Setsuna

Here's my recent list of playthroughs. A couple weeks off in December with nowhere to go and nothing to do contributed greatly here. Fire Emblem : Three Houses - This was my first Fire Emblem game so played on hard-casual, but wish I'd done hard-classic now. That X-Com vibe where every mission you could lose one of your characters would have been perfect, and the ability to skip back in the fights makes me think I could have pulled it off. Really liked how the first half was fairly casual / friendly, then the intensity ramps up about ten-fold in the back half of the game. Great combat system and awesome large-scale battles in the missions. As much as I'd love to replay it under the different houses, I just can't bring myself to do the more grindy parts of the story again ( finding missing items, fishing/eating to level up your character, etc..). I never did get anyone to master class either... Hades - deserved the love it got. Hit some early barriers ( namely Meg and then Theseus and the Minotaur ), but by around run 20 I started on a 25-win streak and got up to level 16 in the Pact of Punishment. Then I started getting destroyed at level 17. I'm probably done with the game, but I spent something like 20+ hours on a 20 minute game, and loved every minute of it until the end. Shantae and The Pirate's Curse - This was...okay? Really short and maybe I was only half paying attention but I ended up needing to use a walkthrough to figure out where to go at one point. Pretty easy and was basically a palate cleanser after sinking 50 hours or so into Fire Emblem. Batbarian - I probably loved this more than I should have. An old-school metroidvania, I'd definitely recommend it if you like these style of games. It was hard all the way through, and became harder in the back half of the game. Sort of proud of myself for getting through this one. Deponia : Doomsday - Figure I might as well finish the series off. At the same level as the third in the series, which means not good at all. Encountered a game breaking bug about 3/4s of the way through the story and no saves within the past couple hours, so just gave up on it. Don't imagine that I miss much. I'm playing Inmost now and not really enjoying it. It's not a bad game or anything, it is just so slow.

Sorry for triple=posting, but this is the most I've been invested in a fight in quite awhile. Very real draw possibility coming up.

Straight up front kick to the balls. This sucks, because it looked like the momentum of this fight could swing in Moreno's favour in the championship rounds. 1 point is big. Right decision there.

The power difference is clear through the first round. Moreno did well, but I think that damage is going to add up.

Yeah, I actually meant to start from TUF -> early elimination/short notice call up to the UFC while the show was still airing.

I don't have anything to add to this but I've always been really interested in Moreno's career. I'm not sure what the actual odds were in many of his fights, but I've always seen him as the perennial underdog and his release from UFC to title contender has made for a captivating arc. I don't know what his path to victory is other than catching Figueiredo in a scramble, which is a tough ask for every reason you mentioned.

Okay that was crazy

https://streamable.com/1zljfp I am an idiot who does not know how to embed things. Anyway, Alex Pereira takes his first step in following Israel's path.

Fun fight between Abbasov and James Nakashima for the WW title from tonight's One card. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-lVh5HzcEk

I was going to mention this card, and that exact same spot, but didn't get around to it last night. I thought it was a great event - legitimate prospects, equal match making and some great finishes. Probably the best non-UFC event in a long while that I can think of. I know I'm biased here though.

And that was like five seconds after taking the full five minutes for a slightly less terrible spin kick to the nuts. Daniels looked pretty terrible in that fight all around.

I opened my first walkthrough to find the crystal hearts in Celeste, got them, fired up the Chapter 8 b-side and just thought, nope. I think Chapter 6 b-side broke me. Great game but I'm done with it. Did start the Ace Attorney Trilogy and enjoying it a lot so far. I've tried a couple of the text-based Japanese games, like AI Somnium Files and a horror game I'm completely blanking on the name of. This one's hooked in a lot faster though and could be the first one I actually see to completion.

Took a day off Celeste ( and got lured back into that sweet temptress that is Slay The Spire. Knocked Ascension 14-17 off the list for The Defect. First time I ever bought prismatic shard and made for a really neat build, with cards like Feed and Cloak and Dagger on Defect. Think I'll do that again sometime because I'm sure that build would have won A20/killed the heart. ) Anyway, fired back up Celeste to knock off the B-sides. Holy man - averaged around 400 deaths for each from chapters 2 - 5. Missed the B-side on Chapter 6 my first time through, so will go and get that BUT did beat the b-side on chapter 7. 860-something deaths on that level alone. Honestly felt like one of my biggest gaming accomplishments in awhile that an old man (well, 38 so old by video game terms) got through it. Take that ya young whippersnappers!

Finally decided to play Celeste and finished the main campaign in two days. Only collected one crystal, so was not able to do the core level but did get all except one of the B-side tapes I think. Knocked off one of the B-sides post-game(chapter 2) and my brain needs a break. 7 hours over the past two days and it's Celeste so that's a pretty intense 7 hours of gaming. Right up there with Hollow Knight as my favourite of the recent platformers. Both are really hard, but Celeste is a bit more forgiving in that you respawn so quickly. I doubt that I'll 100% it, but will dive into more the B-sides tomorrow.

I think with Silent the only real winnable build is a scaling poison build. I feel like Ironclad you can go strength scaling through demon form, artifact/flex, the sword card/limit break. Or you can do high-hp deck through Feed/Reaper, or an exhaust deck with Feel No Pain / Corruption ( quick aside, the first time I stumbled across corruption/dead branch, wow. That is a game breaker). The Defect can do an offensive/defensive/mixed orb build, or a claw build. But with Silent, I feel you're very limited as far as making a winning deck. Always pick up catalyst or corpse explosion, because with either of those cards the run becomes winnable, but without either you're pretty much doomed. Like, I can see how a shiv build might work, but you'd need crazy good defense and card draw as well as some complimenting relics to win on a higher ascension level. My A20 win had 2X upgraded catalyst and upgraded corpse explosion with runic pyramid. Once I hit that second catalyst, I knew the run became very winnable. Once I first started hitting a wall, I watched some of jorbs (sp?) videos on youtube and it really gave me better insight into the game. I pretty much never checked my draw pile before then to think ahead, nor did I have the best Floor 1 strat. You've really got to go for it on Floor 1 because surviving is not enough, you've got to have a decently upgraded set of cards and some relics otherwise you're pretty much doomed at the start of Act 2. Avoiding resting at campfires so you can upgrade cards is essential and you've got to be comfortable going into boss fights with 30 hp.

Scott Adkins is doing a series of interviews called The Art of Action on youtube. I'm a sucker for old-school HK stories and the Richard Norton one I watched yesterday was great.

I'm going to start Lovecraft Country tonight, but anyone else watching Ted Lasso? I'm enjoying that way more than I thought I would. Watched the first episode thinking I'd get something vapid in the style of Ballers, but I am totally hooked on pretty much everything going on in the show. Love the Sudeikis character and was going to start naming others until I realised I like every supporting character. It's the show I look forward to most for the past few weeks.

This is how I feel, too. When I eat out, I want something that either I can't cook, takes too long, or has too much clean up after. Steak is the easiest, low-prep food you can do at home. I've got a soft spot for Sizzlers. Mainly because it was always my go-to in Bangkok when I was on a visa trip back when Myanmar was in its dark days and there were like four Western restaurants in the city. The food was always mediocre, but just being able to hit that salad bar with an entree and fill yourself up for 10 bucks was always something to look forward to. It was kind of like McDonalds, I'd crave it for months ahead of time, step off the plane, hammer through a Big Mac meal then leave feeling a bit sick and disappointed with myself. Fwiw, I still do both of the above whenever in BKK. It's almost nostalgic now.

I said I'd put it down, but something just makes me keep coming back to it. INTENDED to start a different game last night, decided to have just one Defect run ( A13), two hours later realised I had used up all of my gaming time on Slay again... Didn't make it past floor 2. Had an awesome build at one point but a couple bad hallway fights/card draws and that was all she wrote.

I started Slay The Spire up again and the rng gods were in my favour because I ran through Ascension 19 and 20 with The Silent, and Ascension 20 with Ironclad in four or five tries total. I've never played a card-based game like this before and enjoyed it waaaaay more than I thought I would. Time to put it to rest though. Getting crushed on floor 1 or 2 on Ascension 20 gets demoralising really quickly.

I fired up Slay The Spire again a few weeks ago and got hooooked this time. It was fun climbing through Ascension, but I'm stuck at 20 with Ironclad and 18 with The Silent and lost the will to keep going. Played through Mario Odyssey the last week and enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. Like yeah, it shouldn't have surprised me, but that was a really fun experience. I got to the darkest side of the moon today, died on a stupid mistimed jump and shut it off, but I think I will 'finish' it tomorrow. 500 moons is all I'm collecting, just wanted to unlock this last world. Not sure where to go next. Possibly Fire Emblem Three Kingdoms? Feels like I've had enough time off between long rpgs.

I had to google after reading this post and only just found out that Benavidez left Alpha Male. And Figueiredo was the Alpha Male rep in this fight? Huh. For someone who watches every UFC show, I really don't know what happens outside of the cage for the most part.

They announced and cancelled a few events over the past few months. Once they announced a Thailand event with fights attached, it was they were going with only local fighters so a muay thai-heavy card was guaranteed. International flights are pretty much shut down through SEA, aside from relief flights for people to get back to their home countries. I'm not sure when the next card will happen, unless they stick to booking only local fighters. I'll take what I can get though.

That's very cool to hear. I wish I'd known that when I played the game, or even better if I'd seen it in the credits that would have been a total mark out moment for me. The last line about him being strange - I meant it to come off as endearing because the guy is like a low-key idol for me in life. Dude never gave up on his dream of being in action movies and I guess has made a good career out of it for himself. He is what 20 year old me would have said I'd wanted to be but didn't have nearly enough drive to stick with it ( or even get started aside from a couple homemade beat'em ups with friends.)

Is Thimbleweed Park the best adventure game ever? I think I'm at the last chapter and it was a total blast from start to finish. I really tried not to use the hint line, but still used it way more often than I probably should have. I sunk about 13 hours into it this weekend and it was the decompression I needed after this past week.