Author: mdhughes

Halloween Countdown Sunday Music

Odd film, but I love it. Halloween I & II completed the Michael Myers story. Then III was a totally new thing. The intent was to make an anthology series, but no, dumb people just wanted more of Michael; I think all subsequent "Halloween" films are irrelevant and stupid (OK, I do like the Rob Zombie movies). I was a spooky monster kid, but still wasn't allowed to watch the first two at the time of their release, but somehow H3 at 12 was OK. The soundtrack is one of Carpenter's better mood pieces, not as iconic or repetitive as the first two; people sometimes forget Carpenter's as much a musician as a filmmaker.

Plot & characters of the film remind me strongly of The Stuff, Phantasm (especially II-III), and Killer Klowns From Outer Space; losers struggling to expose some terrible danger to Humanity, mostly failing and running. That's what Lovecraft was on about, and how every Call of Cthulhu game should be, not gangsters throwing dynamite at Shoggoths, but truck drivers and kids running for their lives and coming across as crazy people to the useless pigs.

"And don't forget to wear your masks. The clock is ticking, it's almost time! Happy happy Halloween, Silver Shamrock!"

Bonus:

Pandos Go Extinct

I was as surprised as anyone to hear Pando was still in business, I figured by now Sarah Lacy would've egged Paul Carr on to punch someone and the both of them go to prison. And now they've sold their site to, no shit, "BuySellAds". The "we run on investment and vapor like a tech company", no, "we run a LOT of ads but paywalls are evil!", no, "we run a LOT of ads AND a paywall!" business models never supported them becoming big.

Say what you want about Michael Arrington and Techcrunc, the business model worked. Just as hated, still kind of a shitty site, but they pay their bills and provide consistent mediocre tech industry news coverage.

Examine why everyone hated them. First, they bit the hand that feeds; you can't run FuckedCompany 2.0 and also schmooze with the companies you openly fuck over. Second, their site was awful even before the paywall, and after, you had to search around for someone with a sharing link or find a bugmenot login, complete pain in the ass; I never gave them a penny and read anything I wanted, back when I cared about the "Tech Industry". Third, they thought they were the smartest gal/guy in the room, when generally they were unaware of basic technology and business principles.

Take the site Pandering Dozily continuously compared itself to, despite a vast difference in scale and ambitions: The NY Times, with 100x more staff (?). NYT has shitty tech coverage, too, but nobody feels anything but mild contempt for them, because they don't try to suck up to Silicon Valley; and fundamentally everyone hates New Yorkers including New Yorkers, so it's just urine off a rat's back to them. NYT has a big solid base of not-tech-news to support this dangerous hobby of insulting every tech company they report on, despite half of them having universal surveillance systems, AI killer drones, and whatever else in the labs. Nobody expects New Yorkers to know anything except shitty pizza, Wall Street nonsense, and Broadway, so their tech gaffes are ignorable. Pandilly had no such backup base.

Oh, don't worry about them. Paul can fall back on writing midlist quasi-self-help books, Sarah's trying to teach women how to be mothers because clearly they need her help.

Lester Bangs Sunday Music

So the playlist:

So I was thinking about Lester Bangs, who basically taught me how to write with his reviews (which explains a lot, you know? I had higher ambitions but some rambling reviews with moments of clarity and profanity are what I can manage), then remembered Bruce Sterling wrote an alt-history biography "Dori Bangs" about him and Dori Seda hooking up, reread it. Fucking fantastic and a little heartbreaking, highly recommend it.

Tech Noir Saturday Music

Styx famously sang:

"The problem's plain to see
Too much technology
Machines to save our lives
Machines dehumanize"

But of course that wasn't the problem at all. People were the monsters all along. Machines only suck because people program them to suck.

The solution is clear.

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