Blog Features

Regularly Playing: October 2022 Edition

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Good Morning Folks. It was this morning that I had the sudden realization that I seem to have let one of my long-term reoccurring segments just completely die. For years I have done this thing where I update my blog sidebar with the games that I am regularly playing, and then create a semi-monthly post talking about where I am with each game and the games that are cycling out of the mix. However, the last one of these that I have done was from March of 2021. Some pretty significant things took place last year that derailed a lot of events in my life, but it would be nice to get back in some sort of regular cadence with these posts as there are often games that I am playing but not really actively talking about.

Generally speaking, one of these posts is broken down into subsections:

  • To Those Remaining – The games that I am still actively playing or at least expect to be playing within the month.
  • To The New and Returning – The games that I am either dusting off and revisiting or are brand new experiences that I am enjoying.
  • To Those Departing – The games that I am finally removing from the list for one reason or another.
  • Ships Passing in the Night – Games that I don’t expect to regularly play but I spent some time with over the month and enjoyed enough to talk about.

Unfortunately given the length of time that has passed I am not sure if any of these really make sense for this “catch-up” post. Instead this time I am just going to talk about the games that I am poking a stick at periodically.

Cyberpunk 2077 – PC

While waiting on the New World patch drop, I found myself in a bit of a doldrum where nothing much sounded good. When this hits, I tend to dive into some sort of open-world game like Fallout New Vegas, Skyrim, or Witcher 3… and more recently Cyberpunk has been in that “nothing else sounds good” rotation. Generally speaking, I tend to play for a few nights and then nothing much comes of it, but this time around I am precariously close to a second complete playthrough. I am also finding a ton of content that I missed the first time around, and I think I am way more attached to femme Nomad V than I was to my original male Corpo V. Judy is without a doubt the best romance option in the game and it ends up being super sweet.

Diablo III – PC

I got a bit of a late start on Season 27, and because most of the conquests are sorta butts this time around… I have yet to finish things up. Essentially I need 3 Conquests to get Set Dungeon Mastery. I need to do this at some point but other things have just been drawing my attention. It is a bit harder than in past seasons because I am mostly soloing everything and don’t have my partner in crime Ace along with me. I need to buckle down and finish things off, but ultimately what caused me to fade for a bit was the severe performance issues that I was having. Hopefully those have passed now.

Fallout 76 – PC

Another game that I have been poking around for a while now is Fallout 76. I am not playing it super often, but at least once a week I dive down into the world of irradiated West Virginia. Right now the AggroChat folks seem to be going through a bit of a renaissance launched by Thalen’s discovery of the game. I need to figure out a time I can join in, but I am way behind in levels due to a reroll recently. I spent some time fucking around in a custom world and it seemed as though I was gaining levels… but said levels did not carry over to the main game.

New World – PC

If you have been reading my blog lately you will know that I am back in New World and created a brand new character over on Themiscyra to experience the game from level one again. The new player experience is so much better and the leveling and balance are much better than it was at the original launch. I am closing in on level 60 without really trying terribly hard, and my goal is to effectively complete all of the quests in the game. For the moment I am filling all of the various stashes that I have access to with materials and I hope to grind up Armoring and Weaponsmithing to 200 so I will have a good start at the game. At some point, I will need to find the various legendary crafting materials that unlock the 600 item-level weapons and armor, but I have plenty of time.

Path of Exile – PC

I’ve wound down the experience of playing Path of Exile Lake of Kalandra league, and I have to say it was pretty frustrating overall. I feel like I chose a bad league to go all in on. I did manage to knock out a number of the achievements and completely unlocked my altas, so I accomplished the things I had set out the do. I am not sure if I am going to be quite so amped to dive into whatever the 1.20 league ends up being, however. I am just not sure if Chris Wilson’s vision for the game fits the sort of experience I actually want to have. I am still interested to see what mobile Path of Exile ends up being like and the 2.0 experience… but my hopes are being tempered greatly by the frustration we experienced with this past league.

Torchlight Infinite – PC and Android

I have to admit I am not playing a ton of this yet, but slowly easing into it. I would greatly prefer that it supported a controller and whenever that patch lands, I have a feeling that it will become my primary phone game. The touchscreen controls are not amazing, though probably better than most mobile games. The game seems way less greedy with its mtx or at least the things that you can buy with real-world cash don’t seem to matter that much yet. I need to try some of the other classes but so far I am digging the “not-barbarian” character. I am not playing much of the game on PC mostly because if I am sitting at my PC… I have other games I would rather be playing.

Tower of Fantasy – PC

I think I am mostly winding down Tower of Fantasy. While I do enjoy it much more than I did Genshin Impact, I find myself in the old familiar trap of only logging in to collect my freebies and then logging right back out. I am not sure why the experience went flat for me, but I just stopped wanting to play it quite as much. I think maybe around the time I was winding this down is when the Brimstone Sands patch landed on the PTR and re-ignited my love of New World. As one star rises another sets, and as a result, Tower of Fantasy was on the losing end of that equation.

World of Warcraft – Dragonflight Alpha/Beta – PC

I played a ton of this game when I first got into the testing. I really liked the more directed testing phases of giving us a new zone to explore each week. I have to admit I ate that up and completed the quests in each of the new areas. Unfortunately when things opened up more and I was given access to play the entire experience from start to finish… I deflated a bit. I think the biggest frustration is that it seemed every single time I logged in, I had to reset my talent points and the profiles that I saved were getting wiped. There were several times I logged in… stared at the wall of talent points and noped out of choosing them and setting back up my bars again.

As far as Dragonflight itself… the pre-patch has landed and I still do not have a World of Warcraft subscription or own the expansion. While I had a lot of fun playing the test phases, I am not sure if it was enough to really draw me back into the game. I have to be honest… World of Warcraft feels like a really old game at this point. A lot of what I have been focused on of late is more action-oriented games, and Hotbar combat just feels weird. Like I never thought I would get to that point but here we are. I still don’t feel amazing giving Blizzard money either… so I guess time will tell if I get caught up in the expansion launch zeitgeist or not.

NDA Game – PC

Then there are games that are bound by NDA that I can’t talk about other than in the vaguest of terms. One I have access to and is eating up a bit of my time, and another I have created an account but have not received the game client. I am torn on whether or not I like NDAs in general because, on one hand, it keeps the players from getting just completely burnt out and bored with listening to news about the game before launch. On the other hand as a content creator, it sucks having a void that you are afraid to talk about. I get to the point where I am almost afraid to cover even public news of a game for fear that maybe just maybe something that ISN’T public knowledge will slip out.

Intentional Downgrade

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Good Morning Friends! This is going to be a bit of a hardware discussion. For the last six years, I have been using an LG 43UJ6300 43″ 4k 60hz television as my main gaming display. In the grand scheme of things, it was an economic way of getting a large display and since I specifically shopped for the lowest latency panel I could find, it was a pretty solid gaming experience. I would not shy away from using a television again in the future because it had a lot of benefits. Firstly the price of a reasonable 43″ 4k 60hz television is roughly 1/3rd of the price of a similarly sized gaming monitor. The other massive benefit of a large 4k display is that it is effectively a 2×2 grid of 1080p monitors, so a ridiculous amount of productivity space.

For gaming purposes, however, I honestly found little difference between running a game at 4k resolution and running a game at 1440p. So while I had the horsepower to run games at 4k 120hz due to my RTX 3080, I never did because I did not have the display to support that. Instead, I was far more likely to run at 1440p 120hz which my display did a fairly good job of supporting even though it seemed to be an “unofficial” mode. The other thing that I noticed over the years is that 43 inches is a wee bit too big to comfortably use at normal monitor distances, and by the end of the day my neck would end up getting sore from gazing upward to see anything I had at the very top of my screen.

Then there was the color accuracy problem. I had been running my LG TV next to a bog standard 1080p monitor, and whenever I moved windows from one screen to the other there was a massive difference in colors and clarity. For a while, my wife had been telling me that my screen was blue, and it was super noticeable any time I attempted to take a photo in my room. However, I had gotten used to it and was seemingly adjusting in my brain to the color shift. What I was noticing however is that my screen kept getting dimmer and the only way to adjust for this was to essentially wash everything out. Modern televisions are just not designed to last anywhere near as long as their tube-based cousins, and eventually, there are going to be problems be they dark spots, color shifts, or in my case global dimming. Last week it was finally time to move on when several times a day the display would just blink off for a few minutes and then go through a series of flashes as it finally woke back up to work again.

So when I got my replacement, I unintentionally chose another LG product not necessarily for any real reason other than the price to specs seemed to be the best deal. Instead of going with another 4k display, I “downgraded” to 1440p 165hz which could be debated as an upgrade instead. The higher refresh and supporting Freesync are both big bonuses. Having HDR10 which is a published standard instead of the jank HDR support the previous display had. The thing that I was not really prepared for is just how sharp and crisp everything looks. I am not entirely certain I realized how fuzzy everything was on the television and that everything essentially had a bit of a halo around it. There were a lot of times I had trouble reading things, and I just assumed it was my old man eyes getting the best of me… but instead, it seems that maybe the text itself was nowhere near as sharp as I thought it was.

The thing that I was not quite prepared for is just how my screen real estate I lost. Remember before I said that a 4k panel is an equivalent of having a 2×2 grid of 1080p monitors. The above image is the proportions of a 1440p screen with a 1080p black square in the upper left corner. I have more height and width than a normal 1080p screen but it isn’t a ton of it. My hope is that I can get used to this, but it is going to be an adjustment. I was used to having three or four windows open and arranged on screen at the same time where I could see and work from them all. Editing the podcast this week was the first time I noticed the big difference because often times I would be working on something in photoshop while my audacity window was sitting beside it and hot swapping between both of them while each was visible.

It does make me wonder if I am heading towards just adding a second one of these 32″ 1440p panels and calling it good.

Ten Favorite Slasher Films

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Good Morning Friends! As we are well into the “season of spoop”, this morning I am picking up a series that I started a few weeks back where I talk about my favorite horror films. The problem with that undertaking is that horror as a genre is too broad to ever boil it down to a comprehensive top-ten list. Instead, I am tackling things by various subgenres, and to date, I have covered Zombie films and Vampire films. This morning I will rip the bandaid and get this genre out of the way because I have to admit slasher films are not exactly my favorite. There are gems in the genre, but my preferences tend to align more towards dark fantasy or films with a clearly defined monster and some deep world-building. That is not to say that I do not occasionally enjoy watching some villain tear through a bunch of drunken college kids.

I am saying this ahead of time because my favorite slasher films are likely not going to align with someone who is really into that genre. This is probably the most “your mileage may vary” that we are going to get with this series of listicles. Again these are not necessarily in any particular order.

Halloween

We have to start things off with what is maybe objectively the best movie on the list. Halloween is a master class in suspense and leaving the worst parts unseen. It also introduces what is potentially the most relentless hunter that does not dip down into the supernatural. Jamie Lee Curtis will always be the queen of horror movies in my book, and this movie highlights why. The Michael Myers appearance is reportedly a cheap William Shatner mask, but the end result leads to one of the most creepy and soulless killers out there. There are a handful of sequels that I have enjoyed, but nothing will beat the original.

Friday the 13th

When looking at Friday the 13th it is impossible not to think about the deeply derivative number of sequels this movie has had. I think to date there are twelve different movies in this series, including the truly dumb Jason X which is set on a space station. However, the original movie is a truly creepy film and I think deserves our respect. As far as villains go, Jason is known for being this relentless force that will track you forever but the first film didn’t even need the supernatural to lean on. While I really dig some of the later films like Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, I still feel like the first film is the best.

Nightmare on Elm Street

Continuing the sequence of bringing out the great slasher baddies, let’s talk about Nightmare on Elm Street and Freddie Krueger. If you were a child of the 80s… we all wanted that glove. Sure Robert Englund did an excellent job bringing this bloodthirsty oneiromancer to life, but the glove… that is the part that made everyone love Freddie. Again you have a series with many sequels… some of which are not all that good but I think the first film is probably objectively the best. That said I really loved dream warriors as a kid in part I think because it gave the “victims” way more agency.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

One of my core problems with the slasher genre as a whole is that so often it devolves into torture porn. That really is not my jam as far as films go, so you are unlikely to see any movies of the Saw series on my list. That said every so often there is a movie that is ABSOLUTELY torture porn, but it is delivered in such a compelling manner that it has to be respected. For me, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of those films and while it is legitimately hard to watch at times, it presents a world that is deeply disturbing but also extremely unique for the time in which this was released. Not only is Leatherface an iconic villain but the fact several of elements from the movie are lifted directly from the life of Ed Gein makes it even more traumatizing.

Childs Play

I love this movie for entirely the wrong reasons. In the 80s there was this toy called “My Buddy” and the commercial was played so often during Saturday morning cartoons that the theme song drilled into your brain. The Chucky doll is a play on this and what if this object of safe childhood play… went horribly wrong. The BEST version of this is the Simpsons Treehouse of Horrors Krusty Doll satire, but the original Child’s Play movie is still a pretty solid outing. I love the world that got built around this movie and more specifically the phenomenal performances that Jennifer Tilly has given as Tiffany the girlfriend/bride of Chucky.

Wrong Turn

This is another film that borders on torture porn but still is extremely interesting. City folk especially have deep-seated fears of the unknown in the undeveloped green wastes of our world. I come from “Rural America” and even then there are always the weird people that come to town very rarely, and largely live off the grid. This movie dials this up to eleven and presents a clan of highly deformed mountain folk who prey upon outsiders. There are multiple versions of this film, but I think the 2003 rendition is my favorite. It feels like it draws heavily upon the banned television episode of the X-Files called “Home” from 1994. It is a disturbing watch to say the least.

Happy Hell Night

I can pretty much guarantee that this film is not going to be on anyone else’s list, but it means a lot to me personally. Once upon a time, there was a movie rental place near me called Video Giant, and they had this 20 movies, 20 dollars, 20 days deal exclusive to effectively “B Movies”. My friend Kaleon occasionally comments on this blog and I would go over there, each get 20 movies, and then swap back and forth until it came time to return them. There was many a treasure unearthed through these adventures and one of my favorites was Happy Hell Night. It features a very young Sam Rockwell and Jorja Fox and is not likely something they specifically promote on their resumes. Everything about this film is “not great” except for the villain which is this demonic priest that has a “catchphrase” of a sort each time he kills someone. He does not really speak at all other than uttering things like “No Sleep”, “No Sex”, or something similar with No and something relevant to the context of the killing. Something about the absurdity of it all made me fall in love with this film and recently I tracked down a DVD so I could rip it and add it to my digital collection.

Happy Death Day

Also in the absurdist sub-sub-genre is Happy Death Day. Essentially this movie is what if you combined a slasher flick with groundhog day. It is Tree Gelbman’s birthday, and at the end of the night, she is going to die. Each time she dies… it resets the loop and she wakes up in a dorm room after a one-night stand each day she has to live out a walk of shame… and a sequence of events leading up to the same conclusion. Essentially she has to figure out how to solve her own murder so that she can avoid it… close the loop, and live to see another day. The movie is definitely not your standard brain-dead slasher fare and is extremely funny in the process.

Candyman

I love Clive Barker and this is his ode to the slasher film genre. What this has that so many other films lack is this rich mythology that is built up around the titular villain the Candyman. Into the narrative are woven statements about social class structure and racial violence, that make this far more than just a tale of the boogeyman. The brush chosen to paint this story however is borrowed from the Bloody Mary style mythos where someone saying a name three times in the mirror summons forth a demonic presence. Like pretty much everything that Barker has been involved in, it is both compelling and terrifying at the same time with a palpable sensuality. Sweets for the sweet.

Scream

Scream is a great film… full stop. It is a satire of the slasher film genre, while at the same time being one of the best and most competent examples of it. While this gets watered down greatly over the course of a series of movies, the first film is still phenomenal. The Ghostface killer also walks this line between being one of the most generic-looking villains ever but also summoning forth an iconic appearance at the same time. What I find so interesting about it and that will not be understood by future generations… is the mask used in this movie was like the cheapest of cheap Walmart discount bin costumes for years. Much like Michael Myers gave new life to a discount bin William Shatner mask, Scream made this awful ghost mask design the stuff of legend. If you have never watched this film I highly suggest doing so.

More to Come

This is probably going to be one of the more controversial lists that I have released in this series because in creating it… I left out a lot of fan-favorite slasher films. That said this is “my” list of favorites not designed to be universal. I think next up we are going to tackle Werewolves, which moves us back into more of my favorite sub-genres. Like I said before, Slasher flicks are not exactly my favorite in the genre but I wanted to tackle them just so I could talk about Happy Hell Night, a film that I think more people should appreciate for its absurdity.

Ghost Hunter YouTube

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Good Morning Friends! I took a much longer than originally anticipated hiatus from posting. When I got up Wednesday morning I just was not really feeling it, and then I was off both Thursday and Friday and did not post then either. For those who follow me because of Blaugust, I would say that it is a good idea to just go with the flow when you are not feeling it. Chances are you probably need a break from creating content and so long as you resume at some point taking a break is extremely therapeutic. I can’t necessarily say that I feel recharged, but I was ready to get back to the blog this morning. Over the weekend a discussion happened over on the “Twitters” about Ghost Hunter channels on YouTube and I said that I should really do a blog post where I dump some of my favorites. This morning is the realization of that statement and if you are thoroughly uninterested in the paranormal, today is likely going to be a hard pass for you.

Overnight Channel / TFIL

The Overnight channel is something that branched off of another channel called TFIL, and the premise is that they go all around the country and world to do ghost-hunting videos. Ghost Hunting YouTube is this spider web that branches out, and there are a number of collaborations that ultimately will lead you to other channels. Since this one was my “first” it will always have a special place in my heart, but as I have developed slightly more refined tastes it does come across as extremely over the top. Corey is a sweetheart though and seems to be a ghost magnet, and there have been a few moments that were genuinely shocking.

The Paranormal Files

This is probably the second channel that the YouTube algorithm sent my way. Overall I like this series but there are certain aspects that bug me. Firstly Colin is a little hyperbolic when it comes to his reactions to things going on. I do kinda dig that he is often out doing stuff with his mom, dad, and now wife so it creates this interesting dynamic. It bugs me that he calls his parents by their first name, but that is just a pet peeve of mine because I had a friend growing up that did that. The only time he called them Mom or Dad was when he wanted something. Anyways there are a lot of interesting places that this channel explores, but there tends to be an excessive amount of padding with background setting content.

Twin Paranormal

It was through Paranormal Files that I was introduced to Twin Paranormal, which is a group operating out of the Las Vegas area. Over time this has become probably my favorite group because they release content reliably and it has sorta become my thing to sit down and watch their latest video while eating lunch on Sunday after I finish editing the two podcasts. They have great energy and I really like the brother’s dynamic and their friend Wyatt. All of these channels indulge in quite a bit of hyperbole at times and this channel’s greatest sin is probably its video title and thumbnail game. The videos are much better than this would denote, but they are absolutely playing the algorithm game.

Paranormal Nightmare

This channel brands itself as a TV Series, which appears to be “broadcast” on Tubi, Apple TV, Prime Video, and Pluto TV. After watching several videos, the algorithm opened the floodgates at recommending channels that I had not encountered organically and this was one of the first. The group does investigations and has a religious aspect to it where their goal is to free the family from whatever “infestation” might be occurring. There have been some interesting situations in their shows of individuals who appear to wildly change their personalities that you would think might indicate possession. One of the more professional groups and unlike a lot of the made for the travel channel type crap, it is weirdly not super over the top.

Paranormal Quest

Another group of four guys more or less follows the formula that all of these groups follow. I think it was through this channel that I first encountered the Estes Method. For those who don’t watch a bunch of these channels, it is a thing where they have one person put on noise-canceling headphones and listen to a “spirit box” while another person often times in another room asks questions. The person who is “under” just shouts out everything that they hear through the spirit box regardless of context. When the questions and the “answers” line up it is really interesting, but oftentimes there is a fair amount of nonsense as well. A “spirit box” is essentially a device that scans through the radio frequencies and it is reported that spirits can stop the scan at specific spots to land on words or phrases.

Exploring with Josh

This is probably the most hyperbolic channel on the list. Josh has done a wide number of collaborations with other channels on this list to this point, and as a result, I periodically get fed his videos through the algorithm. If there is any group that I would accuse of playing things up for the camera, this is absolutely the worst offender. These are sometimes interesting but I absolutely do not watch every episode. One of the interesting things that come through these channels though is that often times different groups will do the same locations. It is interesting how many groups get the same results from the same areas.

Paranormal New England

As hyperbolic as Josh is… it at least led me to find this channel. I guess Paranormal New England is a group that he used to work with regularly, and their channel is a gem in the rough. Basically what you get is a lot of very lightly edited footage of investigations, that more or less feel like raw vlogs. They don’t release videos very often with something new landing every few months, but they are deeply interesting to watch. This is the sort of thing that I really love to see because it is way more serious than the “whacky adventures of ghost hunters” vibe you often get from YouTube channels.

Exploring with Fighters

This is another channel that I stumbled onto through collaborations, specifically with Overnight/TFIL. Dan’s stuff is sort of hit or miss and he seems to do way more urban exploration/abandoned locations stuff than ghost hunting, but there are a handful of really interesting locations in the UK and Europe. Admittedly I don’t watch him that often but still someone I am subbed to that occasionally does something really interesting.

Mackie and Amanda

This is another channel that I stumbled onto due to collaboration. There was a series of videos where Amanda was recording with Twin Paranormal. Amanda is a medium and Mackie is seemingly one of those friends who is just down for any sort of nonsense. There is a massive backlog of stuff that I have not seen, but the few videos I have watched have been interesting. I really like the vibe of this group and they feel extremely relatable and don’t really fall into the over-the-top YouTuber rut as so many channels can over time. There is a deep sincerity with what they are doing and I dig that.

Lomar Mendz

The next couple of channels is recent finds. The algorithm fed me a series of videos that included Lomar and Chelsea as they were doing some Randonautica stuff, then I noticed they also did more than a fair number of ghost-hunting videos as well. Essentially Chelsea is in her words a “baby medium” and she is trying to learn to control it Lomar is just one of those “good dude” types that seem interested in exploring anything. There is a good-natured vibe to the channel, and while I have only watched a few things so far I do plan on diving back into the past content.

Exploring with Angelo

Another “Good Dude” type that I encountered through a series of videos he recorded with Lomar and Chelsea. I’ve not really plumbed much of his solo content, but it seems very interesting. Mostly throwing these channels out there because I think they are going to be ones that I really dig in the future. I don’t have much experience with either of the groups though.

Amy’s Crypt

This one is literally brand new to me. This was suggested by my friend Jae during our conversation this weekend and I have only had a chance to watch a single video. I often have one of these running in the background while I am playing games and then alt-tab over if things sound interesting. This is an Aussie couple that travels broadly and does investigations. So far I dig the vibe of the videos and they also seem to have a deep sincerity to them.

Madd Vladd – Skinwalker series

This one is interesting but also gives off deep “fake” vibes. I am throwing it in there just in case it eventually turns into something. The setup is that this dude is a gaming YouTuber with another channel and started having weird happenings in his backyard that open up onto an undeveloped area. Since Skinwalkers are the new hotness this video series for which there are only two currently, uses that titling. There were three months between the first and second video, which seems deeply suspect and makes me think there is maybe some “after effects” editing time happening. There are some fairly interesting things that go on. If you have an hour to sit down and watch with a deeply skeptical eye… it might be interesting.

[EDIT] – 4pm 10/17

Jasko

I so very rarely edit my own blog posts to add content after the fact, but I am going to do so today. Over lunch, I was looking for something to watch and stumbled onto this channel. I know nothing about it, but this video is interesting enough to make me subscribe. There is a point where there is this insane blood-curdling scream from out of nowhere, while they are deep in the woods seemingly alone. I opted to go ahead and edit it in because lord knows if or when I will make another post like this in the future.