stevetown

[stevetown]

Hmm

Support game history and watch me possibly break my wrist playing with an experimental controller

ROMchip, the first ever video game history journal, is going independent! They're doing their first-ever fundraiser stream on Saturday, featuring gaming notables like Bennett Foddy, Rami Ismail, Nina Freeman, and John and Brenda Romero!

And also, I'll be there! Last month, we were donated a Novint Falcon, an experimental 3D haptic controller released in 2008. This thing is absolutely hogwild. It can exert several POUNDS of force feedback. And I'm gonna put it through its paces.

As an incentive, if ROMchip raises all $6000 they need to keep running, I will go into the Falcon settings and turn force feedback up to maximum. Will I get hurt? WE'LL SEE.

The fun begins Saturday May 11 at 11am Eastern and goes late into the evening!

[stevetown]

The Desolation of Scorch

#my birthday beanie!!

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shouts out to enenkay for getting me unshadowbanned WE FREE BABY !!! WE FREE!!!!!

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Bring me back here

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Consider the snooze alarm. Someone once upon a time recognized that waking up cold-turkey to a screaming alarm just wouldn't work out for most of us and built an option that would let you take a little nap before getting out of bed. Now it's a ubiquitous part of every alarm. I want to thank them for making it socially acceptable to literally snooze, perhaps the most wonderfully diluted kind of sleep there is. Until the alarm goes off again.

#this is also a callout post for iOS' alarm app that doesn't let me change the snooze alarm length. #fuck you apple

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Oooh I saw one the other day in a nearby park! Having a warbler renaissance.

Happy Friday! Here's a Black-and-white Warbler in Brooklyn Bridge Park, Pier 1.

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This account is 2 for 2 this week with me

Crate Pushing ‘Croc: Legend Of The Gobbos’ PlayStation

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Lickher

WOKE RESIDENT EVILLL:

ALBERT WOKESKER

LEON ILIKEMENNEDY

Jill Valentine

CHRIS RAINBOWFIELD

ADA WOKE

ETHAN WHIMPERSFORMEN

THEY/THEMESIS

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Oh my goodness I forgot all about this one. This was my Mario kart.

On The Attack ‘Toy Story Racer’ PlayStation

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Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth

Playtime: 59h 29m Completed: April 17, 2024

I put off writing this entry because I didn't want to admit to myself that I really did not care for Rebirth. Remake was my favorite game of the last decade, and I rarely get hyped for new titles nowadays, so to swallow the bitter pill and admit the last four years of hype were wasted...hurts.

It happened sometime around Costa Del Sol. After a lengthy chapter involving a card tournament, which itself was followed by a chapter whose climax hinges on a rhythm game parade segment, here was another chapter where you had to complete multiple required mini-games to get tickets to dress our favorite cast of destiny defiers for the beach. On its face, Rebirth should have been exactly what I was looking for. I love these characters so much that just hanging out at the game's equivalent of Atlantic City should have been an easy slam dunk for me. And there are good, if fleeting, character moments to be found here!

But at this point in the game, it became apparent there's no pathos and no forward momentum pulling the party forward other than "I guess we'll bumble around looking for black robed figures." It's a confusing approach to the middle chapter considering even the original was so clear about the stakes for each character and what they were after once they left Midgar. Remake was also so keen on engaging with our knowledge of the original's plot. "You can't fall in love with me" sent me reeling. Rebirth offers no such assurance that it knows nor cares about what's coming.

Emotional catharsis is nowhere to be found. Character moments like Barrett and Dyne's reunion and Red XIII's Cosmo Canyon homecoming are offensively brief, having little to no lead up and no follow through indicating those events had a lasting impact on anyone. The few beats where the game does take swings and add new material are almost never talked about amongst the cast, leading to narratively clashing moments that left us scratching our heads and screaming at the screen for anyone to talk about anything of importance. Whenever the game begins to build any kind of emotional crest, you can count on it falling short of a satisfying conversational resolution if it wasn't interrupted by Yuffie screaming about materia for the thousandth time this chapter.

It's not all bad. There's good stuff here with Cloud and Tifa's relationship. Vincent and Cid's character introductions are highlights that got some good belly laugh's and felt like old school Remake character magic. The second visit to the Gold Saucer got the waterworks going. The combat is more of the same, which is to say fairly good, but it's hard to keep all of the character play styles straight in your head and the Folio system is the worst character upgrade system since Final Fantasy II.

Then there's the climax, which I'm honestly too exhausted to get into. It's not that I hate the idea of what they're going for here, but during the moment where the game needed clarity the most it decided to muddle the message and leave us shrugging more than salivating for part III. It's clear this Final Fantasy VII remake experiment wants to have its cake and eat it too, offer titillating change and remain faithful to the original, but instead offers neither. I'm not left with confidence that Hamaguchi, Nomura and co. know how to wrap this up and deliver a satisfying conclusion to what they kicked off with aplomb and intrigue in Remake.

I did have fun with Rebirth! I put a lot of hours into it, despite the game's incessant efforts to make me hate it at almost every turn (I never want to hold down triangle for three seconds every time I need to do anything in the environment, thanks). There are good nuggets buried deep within the expansive nothingness that is the game's take on Ubisoft map design. But this is a game that is impressively all fat with little meat to chew on. Golden moments are spread too thin, not explored to satisfaction, and at worst become utterly confusing. I know in a year I'll still be pining for the last installment, which is more of a testament to how enduring these characters are than anything Rebrith itself did. I might as well see this through, but I'm left feeling disappointed that Square has shown this experiment to be what I wasn't looking for after all.

#ffvii rebirth #2024 game journal #final fantasy #video game review #ffvii #I got Tifa for the gold saucer date btw. They knocked that scene out of the park.

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the smallest artist i listen to? probably the bird outside my window

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I logged my 200th bird species for Wisconsin! I got a great tip from a close friend, who knows about these things, that a Hooded Warbler had appeared in a park near my house.

[ID: A male Hooded Warbler perches on a mossy branch in the forest. His body is just a couple inches long, with green feathers on back, wings, and tail, and dull yellow for the underparts. His "hood" is a black cowl that covers almost his entire head save for a bright yellow mask that extends in an oval from the middle of his face to surround the eye and ear on each side. He has a pointy dark gray bill shaped for picking insects off of trees, and his eye is a reflective jet black that stands out against the yellow mask. End ID]

The next morning, I packed up my camera along with my work bag and took a break from my commute to check out the park. I arrived to find several people wandering the trails, here to do the exact same thing as me. None of them had seen the Hoodie yet, but they had a wealth of information from other birders on the movements and general behavior of the bird from the past couple days. I spent at least 45 minutes wandering the trails, squishing through the damp and the mud in my work slacks and sneakers. I logged five firsts for 2024, but no sign of the elusive Hooded Warbler.

[ID: The Hooded Warbler perches on the same mossy branch, this time facing away from the camera and looking up into the treetops. His wings are neatly folded behind his back, making a pleasing pattern with the tips of the primary flight feathers. End ID]

So I left the park for work, but decided I should come back in the evening. I knew from the sighting reports in eBird that this guy is active all day. When I got back to the park, it was cloudy and drizzling. I met a pair of nice young women with binoculars and a camera lens as long as mine. I asked, "Are you here looking for the Hooded Warbler too?"

One of them said very casually, "Oh yeah, it's right over there across the creek. Just flittering around." So of course I had to get eyes on him and try to get a photo. It was only a couple minutes before he came out again and started working the far bank of the creek.

[ID: The same Hooded Warbler, this time perched deeper in the brush and looking toward the camera. This angle provides a better view of the black hood and bright yellow mask, looking delicately fringed around the edges. End ID]

I probably followed the Hoodie down the creek for like 10 minutes before he decided to cross over to our side to do some more foraging. I froze. He was almost completely hidden in the brush, but I could see bits of movement and kept him in the frame the whole time. I knew I couldn't make any sudden moves without scaring him away. For a brief moment, he came out to take a closer look at me, which is where all the photos in this post came from. I only managed to shoot three bursts while he was completely out in the open before he took off for the far side of the creek again.

[ID: The Hooded Warbler looks directly at the camera, only partially obscured by a twig. His posture suggests being ready to leap forward and continue the hunt for insects. End ID]

I was left feeling incredibly amped. The other photographer and I had to share back-of-the-camera shots and gush over how cute he was and how close he came to us. It seems it's always a special event when a rare or unusual species shows up in town. I love these brief moments of connection with birds and the people that care about them.

[stevetown]

sleeping positions that fuck up your spine feel so good for no reason it’s literally the devil’s deepest temptation

#a bad spine isn't all he's tempting some of us with

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one time during the height of homestuck's popularity I told a friend I was finally gonna start it and they were the most serious they'd ever been with me when they told me I definitely should not, and it scared me away forever. Every year that passes I feel it was the correct call and I am thankful to have such a friend.

#which is why this April 13th I'm celebrating #neil banging out the tunes

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#... #steve... mention

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just heard a skeleton skitter past ...

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