I took the last couple of weeks off for what should be obvious reasons. Wasn’t exactly feeling like sitting down and talking about my consumption of media when there were more important things going on. This will be more of a general “this is how I’ve spent my time” post rather than a focused write-up.
I’ve mostly been taking it easy. The weather is getting colder here in Colorado. It’s a time of the sun setting earlier, cold wind numbing your entire face, listening and re-listening to your Shoegaze collection, and trying to avoid showing any degree of pleasure or happiness while everyone else is affected by seasonal depression; sorry, but I really fucking love Fall. That also means that this is the best time to spend my days bundled up in a blanket, avoiding the miasma outside as much as possible. And what do you do when you’re all wrapped up? You either watch a movie or play a long-ass RPG. Living the gimmick here, I’m going to talk about an RPG.
Been playing some Hyperdimension Neptunia. It’s that time of year where I feel the need to consume as much cutesy anime shit with a moderately-sized budget as possible. I have a weird “seasonal” taste in my media. Does it have magical girls screeching and making weird faces while fighting monsters before they have to get back to class? Give me that shit. Inject it directly into my veins like it’s a popular new designer drug. I have to balance myself with adorable things, as much as I do with gory blood shit or fast cars.
Hyperdimension Neptunia is a game where a bunch of anthropomorphic video game console fight each other in a war that never ends. The main character, Neptune (named after the unreleased Sega Neptune) gets hit in the head, and falls to fake video game earth, losing her memory, and then hijinks ensue. That’s really all you need to know. The rest of the game is fighting game references, dialogue full of memes, and grinding a ton so you can fight the next boss. But you know what? That’s all I need. Neptunia is a very simple game. An issue with a lot of RPGs of this particular era is that they are way too fucking long, with very little happening. I remember playing Persona 4 several years ago and wondering when this prologue chapter would end and I could actually do stuff with my controller; that shit went on for what felt like hours, and probably was. I don’t have that problem. Dialogue windows in this game are not especially long. There’s a ton of small sidequests and a bunch of extra dungeons to explore, but it’s all active. You’re constantly doing something in the game. The combat? It’s not pressing “Fight” on a menu, there’s a whole combo system at work. There’s this constant interactivity, which is great, because it means that even when I’m turning my brain off to get experience or money, I’m not bored out of my fucking skull while I’m doing it.
Something I was a bit wary of when I loaded the game was the degree of horniness present. I mean, these girls do look pretty young, and a lot of games like this love to do the whole “she’s actually a 3000 year old demon” bullshit. And…it’s surprisingly tame? Like, there are definitely some characters with some big mondo tits, but at least they’re adults. It’s not like my nightmare experience of playing Blue Reflection on PS4, where the developers thought giving its 14-year-old protagonist jiggle physics was a great idea, in addition to providing lots of shower scenes and having her school uniform turn transparent in the rain so you get to see her underwear. Fuck Blue Reflection, I don’t give a fuck how good its music is. Hyperdimension Neptunia is more like, at worst, I would be put on an FBI list, as opposed to wondering if there are armed agents literally outside my door.
Anyway, the game fucking owns. I plan on playing more of this, and maybe even trying out its sequels when I’m done.
I’ve also been spending a bit of time getting back into Tekken 7, now that season 4 has arrived. Taking a look at all of the changes that have occurred, trying to get back to the rank I was on PS4, but on the PC version. How am I doing with that?
Think I’m doing fine.
I’m either playing with randos, or playing with my friend Hazel. Things have been really fun, and I’ve also noticed that I’ve gotten a lot less frustrated when losing. Every match is a learning opportunity, win or lose. If I get completely destroyed 3-0, well hey, that means I should learn to adapt to my opponent, or even hit up training mode if I need to. Losing causes me to laugh more than seethe, which is great. Like, yeah, I do take getting better at fighting games seriously, but they’re still games. It’s not a matter or life or death if I fucked up an input, or dropped a combo like a freaking dope, or if I’m faced with an unfamiliar match-up I don’t know what to do with. Fighting games are great.
So I think that’s a good place to wrap up this pos-
NO WAIT! FUCK! WHAT THE FUCK!? MY WORLDS! MY WORLDS ARE COLLIDING!
Video games rule.
Maybe I’ll do another post this week. Something more dedicated. Just needed to shake the rust off with this one.
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