared enough to try something new with them…)

Frosmoth (Super pretty pokemon design.)

Dragapult (Nifty design.)

Most of the new designs are just…okay. There are a lot I don’t actually care for. But I’m biased; I just want more creature-based pokemon that look like they could exist and function in the world they live in. Some of these designs they come up with look like they’d have died out ten thousand years ago due to being Poorly Evolved lol.

 Final Thoughts [6/10]

The worst part of the game for me personally was probably feeling like I was getting interrupted constantly by other characters. JUST LET ME PLAY. But the best part was definitely exploring the new areas, catching a shiny 2 hours into the game, and getting to the end more or less with the team I started with.

The individual scores don’t add up to a 6/10 (they actually add up to a 5.16/10) but I think it’s worth noting that I did have a fun time playing through the game, I intend to hop into the breeding stuff, and even though I don’t have to keep max raid battling and stuff, I probably will.

It’s far from the 9s that it was getting by certain people from certain places that won’t be named here, but it’s not as if it’s a dumpster fire game. I don’t regret the money I spent on it, and I hope to keep enjoying the game for a few more months (albeit more casually than I did over the weekend), but I hope GameFreak has learned from its follies and puts its best foot forward with the next game, because I will not manage to be this forgiving again.

[wolfliving]

Steven Sinofsky at CES

*Here we have industry veteran Steven Sinofsky visiting CES in Las Vegas for 2020, and his extensive, much-documented, multi-decade point of view is the best CES reportage that I’ve seen this year.  The business about the "fragility" of the smart home is well-observed.

https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/ces2020-primordial-soup-of-innovation-208571f15c94

CES is a show where invention meets innovation — inventions are the ingredients of products, not necessarily products. An innovation is the result of an invention meeting the best execution of product, price, place, and promotion, usually taking many iterations from many companies.

(…)

The remainder of this report looks at 12 different technologies/categories and what I saw.

(…)

Folding Screens: It folds, so now what? 8K TV Is Here: That’s a lot of pixels 5G and WFi 6: So many frequencies! Home Automation: So many nice touches, but… Home Security: Consolidating Health and Monitoring: Watch out! Mobile Phones: Two screens Transportation: So many choices Smart Everything: There’s an app for that Pro Photography/Video: Hybrid! PCs: Pendulum swings back to power Energy: Batteries!

(...)

Going all the way back to universal remote controls that could do magical things like open window blinds through X15 and now ZigBee and others, home automation has been the next big thing at CES for, well, forever. The journey continues.

Every once in a while something new is introduced that will be the technology that brings everything together and allows us to cross into that magical world of the Jetsons. This past two years have all been about Alexa (and to an arguably lesser degree Hey Google). This year the voice efforts were entirely ubiquitous so as to be uninteresting, but the problems have not been solved. If anything the problems continue to compound because nearly every device is getting or is offered with its own microphone and voice controller.

I feel like this year reinforced for me that the journey needs a break. While for techies and people with the time to futz, things can be made to work, the fragility is overwhelming. Unlike say a programmable remote or light switch that doesn’t work, a garage door opener or a sprinkler system that fails becomes a bigger problem requiring immediate attention. Clothes that don’t get cleaned or ovens that don’t turn on can be more than annoying.

This section was supposed to be a look at the marvels of new scenarios — there were plenty of neat new home devices, like entry doors with face recognition built into the door (how’s that for commitment to be around in 30 years?) or a wardrobe screen/mirror that knows what you have in the closet, or a plethora of remote controlled washing appliances. These are all nice and many solve problems people have today, but with a very high cost in a relatively short time.

The problem is homes are designed around a 10–20 year cycle, and tech does not yet work that way. My feeling, especially as I run a home like a laboratory for all this stuff, is that what is really holding everyone back is the focus on retrofitting. We have 75 years of modern homebuilding (thinking of the GE Carousel of Progress!) with codes, replacement parts, and more. Tech isn’t set up like this. Even modern appliances are hugely problematic (why is it that ovens randomly differ by like 1/8” between model years making replacement difficult, or why does when a washing machine break those parts never exist). Add in a tech factor and it gets much worse in much less time.

Some of us will pick one scenario and make it work — doorbells is the breakthrough one (see below). I have a garage door and connected up to Amazon Key and it is amazing. Except it only works half the time when I summon it through HomeKit.

I wanted to pick one example that seems so simple yet illustrates this point — the ubiquitous decora socket. This socket has been a marvel of safety and utility for generations. For a while home automation was suggesting to replace these with CAT5 wiring to lights, and then those homes are left hanging trying to figure out what to do for a remodel that doesn’t involve ripping out all the walls. At least line voltage always works. With USB seemingly taking over powering most everything imaginable (maybe DC and Edison were right!) many of us now have USB in these decora switches. They are easy but a pain to install, probably don’t match the other switches precisely.

Then along comes USB-C. Time to update those. And if you’re not an electrician or live in a rental good luck. Then in a year, along comes USB PD so even those need updating.

These aren’t even for automation, just to connect to stuff. I think the break we need to take is that someone, probably in Korea, is going to start commercial construction from a blank slate (like a forward-looking Carousel of Progress) and rethink how home or more likely offices should be built for automation. It could be that using what’s available today can work, but that will still be a big commitment.

On the lookout for devices that don’t require home construction, this year featured endless Roombas all extolling how smart they were at navigating your home.

(…)

Home Security, perhaps out of a modern but sad need, is an area that in just a couple of years has progressed marvelously. What started off as systems with door and motion detectors and a home base have blossomed into systems that ADT would not have been able to create for 100X the cost. Truly impressive.

CES is a perfect showcase of the integration or bundling/consolidation in the space. There was one startup that made the first smart door lock, taking advantage of Bluetooth, wifi, and the cloud. Many thought this would disrupt the likes of Yale, Schlage, and more (who never even came to CES until locks added radios.) Instead those companies through organic and M&A are leaders in locks now (a great story). Even relatively complex tech like biometrics is making its way into locks. The vulnerability of PINs is driving wave of locks supporting biometrics from all the makers (what is old is new).

But now locks are part of a bigger picture and consumers want integration — apps for locks, alarms, garage, gates, smoke/fire, and more are a ridiculous combination. That is like trying to get a zigbee solution to work or worse to make “automation scenes” work without a professional installer.

The product lines that have emerged, from SimpliSafe to ADT (yes them) and Amazon Ring (and more) are incredible. A huge part of this has been replacing complex integration at the edge over fragile radios with WiFi (when the power profile allows for it).

A great (but hardly only) example of this is the Ring product line, called Ring X. Inventing to integrate into existing infrastructure (24V electronic bells) the product has expanded to a “professional” level that requires (and leverages) homes to be more wired with CAT6. Doing so gets a doorbell, cameras, gate control, and lighting, and more. But this is a remodel. Will this work still in years? It could be because DC current is pretty predictable and likely that connectivity will be wireless down the road. Those choices seem like great bets. If you use more high end WiFi you’ve also experienced the joys of power over ethernet (Ubnt, or Eeero have kits).

Some parts of home security are more acute, like receiving packages. Every year there are new attempts at creating products to enable package delivery to unattended homes. This one made a showing this year and though it requires line voltage provides a viable alternative.

Across all the security systems, cameras themselves are starting to build recognition into the feature set. Many feel this is driven by the China market where these cameras and recognition are ubiquitous (and many devices are made.) It remains to be seen how this will play out globally. Huawei had this demonstration going on which the irony of a US showing of this by them was probably lost in translation. This is the photo above with me in it....