Month: October 2019

What I'm Playing: Last Cloudia

This is quite a nice surprise! It's a gacha game, sure, but the characters aren't rated, they're all useful. Instead the "Arks", which are like FFVII Materia, are rated R, SR, SSR, and provide a list of buffs, skills, and spells; but a character must attune to them by building up experience with that Ark equipped.

The starting quest characters are the usual fairly dim swordsman Kyle (fricking Kyle?!), giant monster companion (Rei, which is normally a feminine name?), former enemy cyborg sniper girl (Lilebette), and an NPC magical girl (Theria). Happily after my first pull I got Prince Gorm, who is a strong melee fighter and has a group heal ultimate which is incredibly valuable, so he's replaced Kyle.

You level up characters with a sphere grid right out of FFX, with a lot of choices of which direction to develop, unlike Another Eden, where the advancement path was mostly linear. At certain level breaks, you also get to unlock a story page; I can see Rei's is going to be a misunderstood monster line, Gorm is an implausibly altruistic industrialist prince, Lilebette's is cuter than you'd expect from a murder machine.

The main story quest, and the two little sidequests I've found so far, are not bad at storytelling; a little slow, but then there's a giant infodump story session with the Imperial council.

Fighting looks great, but it really resolves down to waiting for timers and hitting skills when near targets. The characters move and auto-attack on their own, and the ones you're not controlling will use some of their own skills, but not all; for efficiency you need to cycle thru characters and use up their saved skills and magic.

The graphical design is interesting, very detailed 3D rendered backgrounds, and cute 2D pixel art characters and monsters. I like this, pixel art's much more expressive than 3D shit, but it can be jarring. The music's nice chiptunes, very Final Fantasy-like.

★★★★☆

What I'm Playing: Mostly iOS Edition

Apple Arcade

  • Various Daylife: Previously described, an RPG life simulator. Slow, tedious, but mildly interesting. Worst title of any game I've heard of. Mediocre.
  • Chu-Chu Universe: Yes, this is another Chu-Chu Rocket, in 3D with shitty controls. I like the slow logic puzzles, but I've played the better version of this game hundreds of hours on the DS (yes, I hear you, two lonely Dreamcast users out there), don't really need a new one. Also, it makes my iPhone 8+ extremely hot along the top-right corner; GPU-heavy with no way to turn that off? Mediocre.
  • What The Golf: Sort of a ripoff of Desert Golfing with a mini-golf course and QWOP or RSSS style physics antics. I'm easily amused by bad physics games, they remind me of Waterful Ring Toss from my childhood. Nice.
  • Sayonara Wild Hearts: Very pretty neon style. Unplayably sluggish movement even at "high" sensitivity setting, forces you to sit through minutes of slow dialogue about hippie tarot bullshit before you can play anything. Deleted after one track. And I like endless runners, so if that's not your thing it'll be even less pleasant. Fail.
  • Inmost: Monochrome pixely, but pretentious starting text "is a moving story of loss and hope, with themes". Incredibly slow, "platformer" but with very little platforming. No dialogue, tap or X does everything so you just have to pixel-hump targets and wait for the action to appear. Fail.

So far this is not a service I'll be renewing. There's nothing here I couldn't get better for that money.

Not Apple Arcade

  • World of Warcraft Classic: I was happy at the start, but rapidly got less so: The sharding is really interfering with gameplay, so I took a break, and then Blizzard decided they'd rather support the totalitarian citizen-murdering dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party than one streamer calling for the independence of democratic Hong Kong. Just to make my position clear: Free Hong Kong! Break up China! Do not punish people for expressing support for democracy, you evil corporate douchebags. Yeah, they gave him back his prize money, but still banned him. Screw that. Cancelled my sub.
  • Elder Scrolls Online: ZOS has a new combat team this year, and they've ruined my Sorcerer build, even worse nerfs are coming in the next patch, and I don't want to pursue total changes to his skills, gear, and gameplay in hopes of maybe ever clearing content again. I was thinking about ending my ESO+ sub for a while, but then WoW blew up so I'm playing my Khajiit Vampire Mag Necromancer "Mortissa Kamidjanni" as main, and having a fun time again; ZOS haven't nerfed the new class yet, ha ha! (I also have a Stam Warden, who was born nerfed, and a Mag Nightblade which is usually the unnerfed class but I don't like the gameplay for that combo). ESO has four kinds of content: Overworld content, which has quests but combat is trivial and boring; Bosses (world or dungeon), which have no interesting quests, combat can be fun but often needs a group and I hate PUGs; Trading, which is slightly interesting but I'm obscenely rich in-game already; and Housing decoration, which is sort of the endgame when you have millions of gold. So my Necro kitty does some overworld quests to get skill points, mats, and recipes, then switch to my Sorc Elf to do housing. It's something to do. Good but so disappointing compared to what it could be.
  • Mario Kart Tour: It's Mario Kart with gacha-like unlocks. Just as stupidly unfair as ever. Mildly fun if you have no attachment to skill determining who "wins" a race. Recommended age range: 1-7.
  • Mirage Memorial: Big-titty waifu versions of historical and mythical figures (many are men converted to women… King Arthur, Edward "Blackbeard" Teach, etc wtf, but also Lucifer, Athena, etc). Unskippable tutorial with no choices for the entire first chapter, and every time a new feature unlocks. Combat is an auto-idler thing; you CAN turn auto off and hit portraits to activate a random skill, but that's it. Somewhat interesting character level-up system, no character is "useless" but may need a lot of grinding to build up. I did a level grind up to 17 in a couple hours while watching Netflix, got bored out of my skull, turned it off. I'm not saying avoid or delete this, but be aware of what it is, which is nothing.
  • Another Eden: Has had a couple new chapter updates, I intend to get back into this.
  • Last Cloudia: Just launching today, looks very pretty. Here's a beginner's guide

OS Compatibility and the Web

OK, not EOL yet, but soon. Long before any rational person would switch to an untested, incompatible new OS version. Among other things, anyone using Adobe software can't go to Catalina.

The policy I like is to support the last two or three major OS releases. There are good techniques in Objective-C to support testing for new features and falling back if you don't have them; I don't think most of those work in Swift, because Swift's an amateur hour language.

Happily, I use Feedbin to sync my RSS feeds rather than keep them all local, so when NNW stops updating I can just go back to a working web interface. Sad that Brent keeps resurrecting and killing his app, but that's what he gets for chasing Apple's tail.

This is why the web beats native applications. You can indeed make a better interface in native code; you can't maintain it, and you can't port it. The native dev is constantly chasing a new API that breaks everything past, and fighting with garbage tools like Xcode. The web dev just needs ed or another text editor, and only has to target the browser, which is a moving target but has backfills and a compatibility policy, and native browsers generally work on the last two major OS releases. Firefox is a UI shitshow, but still supports OS X 10.9 Mavericks (2013); Safari obviously is part of the OS, and the last few changes are making me strongly consider moving off it, but this Mojave version will keep browsing the web just fine long after Catalina is released.

The ideal of cross-platform languages ever since UCSD Pascal is to get the best of both worlds, write code once and have it compile and run everywhere, and ignore underlying OS changes.

What I'm Playing: Various Daylife

A new Square Enix game, the first thing under Apple Arcade that's interested me.

So this isn't quite a normal RPG, it's more of an adventurer's life simulator. You answer a few questions to get a starting role, and are quickly rushed through meeting 3 NPCs who will be your main party for a while; since there are multiple party screens, I assume you get new ones later, but I'm not reading cheat sites yet.

You spend most of your time in your home hitting "Work" and picking missions from the other party members. They just take a half day (there are day and night jobs) and there's no gameplay in this. Your purpose here is to earn money and experience, and build up rank points in stats so they rank up. Doing several of these will improve your affinity with that party member, and unlock new jobs with them or side-quests.

  • Warrior: Wolf, Boar, Bear, Tiger Control.
  • Secretary (Magic-User): Filing, Transcription.
  • Server (Cleric): Water Service, Waitlist Attendance.

Each job consumes Stamina, and when you're low, you may fail missions, and then pass out. I once did this and missed about 4 days sleeping. Sleep at least every few days!

You do occasionally get to go out on wilderness quests, where your party runs left-to-right until a mob is met, does a turn-based combat, then resumes running. You can camp to eat and sleep if you bought those items; I found a food vendor on the docks, but no tent vendor yet.

The town consists of a series of left-right only streets, looping around, with up/down access points. It's not hard to search the whole thing, but sometimes not obvious where the access point is. There's a number of little shops, and events you can pay for.

One amusing but buggy part, I took out the waitress character on a date, she ends up back in my home, nice! but the menu is gone and I can't escape. Finally managed to tap on an invisible button and get out, but I was trapped for a bit. Is this a lesson about commitment and why I'm a nameless drifter?

Shops are not up to the usual Squenix standards. You have to buy items one at a time, and there's a very small wilderness quest inventory (currently 6 items!) so there's not much point in buying too much. Buying gear doesn't auto-equip it, or even remind you to; good thing I've been playing FF games since the NES.

What I'm Watching: El Camino

Don't be fooled by the title, the El Camino barely appears in this movie, and it teaches you nothing about the history and operation of the hybrid car-truck.

Instead, we have a lot of flashbacks and added scenes for a show called Breaking Bad which was a popular show about a science teacher like Mr Wizard and his little buddy Jessie.

OK, seriously, it's the final episode that the show gave Walter but didn't give Jessie. But since it's been a few years, it's all bottle episode with only a little new content. In between the flashbacks are Jessie continuing to be very stupid and revisit past haunts. There's brief cameos by people who obviously can't be present.

I call Jessie very stupid, but it's erratic. He'll make a very good decision, a cunning ruse, and then follow it up with completely idiotic unthinking reactions; he can't tell who's a cop and who isn't, can't figure out how much money he has, can't cut and run instead of taking revenge.

And it's slow. The flashback scenes are awful, just misery porn except too slow for me to feel any concern. Jessie wants to be a victim and always puts himself back in that position.

The one heroic, effective scene is then completely implausible, because everything goes right, no hilarious fuckups or bad side-effects. The writer just gave up on who Jessie Pinkman is for this scene.

★★½☆☆ – a whole extra episode of BB. Whoo.

Wait to Visit Catalina

I'm sure there's a hundred other pitfalls waiting. Anyone "upgrading" to Catalina on their main work Mac before at least a year is a lunatic. Half the software you use hasn't been tested on that, lazy devs will only now even be putting it on a second machine. You're a long way from safe.

McSweeney's Classic Wednesday Music

Black Sabbath: Your greatest joy is painting in unventilated rooms.
David Bowie: There is still, somewhere, a Dig Dug or Zaxxon machine with your high score on it.
Mott the Hoople: You are David Bowie.
Rush: You carry a small flashlight everywhere, and use it at least three times a day.

Steppenwolf: You have three or more cigarette burns in hard-to-reach places.
Golden Earring: You have three or more intentional cigarillo burns.

Derek and the Dominos: You have successfully used cooking spray as tanning oil.
Jim Croce: You have worn only socks and sock garters to a nude beach.

(what the heck, three good McSweeney's in a series? Normally they turn whiny after one or two)

So anyway, that's my playlist today.

What I'm Watching: In the Tall Grass

This might be the dumbest film I've ever seen. I've seen every real MST3K (up through Pearl, not the boring new loser), and even Red Zone Cuba or Beast of Yucca Flats aren't this dumb. Written by Stephen King & Joe Hill (his son), so I had some hope. But hours, years later, no, all hope is lost. Save yourself, don't come in.

Walking into this grass field by a vacant small country church gets you permanently lost. There's a steady flow of idiots walking off the road into this shitty midwestern Narnia/Blair Witch, but it's not corn so there's no He Who Walks Between the Rows. There's no sets, just a grass field with some paths stomped down, and a big rock, and a ruined Bowl-A-Drome (or "OWL-A-DME" as the sign says) makes the usual B movie filmed in the woods look like Ben Hur. I miss the variety of sets in Cube.

90% of the dialogue is just characters calling each others names. Beckay does tell a couple good dirty limericks but the wuss brother is useless, the drummer ex-boyfriend does think of marking a trail… not very well, like everything he does. Tobyn (the spirit guide, nice GB reference) is either part of the field or its first victim. His Ted Bundy-lookin' dad is exactly what he seems. His mom and dog appear when needed as props but have no plotline or role.

Of course there's a time travel thing going on, because all movies are time travel now apparently. Oh no I'm stuck in an endless loop of watching bad movies in my comfy chair.

The horrible ancient evil and time loop are trivially defeated by just helping someone out of the field. Every part of this was unnecessary.

★☆☆☆☆ and I'm glad I had a lot of beer.