Vivianne felt compelled to talk about Death Stranding 2 after starting another playthrough.
the vibes. they are immaculate.
Those who know me, know that I like Metal Gear Solid. I also really enjoyed Death Stranding 1, which not many people did. I don’t think it’s worth worshipping Kojima as an auteur (I’m not gonna get into that here), but I’d say his studio still got the juice. I decided to revisit DS2 now that the PC version is out and the game received some small updates & a harder difficulty mode.
If you press a key on a piano, to play a single note on its own, like a C, it might not mean anything on it’s own. But if you add a G, to make a chord, and play that, it now feels different, right? The addition of a chord not only makes the note sound different, but because you played a C before, it also feels differently than if you didn’t play it.
Melanie enjoys learning about the country her wife is from
Still from All in the Family (1971)
Growing up, I watched a lot of TV Land back when TV Land played shows from the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. This meant that my only exposure to Poland was through Archie Bunker’s Pollack jokes at Meathead’s expense (RIP, Rob Reiner and Carroll O'Connor). It’s not a great way to learn about Polish people. I’ve pretty much had to rely on my wife and her family. I’ve already wrote a little bit about Kasia Babis’s comic Breadcrumbs and YouTube channel, but I have a few other things I’d like to share. Not really a history lesson, but covering the things I think are interesting to learn about Poland through.
I like the amount of games coming out recently that aren’t entirely new concepts, but are massive game play experience improvements on formulas we already love. Hytale of course being the previous example, having improved on Minecraft in many ways. But now we got Pokemon entering the Minecraft and Animal Crossing-like scene. The game borrows so much from Animal Crossing, from the equipment wheel to the inventory screen.
Melanie recaps her month, mental health struggles, and where she found some joy
I had my yearly physical in January, and at the end I asked my doctor if maybe I should try another anti-anxiety medication, since I've been on my current one for 15 or so years. Without any hesitation they recommended another pill that I could "hot swap" to without tapering or having any side effects. A week after starting the new medication I knew something was wrong. At the same time the world was becoming an actively worse place to be, which made it hard to tell if it was the medication or everything else in the world.
It has been hard to write about things that you enjoy when you don't enjoy the act of being. The medication caused me to lose trust in myself, and so I withdrew myself for mine and everyone's sake. Obviously that is not good. After about four weeks I pulled myself off the new medication and returned to my old one. It took another week, but I did start feeling better, not where I want to be, which is why I wanted to shake up my medication to begin with, but where I can go back to a sense of normalcy.
I didn't trust myself to write, so I didn't. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy things at all.
Kitty Pryde, a 12 year-old mixed tabby, was born on the mean streets of San Francisco. Once the fourth chairman of an organized cat crime syndicate, she was known as The Lion of The Dogpatch.
Vivianne talks about the new official FL Studio tutorial that frankly rules, Adam Neely’s video essay, GenAI and Bandcamp Friday (I swear it’s all related).
the latest version of FL Studio still has the UI we know and love
Chances are we’re both pretty tired of the generative AI slop on the internet. I recently watched Adam Neely’s video essay on GenAI Music and “the Bad Future”. It was honestly quite a sobering watch, and the future of recorded music is definitely gonna feel bleak.
But we don’t have to give in to that hopelessness.
Welcome back to the X-Men, Melanie… Hope you survive the experience!
Uncanny X-Men (2024) #1 cover by David Marquez
When I was getting in to comics, Marvel was getting in to the “well if we don’t own the film rights, we might as well kill it” era of X-Men. I had a huge history of X-Men comics to read through and there were still some X-Men comics coming out that were a lot of fun. By the time 2020 rolled around I was done with western comics.
Apropos of nothing, Melanie wants to share some YouTube channels she likes.
I didn’t know what image to put here.
We need a break from all the exhausting shit going on these days, so I thought I might recommend some YouTube channels that help keep me going while I’m going through it.
Melanie has been having a great time playing Hytale
Girls Chilling Park
It sucks to always be compared to the same thing, but judging by Hytale’s history I don’t think they are going to escape the comparison to Minecraft. It’s been in the works for over a decade. It was briefly made for Minecraft, but that ended after Minecraft changed their license agreement. It was briefly acquired by Riot Games, but thankfully they were freed. It just entered early access but it’s incredibly polished and detailed.
While Hatsune Miku’s birthday is August 31st 2007, March 9th, 3/9, is known as Miku Day. You might be wondering where the number 39 comes from. Is it her tattoo of “01”? No, that’s just because she was Crypton Future Media’s first character voice.
The number 39 comes from her name. Miku, or in katakana “ミク.” The katakana character for “mi” is very similar to the kanji character for the number 3, which is “三”, and pronounced “san.” The “ku” character, “ク“, sounds close to the Japanese number 9, which is “kyuu,” and written with the character “九.” So we have Miku, “ミク,” and san kyuu, “三九.” It is also another pun because it sounds like “thank you.”
And I thank you for reading. See you next Miku Miku time.
Vivianne finds a way to spice up her future Metroid Prime playthroughs with Randovania.
getting the morph ball in a spot that requires the grapple beam. in the beginning of the game.
I watched BashPrime’s video about the Grand Abyss in Metroid Prime 2 during christmas break, and he finished it by mentioning Metroid Prime is not only a fun speedgame but also fun to play with a randomizer. That caught my attention, because let’s be honest, when you replay Metroid Prime, you’re not really going to be playing the game that differently. So I downloaded Randovania, joined the Prime Randomizer Discord, and had a go at the Starter Preset.
Melanie plays her first Dragon Quest game, even though it’s just the demo.
It’s those three little guys!
It’s cold. There’s ice out. No better time to stay in and curl up with some RPGs like now. I just finished playing Paper Mario and The Thousand Year Door and just slid right over into the demo for the new Dragon Quest VII re-imagining. I’m really enjoying it. The diorama art style looks great on the Nintendo Switch 2. I like the ball touching puzzles, but there’s a feeling I get in this game that sticks out like a sore thumb.
Melanie: Hey Vivianne, thanks for joining me. I just wanted to check in and ask how things are going. How has it been blogging with me? Do you have any suggestions or areas for improvement?
Vivianne: It's been pretty fun! I haven't really posted much last week, but I have a few ideas for things I wanna write about (and they all involve doing a bit of research and collecting information).
Melanie: I've certainly enjoyed learning about Metroid. How have you enjoyed my posts?
Vivianne: I have! It was honestly kind of neat to see people reacting to the one you wrote about the Kobo Remote. Turns out there sure are a lot of folks that would want (or even need) something like that.
Melanie: Yeah, I wrote the title a little tongue-in-cheeky, because it is funny as a concept when comparing it to a paper book, but it definitely has real world uses and especially for accessibility. Technology and books are both helpful and funny to think about. I've started thinking about electronics with a critical eye of "Should this need to be reliant on a battery?" There's also so much detail we lose by converting analog things to bits and bytes. Like film and digital photography or listening to audio over Bluetooth.
Vivianne: Speaking of music I am honestly pretty excited about The Protomen Act 3 CD. They didn't release lyrics for the initial Bandcamp release, so I'm looking forward to reading those and figuring out the story! What are you looking forward to?
Melanie: Hmm, well let me check... The 404 Media zine should be arriving soon. I'm looking forward to the Switch 2 Animal Crossing update this week, starting Big Hops (out today), the new Dragon Quest VII Reimagined (more on that later, out next month), and Yakuza Kiwami 3 (out next month). All Nintendo Switch 2 all the time, apparently. I don't really know about albums or books prior to their release. Maybe I'll know in advance for comics and manga.
Vivianne: Dragon Quest VII Reimagined sure does look pretty good! I really like how the art style matches the charm of the original and there's even some pretty funny things that you'd see in a 2D RPG. Like the stairs that look like they're going to nowhere, but you can actually go up those to another level.
Stairway to Mid-wall
Melanie: It's really cute. Well, I can't wait to see your next post.
Vivianne: Same! I can see the drafts, but I think it's pretty fun to just like, see them as you post them.
I don’t see a lot of ads but I do come across ads in videos on YouTube that should not have made it through any sort of review. And yeah, you should be vetting your advertisers. A paycheck is a paycheck, but c’mon you need to have some standards.
This list is non-exhaustive and doesn’t include obviously harmful ads like those for gambling. If you’re even considering a gambling ad you are too far gone. Seek help immediately.
Nice stats, shame the game is moments away from destroying them.
I was having fun and enjoying my time leisurely exploring the world of Metroid Prime 4. I’ve played bits of the first 3 games, but never completed them. So when defeating the final boss deleted my progress I was devastated. Does it try to warn you? Yeah, but it didn’t quite make sense to me coming from the Like a Dragon games. Could I do anything about it when it warned me? No. I could either save my defeat of the final boss, or lose all the progress I had made since the last save. Either option would result in lost progress.
Vivianne shares SynaMax’s new video about what was one of the earliest musical performance rhythm games. Also talks a bit about his work researching Metroid Prime music, because it’s relevant to her interests.
Aside from that, SynaMax is also a video game historian, and on January 5th he uploaded a video documenting the history and restoration of what could possibly be one of the first musical performance rhythm games. It’s a good watch!
Breadcrumbs was on my list of books to read, but I never expected I would find a copy at a local bookstore. I guess that’s why that particular bookstore is called “the best comic shop in the world.” Vivianne is Polish and she has shown me Kasia Babis’s English-language YouTube channel. I don’t know much about Poland, so any attempt to learn more I must take.
