Y1W37 And so this Challenge ends but the learning always continues

Other Adventures: 

• Games (watching bits or all of it): heyo
  • Mario Galaxy – snippets
  • Claire B ending
  • Destiny – bg noise
  • Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Case 2, Samurai Turnabout; the music soooo good as always
  • The Walking Dead Season 2 all over again from a different perspective: someone who hates Kenny and likes Sarah (most playthroughs I’ve seen is the other way around interestingly enough). I don’t side with either Kenny nor Jane myself.
  • Hyrule Warriors – it’s interesting seeing the dialogue properly when you’re not playing it
  • Destiny – boring to watch and the missions appear repetitive with a lackluster story. But I am sure it’s incredibly fun with friends.
  • Speedrunners
  • The Sims 4 – uh for the silly times
  • Roundabout Deluxe
  • Whack Your Boss – uh whoa, violent and gory. Don’t do this for real. I have never hated anyone this badly. I don’t have any desire to be violent to another being; it’s horrible and it’s a waste of energy on top! Playful and light whacks don’t count in my book though. Haha
  • Terraria
  • Forest of Drizzling Rain
  • Neverending Nightmares – art style really cool, gameplay is a walking flash game though. Saw the worst ending and then the other two endings. A lot of food for thought in terms of story and symbolism but gameplay wise it is made up of a lot of walking just to get through to the next story trigger moment.
  • Left 4 Dead 2 Versus
  • Gauntlet
  • Pass the Whiskey
  • Habitat
  • D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die – Swery going another notch up the weirdness scale
  • Alien: Isolation
  • Civilization: Beyond Earth
  • Anki DRIVE – some tournament coming with youtubers
  • Soccer Physics
  • Samurai Gunn

• Workstation Approach: makeshift standing “desk” report! Week 4! Getting used to it more but as usual, my legs get tired. Sore in the left hand sometimes.
• Movies: The more movies I watch, the more I seek something that speaks to young and older audiences alike with an engaging, meaningful message that you can’t easily predict compared to the thoroughly used story formulas. Or maybe I’m seeking more than the expected entertainment value in a movie.
  • Escape from Planet Earth – at best I can see this as a TV movie. Definitely there were some entertaining moments and some cool character designs, great animation and visuals.
    • In terms of pacing and storytelling it lacks the substantial time at the beginning for you to warm up to the characters and throughout the whole movie it’s usually barraging you with action story moments one after the other that I couldn’t take the time to warm up to any environment and scene change (example: mission control versus whoever’s in charge here, if there’s any authority of political leadership in this planet at all…it feels completely neglected) and see how fleshed out each of them are as a society, hierarchy or even their way of life before things changed. I feel far removed from their world.
    • And you just know that nothing bad will happen to the ‘good guys’.
    • The portrayal of humans is interesting
    • The way the son switches career goals just after playing pilot? Somehow he knows how to control everything like an engineer despite wanting to be an action hero beforehand and ignored whatever his father was doing?
    • I was most amused at how that flashback was executed: villain’s father death by ufo
    • The key plot: the sibling relationship between Scorch and Gary, both learned that they were an unstoppable team if they used their strengths together. Though I can’t say it was satisfyingly developed, I believe this was the most fleshed out thing from the whole movie, the classic clash/teamwork between the exaggerated representations of brains and brawn.
  • Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted
    • Brilliant animation, character designs, colours, environments, action packed and good pacing, music score, simple message- I was entertained. It did its job as a well executed silly movie. It just didn’t go deeper than entertaining for me as a movie so in that respect it didn’t hit me as memorable nor meaningful. I was certainly not the target audience.
• Doctor Who Episode 5 Time Heist: I enjoyed this better than the previous two episodes. (:
• Doctor Who Episode 6 The Caretaker: The Matt Smith look alike teacher thing had me cover my face and roll my eyes so much.
  • Well Pink and The Doctor are both stubborn individuals with principles. Some character development I guess?
  • Danny’s clear black and white ultimatum didn’t sit well with me because of his tone (rather than the principle of honesty/trust itself plus it foreshadows that she won’t be honest sometime in the future)
  • him poking fun at the Doctor somewhat insensitively highlighted how the Doctor is a commander and is likewise a jerk too with ultimatums of his own
  • Overall the episode was underwhelming though; not the silly, fun adventure as the trailer seemed to be
  • silly Danny flips, the random annoying troublemaker kid and Clara stretching herself thin due to her double life of lies/compartmentalising her life and later her attempts to smooth things over and please her boyfriend
  • Really not sure how much Clara has explained to Danny about the Doctor and his adventures with her here because he is completely skeptical, unimpressed and wary (understandably so as he has been deceived by said girlfriend). It seems like little has been said unlike with Robin Hood.
  • I don’t see why the Doctor hasn’t connected the dots with the events from Listen and this episode concerning Danny, especially when Clara made hints
  • At the least, more conflict between characters make it interesting
• Games Played
  • Hyrule Warriors Legend Mode Co-op: wow. Spoiler warning as follows!?
    • Playing as Ganondorf (such a fancy head full of hair) feels soooo gooood, ultimate wondrous hack and slash; the power you feeel. Likewise with Fi and Shiek; Link feels good to play as too
    • entered the serial killer’s basement equivalent when we discover how Lana/Cia have been stalking Link throughout the ages with paintings and statues. Creepy. It’s like demonstrating to fangirls/boys of the world: “Hey, Link will never be ‘yours’. This is what happens if you try. You die like she (Cia) did“. The Dark Link thing was predictable too. It does make me think that Lana is now just an incomplete half person now though.
    • Ah fanfiction story continues until the point where Ganondorf is revived. It becomes a straightforward, equally predictable story from this point. At least they did a story; it’s essentially a Dynasty Warriors game.
    • I was terribly amused at having Player two as Ganondorf on my “good guys” team or having a “good guy” character in my “cool, evil world domination team” as player two doesn’t matter in the story. There’s clones of the same character even!
    • Not a game you’d want to complete everything 100% for (terribly hard and cruel I’ve heard) and it’s better fun with a friend (I had my bro)
    • the Legend Mode story ending was so straightforward and underwhelming despite the wondrous Ganon design
    • still haven’t tried Lana, Zant, Ghirahim, Agitha (she is a waste of a character slot) but this is now a ‘sometimes’ game now that Legend Mode is done. Yes I know Adventure mode is where the real gameplay is.
  • Professor Layton VS Phoenix Wright: bro pressure plus seeing the old Ace Attorney being played got me in the mood again for it. Heard that they ‘nerfed’ both difficulties of both Professor Layton and Phoenix Wright gameplay. Wright’s investigation side of gameplay is still there through Layton instead actually. But I’m here for the story. Up to the hip side thrusting Caribbean cook testimony.
• Eating Japanese food: ooh as a ‘don’t get to eat out much’ hermit, I was looking forward to this. I even ordered some take away to feast with my brother the next day! I’ve been incredibly tight with money but I wanted to treat myself this one time. I’m not interested in taking photos of food to show online but the food did look sweet.
  • Actually did some passable conversations, card games (yay I won a round!) and some sneaky doodling before anyone did…well I arrived first on my own to order the take away so haha.
  • Realised that no matter where you sit (just to manage how many people who are surrounding you), flowing moments of conversation are still hard to keep up…
    • Who to eavesdrop and interject if you’ve got three conversations going around you? Understandably they’re all too busy communicating with each other to notice you at these moments.
    • Too much stimulus!
    • Having to choose who to pay attention to sometimes proves difficult
    • You either contribute or drift away from the conversation flow.
    • Thinking (which I do often if that wasn’t evident already) is not recommmended as sometimes the topic potentially changes at each turn and you miss out once you figure out what you wanted to say
    • Whenever I do try to say something though, I just say whatever comfortable; blunt, silly, awkward, a question or just laughing at myself. It usually works out…? I won’t ever know but it doesn’t matter. I’m just happy I said something.
    • I guess this is what I mean by trying to keep the social quota in check for me and why I’m socially quiet in group situations.
    • But then I enjoy group situations because I get to listen in, not be the centre of attention and learn from others. I’m a sidelines person? I don’t know. What I do know is that people don’t really care (they’re probably too busy being self conscious too) and that can be a good thing. If they accept you as you are that’s even better. (: Ooh mushy here!
  • Ultimately I left with a numb, rough tongue thanks to the broth from the grilled beef ramen (note to self: get something without broth if there ever is a next time)!
  • I interacted with people of the outside world…whoa!!
  • I ate too much Japanese food as the last time was 5 to 8 years ago. Oh Derp! My bro suffered even worse; it was hilarious.
  • And now I probably won’t eat out for a looong while haha.