R&R Week

The week that just passed is a strong R&R-type of week.

I finally completed Fez, and Cat Quest II, two games that had been on my Steam library that were half-completed for quite a while. One's a puzzle game that I had mistakenly tried playing like a Metroidvania, while the other is a straightforward action-RPG with cute characters, a simplistic storyline, but amazingly pun-y writing. A sense of achievement, for sure. The key thing about these two games was the almost exclusive use of the gamepad, of which the one I have is the F310 Gamepad from Logitech. I usually play games on the PC with mouse and keyboard, but for some of these types of games where they were originally designed for controller, I am finding it easier to use the controller for them. Except maybe for Megaman-type games---I started on them via the keyboard, and will need quite a bit of getting used to on the controller, especially when I am trying to keep a charge while jumping (requires some interesting right thumb gymnastics). Overall, I like this controller over the one Playstation-esque one (VX2PS3-11) that I got from Gioteck. The Xbox controller feels more comfortable than the PS one, and more importantly, does not have any of the rubberised plastic that literally dies in the hot and humid weather conditions that are present here in Singapore. I had to scrape off all the weird plastic, and have not used the controller yet.

To be fair, that other controller is also much older than this one, and so there will be some major differences. I will probably find the PS controller more useful for games that were ported from the PS to the PC, assuming that the equivalent button commands for the Xbox controller were not a part of the port.

Next game that I would want to reach a clear of any sort is Feudal Alloy. It has been sitting in my library half-started for a while, and seems interesting enough that I should reach some level of completion on it.

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I have also read [translated to English version of] All You Need is Kill, the novel that was the [very vague] inspiration for Edge of Tomorrow. Like always, the book is literally better than the film due to the more realistic premise of the time loop being a step towards an eventual ``final'' confrontation to get the Mimics off planet earth. I have always found ``happy endings'' in dystopian/apocalyptic/end-of-the-world type stories to be incongruent with their subject matter. The author literally (ha-ha) builds a gloomy and doomy world throughout most of the novel/film, and having the last section/act subvert all that gloom and doom is just... wrong.

I know that there is a need for some kind of happy closure for most people, but certain twists are just too awkward to pull off. I get that people want to be entertained, and they are allowed their opinion and thus it is okay for the writers to pander a little with some kind of happy ending, but there are different types of happy endings. I am alright with minor (i.e. not world-level change) happy endings, like how a single character finds his/her happiness at the end, but those that involve a massive change in the way the built-up world changes is usually quite unjustifiable, particularly when the protagonist is portrayed as an everyday-person instead of The Big Damn Hero.

And even then, one single Big Damn Hero usually isn't enough to turn the tide of a large-scale gloom and doom---it requires some level of coordination/social acceptance for things to move that way, which often times books/films do not set it up correctly as something that can be done. This often makes the final twist all the weirder, and can be really off-putting.

Anyway, I think I will strive to at least complete [the translated version of] Adi Parva of the The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, the first of 18 books of the famous Sanskrit epic. I ``only'' have 500+ pages left of 768, and it should take roughly a week of relaxed reading to complete it, if not for the many side tracks that I have been doing.

Till the next update then.