comicallycluttered

Played and finished Spider-Man: Mile Morales (PC version) a few days ago. It’s gorgeous and it gets so much right when it comes to adapting the comics.

Yeah, that’s what I plan on doing. I have several drives from older devices and external enclosures. I never really see the point in selling or getting rid of still working drives. More storage, more backups, slightly more redundancy.

Marvel Snap.

I don’t even know why. I have no interest in spending money on it so I’m locked out of most decent cards and I don’t even like card games/deckbuilders that much.

Maybe it’s just because it’s quick rounds and with characters I love and am relatively familiar with.

Man, chronic fatigue is a fucking bitch.

Got a new PC today and I legitimately can’t even move it anymore. Just bringing it inside caused my energy to drain near zero (plus the lovely side effects of my body thinking it was exercising and causing pains and other discomfort because why the fuck not).

I’ll have to set it up on my desk and everything tomorrow or Friday. Chassis too heavy, also have to set up new UPS, even heavier.

Might have to do this over three or four days, actually. Rest day in between because also software setup and restoring some backups and getting all my system settings in order. At least some of it can be reliably automated with Chris Titus’ Windows utility, so that’s nice.

(Then I also need to replug the old one in and properly erase the SATA SSDs before opening that up and removing them, but that can probably wait until next week anyway since it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.)

I’d rather not wade into the larger “CDPR is transphobic” debate, but here’s an article from Polygon from a few years ago detailing some stuff, including the cosplay contest controversy:

https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/4/22058784/cyberpunk-2077-marketing-cd-projekt-red-transphobia

To save you from reading the whole thing, basically, during the run-up to Cyberpunk’s release, CDPR got very… edgelord with their marketing.

One of the more controversial pieces of marketing was an in-universe poster advertising a drink called “Mix It Up”, which depicts what appears to be a trans woman in a highly sexualized manner.

They then organized a cosplay contest for further marketing and that resulted in another controversy related to the poster, wherein a cisgender woman cosplayed as the depicted trans woman, CDPR made it one of the finalists in the contest, and it predictably led to outcry for being tone-deaf at best, malicious at worst.

The larger issues with the poster itself (and CDPR as a whole) are in the article, but the cosplay thing really comes down to this bit in the article:

CDPR also included a cisgender cosplayer as the Mix It Up girl among their cosplay contest finalists. Even if you buy the company line that the poster represents how queer bodies have been appropriated for marketing, their entire argument is negated when they have a cis person dress up in that queer body as part of their own video game marketing.

If you’re thinking perhaps the model was well-meaning, attempting to create a trans-positive cosplay, trying to further highlight queer commodification CDPR spoke of originally, or just a misguided ally who got it wrong this time around, I have bad (yet predictable) news for you. Yugoro Forge, the cosplayer in question, tweeted that her costumes are “beyond politics,” and when pushed on the fact her Cyberpunk 2077 costume dehumanized trans people who are already subject to violence so frequently, she replied, “many cis men and women face acts of harassment and violence on a daily basis as well.”

So you’ve basically got them saying the poster is satire, but then they’re not only doing exactly what they claim they’re satirizing, but doing it in a way that can be seen as rubbing salt in the wound for people who were already hurt by the initial depiction.

My personal opinion on the whole thing is that they really just fucked up and couldn’t read the room, but they do also have a history of being less-than-kind to the queer community themselves (seen in the article), so I can understand why people view the company as hypocritical in regards to the whole thing.

I’m thinking of going back and replaying the original Watch_Dogs with The Living City mod.

Looks pretty fun and breathes a bunch of life into a game I actually really enjoyed, which I know others found boring or disappointing.

EDIT: With the hindsight of having played WD2 with all its wacky antics, I forgot how seriously this game takes itself. Jesus.

I envy you. If you ever decide to get into the mods, I wish you well on your extended break from literally everything else.

Also, the Dawnguard DLC is pretty fun and you don’t have to do much of the main quest line to start it.

I say this mainly because Serana’s awesome and out of all the vanilla companions, she’s one of the few with an actual personality. And Laura Bailey always gives a great performance.

She’s just fun to have around. Plus you get crossbows and some cool armor not in the base game.

Lol, sorry, I just really enjoy that DLC. You play however you want, but I need to just point in her direction because I love her.

I mean, part of that popularity is the modding community (and also re-releasing it a dozen times). It’s not like Elder Scrolls has the best gameplay around. Always been a bit clunky. Narrative is hit or miss, but the lore and worldbuilding is what saves it, along with some great environmental storytelling.

But in general, Bethesda games live and die based on how strong the modding scene is. It’s why a fair portion of people are still playing Skyrim and Fallout 4 instead of Starfield. It has its mods, but the community isn’t as interested in it as they are the others.

That said, I’d say Breath of the Wild has some classic Elder Scrolls moments. The world has a lot of “hey, what’s that over there? Oooh, new unmarked side quest/cool thing to do!” experiences.

It can be a difficult thing to replicate.

Decided to replay Prey 2017 after… 8 years? Good lord.

Anyway, going in with New Game+ makes things so much more interesting.

Don’t forget about the great bonuses for participating in the community forums, such as classified documents, toxicity, classified documents, and classified documents.

Not For Broadcast, Day 296: The Heatwave.

It starts off with a slight shift in tone from the earlier broadcasts, you feel the tension ramping up, and then you know exactly what’s coming, but it’s still a fucking gut punch no matter what choice you make.

Honestly, that entire game has so many of these moments, but that’s probably the one that’s stuck with me most.

(The Lockdown episode also had a lot of “what the fuck is even happening” moments pretty much every time something new happened, so I want to just give that an honorable mention. I often find myself singing “Mr. Bear (What’s That Over There?)” for literally no reason whatsoever.)

Used to be my thing, but not really anymore.

Haven’t been super interested for a while. Occasionally I’ll find one that stands out, but I’m not out here looking for it anymore. I’ll take a tightly crafted linear game over that any time.

Usually, if I play open world games now, it’s a “point A to point B” situation. I don’t explore the entire world unless I’m really taken with it, and even then I’ll lose interest after a while. (And if there’s no fast travel or some equivalent in-game method to traverse across the map instantly, I very likely won’t bother.)

What I do enjoy, though, are kind of “open zone” games.

A lot of immersive sims fall into this category of “wide open levels, separated by narrative chapters”. Think Dishonored or Deus Ex.

I like that approach as opposed to “here’s everything, go anywhere”.

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Enjoying my time catching up on comics. Gone through like a decade’s worth of Fantastic Four in the last couple of weeks and I’ve finally reached the beginning Hickman’s run.

I enjoyed BotW, but I knew from the moment I saw the “let’s go Lego!” mechanics in TotK that I probably wouldn’t enjoy it at all.

Just really don’t like building mechanics in games. Or crafting. And the crafting was already pushing it in BotW. This is just amped up to eleven.

Comics… Equally enjoyable as they are frustrating (crossovers and reading orders make things unnecessarily complicated).

Other than that, pain and fatigue. Didn’t want this year to be like last year, but it seems many appointments are on the horizon.

I also love SpaceHey. I made my profile to be Tina Horse Girl infauated with BUTTS from Bob’s Burgers.

I kind of miss when MySpace was essentially the least terrible social network we had.

It had a myriad of problems inherent in social networks (some extremely serious), but it was a veritable paradise compared to the pure anger and outrage that fills social media these days.

I’m glad I live somewhere that’s never had daylight savings. The concept still perplexes me.

I’ve been having fun with comics again. It’s been way too long since I’ve spent several hours a day reading them. Unfortunately, it appears my fatigue doesn’t like that too much, so there are many breaks necessary, otherwise I burn out.

Still, it’s nice.

After a two-ish week break, I’m playing Marvel Rivals again. Completely disabling all chat (mainly text because I’ve always disabled voice anyway) does wonders. (The fact that I never had to disable text chat on Overwatch perplexes me. Even when it went F2P, I didn’t have to deal with half the shit I see in MR.)

I don’t play comp, so it doesn’t really matter much.

Might start up Reviver or The Operator later. Loved both demos when I played them a while ago, so I think I’ll enjoy those.

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