It does feel like it has been a while, doesn't it?
March is upon us, and already the first week is over. We're nearing the end of the first third of the month, and work-wise I do have a couple of things that need to be done before the end of the second-third to solicit the necessary feedback and necessary adjustments.
But let's not talk about work.
March has no public holidays gazetted in it. A pity. In fact, the distribution of public holidays for this year is quite clumpy, with at least four months that do not have any public holidays in it (off the top of my head---I'm too lazy to confirm that). Since I am not intending to travel outside of SIN city for the foreseeable future (think in the next couple of years), all those leave days that I'm slowly accruing are better off being consumed throughout the year to bring back sanity, you know, like the way it was. And with that in mind, I have decided to take leave on Mar 11, just to do something different.
The whole idea of storing a lump of paid leave days to go travelling was probably something that gained some kind of relevance in the past fifteen or so years in SIN city, during which travel of any sort was preferable to getting stuck in an increasingly packed city. With the pandemic though, travel has been nerfed, but the population density situation has seen a bit of amelioration through the exodus of foreign workers who choose to return to their home countries due to either homesickness, or general genuine discontentment with the seemingly draconian and mercurial policies of the SIN city government with respect to the management of the pandemic.
I cannot blame them. It is still a double-edged outcome---on the one hand, the losing of [large] quantities of foreign workers can do a real number on SIN city's economic output. On the other hand, their exodus brings back a certain sense of sanity, a feeling that somehow the city is returning to those who have sunk their roots [deep] into it. I'm no public policy wonk, having never been trained in any of its allied fields, but as a citizen of SIN city, I both feel and think that the ruling powers of the city owe its citizens fealty and care. Citizens, by choice or by birth, have called SIN city home, and have elected their representatives into parliament to represent their interests. Thus, it behooves the elected representatives to do their elected role of representing the citizens' interests. It is, by no means, an encouragement of xenophobic tendencies, but a declaration that care for the citizen should be among the priority of the usual multi-factor analysis of the pros and cons of various public policies. We always joke about SIN City, Inc, but the sad thing is that the joke, after nearly sixty years, have turned into some kind of twisted dogma, where many of the elected representatives see themselves not as champions of the citizens' needs and wants, but as some kind of ``entrepreneurial business guru running a multi-billion-dollar company''.
It's sad that it has come to this point.
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In other news, I've discovered a cool new game: Vampire Survivors (I got the Steam version for like SGD3.25---best 3-bucks I've spent). It's like an action RPG, but with automatic auto-attacks (i.e. the player doesn't have to press a key or click a button to ``fire'' their weapon). The player's main control is just the movement of the character in the play field to avoid the ever-increasing horde of mobs while picking up the experience gems that drop from the destroyed mobs, and choosing from a [short] list of abilities (both new and to upgrade) each time the character gains a character level.
I won't claim that it has ``surprising amount of depth'', but it definitely has its charm. Each run is short---no more than 30 min, less if one's character build doesn't do enough damage to fight out of the many encircling-type attacks---with very little down-time within. Watching the mobs go boom is very satisfying, as is the tricky parkour-esque movement to collect experience gems and setting up positions where the attack patterns of the auto-attacks can inflict their damage/effects most effectively. There are also some interesting strategic concerns, particularly in choosing the load out of auto-attack weapons (maximum of six) to provide the type of coverage that would allow the character to go the whole 30 min, though due to the random nature in which the abilities lists are offered, some form of adaptation is always needed.
It reminds me of another pair of games that I enjoyed playing, One Finger Death Punch and its sequel, One Finger Death Punch 2. Basic mechanics, but surprising amount of tactical knowledge that is needed. Above all, bite-sized durations that don't require the great sinking of time, time that I don't seem to have these days.
Which brings me to another point. I know that Elden Ring is out. I've always wanted to try a Souls-like game. But then there was Hollow Knight that, despite being a darling, was a game that I eventually had to put down and walk away. I mean, I like such games, but I find that I just don't have that kind of time/stamina to spend grinding out and ``gitting gud'', just because there are so many other things competing for my attention. So I have found myself gravitating towards much shorter duration games. The high price tag of SGD79.90 (at the time of writing) is also a little bit of a put-off, though it isn't the primary concern.
Time. Time and the need to use a controller for the best outcome. Time, and patience to learn the mechanics to a level of detail that I don't feel compelled to do just to obtain a good enough outcome.
I can appreciate it as a great game. But it's just not something that I am feeling compelled to play now, especially since I am already putting in hours for work. Even on my sabbatical, I never did see myself spending enough time to get through similar ``simpler'' versions of the genre: see when I first started on Bayonetta, and then my subsequent abandonment from frustration. Could I have continued to muscle my way through until I could tame the input lag statistically? Sure... I mean, I am a musician, and part of being one is to work our way through until we fix our timing issues. But unlike music-making, being good at Bayonetta doesn't really ``buy'' me anything useful, and so the associated expenditure of effort is just... too much, especially for a game.
And there we go. Almost effortlessly, a post to start March is here. Now I need to wonder about what I would like to do for π-day this year. The office is practically empty, and as always, it is not that easy to find pies.
Ah well. Till the next update then.
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