#tbf a lot of them are heavy in data but like

[angered-box]

i honestly wish i could play pjsk again but alas my phone hates me having more than 5 games

[phoenastra]

An experience (Xbox Series X/S)

So... On Saturday, I got an Xbox Series X. Now this isn't too much of a problem. Most people would be like: "OH DAMN. YOU GOT A RARE CONSOLE. WEEEE."

It, in fact, is a problem. I come from a PlayStation and Nintendo background. A lot of those things are easy to use and navigate. Yes, I had to make entirely new accounts for those two platforms, but it was still a better experience than what I'm about to describe.

I got an Xbox to play all the Halo games whenever I want (and whenever I find something that I can't get on PS or Switch). I borrowed my SO's 360 back in January to play CE through 4 and had a BLAST. I was in love with the games. (This is my reasoning and determination to get through these problems)

Now I knew going into this that Xbox/Microsoft is very update heavy and will force them on you. That isn't too much of an issue for me now, but holy crap...

So, my stepmom took it into her work to get it to update all the games and stuff. (took 2 days). I finally got it back today. I didn't mind this TOO MUCH because right now I am supposed to be playing Pokémon games to get rid of them on my backlog. -_-

I plug it in after sneaking the console past my dad and stuff. First thing I do is check to see if the Master Chief Collection works. I get internet checked, so I comply and use my slow ass data. Whatever. That's fine.

Next obstacle... Checking to see if Reach and 3 ODST would show up in the MCC. They did in fact... But then it told me I had to pay for them (yes, I knew this was supposed to happen, but some part of me wished it didn't). IT'S OKAY. THIS IS FINE. I log into my browser and try to pay for them that way so I don't have to input payment info into the console (takes too long and not used to the controller to save my life rn)...

Next problem I have encountered... The Xbox store in the browser would not let me buy the games. I was essentially just sitting there waiting for the Xbox loading logo to go away and IT WOULDNT. I went on multiple different devices. So I went ahead and tried it on the console and it worked, until it told me the payment method thing. Tbf, never done ANY OF THIS BEFORE. So here I am, going in my Microsoft account settings and connecting my payment method THAT GAVE MICROSOFT MY ADDRESS TO BEGIN WITH.

AND I STILL HAD TO INPUT AN ADDRESS TO PAY FOR IT.

Like idfk what Microsoft is doing, but it's literally connected to my payment info. Anyway, so I go in and add my address to my billing/shipping info. I refresh the page on my console and I pay for both 3 ODST and Reach. Here I am, expecting them to "download the DLC" aka GIGS worth of data... Yeah well, no, it downloads 20 MBs and essentially UNLOCKS ALL THE DATA THEY MADE ME DOWNLOAD FOR THE PAST TWO DAYS.

HUZ-FUCKING-ZAH

Perfect, one thing went right with this. I check in MCC and it's unlocked and now I can play (currently paused in Reach rn just to make sure I'm playing as a woman in that game because I reject the notion that 6 is a male. Tyvm)

Now, I would say my horror story / inconvenience is over with... Until we get to the Apple dirtybud situation... Idk why Xbox is like this, but wtf is everything buzzing? Idk why. The article I used to fix the problem helped and they explained. Either way, not my problem now. But I can finally play with headphones. BUT WHY IS DEFAULTED TO PLAY AUDIO FROM THE TV AND THE HEADPHONES?! WHY IS THAT EVEN A THING?! IM PLAYING A SHOOTING GAME. AKA LOUD. WHAT THE HECK?! Another simple fix in the settings -_-

My last problem... Captures -_-. I come from a VP (virtual photography) background, meaning I take screenshots a lot. It's needed, especially for layouts and whatnot. So here's me, trying to figure out how to get these photos and videos onto a flashdrive. None of my flashdrives work on the console because they are too slow and it's like... WHY DO YOU NOT HAVE A COPY THESE PHOTOS TO FLASHDRIVE OPTION?! Literally, PS does and it's slow, BUT IT WORKS OMG??? So here I am, questioning if my external harddrive works in the console. So I plug it in and it's like "DING DING DING. WE HAVE A WINNER." I wanna sob. Either way, another problem... Fixed...

Look, the console is amazing. I'm excited to finally have one, but it's not a user friendly experience. Quite the opposite. The UI is absolutely terrible and I wish I could understand it faster. Like upgrading from the ps4 to the ps5 took a moment or two to get used to... But this... Yeah. I'm not happy with having to learn an entire console.

Either way, I am still happy and excited to finally play (even tho I need to play Pokémon). So I'm gonna play a bit of Reach and remember January when I first joined the Halo fandom here.

Thank you for reading. Here's a photo of me with my console : D

Sorry if the formatting is weird. I'm on mobile. Pray for me.

[zandyin]

Finished watching a DBH LP and I have WORDS. (Not fun words if you want me to praise this game, just unstructured prattling on about Cage’s pretentiousness.)

Unrelated but no wonder I disliked North’s acting so much... it’s Minka Kelly. She was horrid in the last thing I saw her in, lol. Which was ironically Almost Human, a show about an android who was the good cop to his surly human partner’s bad cop routine. It was a super dorky show with tropes out the wazoo lol but I was following Michael Ealy’s projects at the time so I wanted it to do well. It didn’t and if you watch you can see why...

Anyways, the LP I watched (TBF) was a complete fuck up so I didn’t even get to see the “good” endings, and lbr, Cage wants you to get those good endings seeing as one of his protagonists literally leads the android revolution, Kara is created to be the most sympathetic character, and Connor has Hank to “humanize” him.

So unsavory to see that holocaust imagery... like... really, Cage... you fucking went there. And they didn’t even seem to be recycled? Are they being used for their blue blood, which has been stated to be a rare and low quantity resource? How are androids so cheap... ALSO THEIR BLOOD IS LITERALLY USED TO MAKE DRUGS!? I wonder how much those drugs sell for if androids have 0 fail safe to show when they’ve been tampered with (i.e. removing their LEDs), can’t call authorities on their owners, etc... buy a bunch of robots and say you have a farm, but secretly harvest their blood.

So back to the holocaust imagery, l m a o, if Cage couldn’t prove himself to be an even bigger hack. I know that’s not the only ending available, but the fact it is and... the WAY IT’S WRITTEN. How cheap! How dare you use that imagery to garner sympathy for your android characters cause you couldn’t be bothered to tone down the heavy handedness!! I’d expect something like decommissioning, not shooting them all to shit (tbh idk how they were “decommissioned” but the bodies on the truck with Kara and Alice looked damaged). It says recycling plant (I get it, let’s point out how non-human they are) but wow. Just wow.

Markus died ages ago in this LP cause they suck at reading all their options, can’t comment on his stuff.

Ah, yeah, that reminds me... the androids in the evidence room that COULD be brought back online. I wonder if you could kind of fix them? Connor was able to do it no problem with just switching parts around. Does that cheapen their “death” if they weren’t hit where their memory is stored? To me, abso-fuckin’-lutely. These dudes got Connor killed cause they didn’t know the name of Hank’s son, but Hank didn’t shoot Connor in the head (which seems to be the “kill shot” for memory stuff?) IDK WE DON’T KNOW ANDROID ANATOMY but I would have more than one memory thing in an android. Back-ups, man. It’s 2038 and y’all still haven’t learned the importance of backing up your data!? You tellin’ me that they have advance AI but haven’t learned how to compress data even further into microchips smaller than current micro sd cards? Tragic.

I would never say DBH is my favorite game or that it’s amazing, just because it’s use of civil rights and holocaust imagery for the reasons stated above leave me feeling very uncomfortable, but I enjoyed parts of it and liked most of the characters. I have a huge bias for androids, man... but I’m always at odds with Cage’s idea of a good narrative.

OH YEAH THE HAIR IS A HOLOGRAM THEN WHY DID KARA CUT HER HAIR AT THE BEGINNING OF THE GAME!?!?!?!?! That scene was such a big thing to represent her “freedom” or whatever, but... it’s... not real............... she didn’t have to.............. cut her hair..........

This is just a nuance depending on how you play, I imagine, but I don’t like “I actually kill humans” Connor, haha. I don’t want any of my androids killing people without understanding life and death!

I think what upsets me most about this game is how people are reacting to it and seemingly glossing over its clunky and tone-deaf use of the civil rights movement. I saw a few tweets that were more spiteful than I’d like, and written by people I feel were trying to cash in on social brownie points, but just cause Connor seems cute to you does not make this a great game, haha. It’s got a LOT of issues and as long as you’re aware of that, I’m cool. But when you think people are over reacting to how Cage handles those issues... tells me a lot about those types of people.

Now that the LP is over, and I won’t have time to watch alt content until later, I should make less posts about “god that fuckin cage is a goddamn hack” :d