I’ve been wrestling with whether I should get No Man’s Sky for almost four years now. To their credit, Hello Games has put a lot of work into upgrading it over the years, but I worried it was one of those games that looked great visually and conceptually, but didn’t have much substance or gameplay underneath it. Recently I heard they did another big update, and I was looking for a mouse-and-keyboard game to play on my PC on my “controller-rest days” in between playing Horizon Zero Dawn on the PS4 (which I restarted a little while ago). So I finally pulled the trigger and bought No Man’s Sky on Steam yesterday. It’s on sale right now. (825 words.)

First, just a quick note to say I feel like I’m “recovered” from whatever it was I had. I still have a minor cough now and then, but that’s something I’ve had for years anyway. Secondly, I’ve been so distracted lately that I’m only just now realizing that Blapril is not just coming soon, but already here and started. So go do that if you haven’t signed up yet. It’s a great event. (588 words.)

You’ll have to follow me on Twitter if you want all the minute-by-minute details, because I still don’t have new glasses yet and long-form writing is a pain, but I’m pretty sure I got “it.” Either that or I got “something” at a ridiculously coincidental time, when I haven’t had “something” in a good ten years. Fever spiked up pretty high yesterday (Saturday), and I spent most of the afternoon and night alternately shivering uncontrollably or drenched in sweat. So I’m officially now on day two of a strict two-week self-quarantine self-isolation inside my house. No symptoms before Saturday whatsoever. (351 words.)

Unrolling a Twitter thread because it’s sort of like a blog post, kind of. Today I’m getting scar tissue blasted out of my eye with a laser beam. Maybe by tonight I’ll be able to read and write again. Or be permanently blind in one eye. The possibilities are endless! I’m using humor as a defense mechanism! Procedure is complete and I can already see much much better. Had no idea how bad it had gotten. Poor vision kind of sneaks up on you. (290 words.)

I haven’t played much of any games in the last month, because I’ve been busy dealing with a lot of overdue tasks that I’ve been putting off for so long that they’ve gone from Merely Unpleasant to A Huge Overwhelming Insurmountable Problem. It’s mostly “administrative” tasks-household and personal and money and insurance stuff. All the things I hate dealing with and put off as long as possible, in other words. (416 words.)

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice has been on my radar for quite some time now, as I’ve heard nothing but good things about it, but I only just picked it up in a sale at the end of last year. After finishing up with Death Stranding, I had narrowed down my choice for the first game of the new year to trying out Hellblade or going back to Horizon Zero Dawn. I picked Hellblade, and I’m glad I did. (601 words.)

So I had planned to just upload some videos as I stumbled and bumbled around in EverQuest II and forget about it, because it’s super easy, barely an inconvenience for me to do so, but it turns out that EverQuest II is, well, not a very good video subject. So since all the update comments I left on my last post are just a jumble, I thought I’d try to write down a more coherent narrative of my attempts to find some meaningful gameplay with my lost Level 100 Ogre Coercer. I did find a level 100 story to follow, but it took a while. (2378 words.)

It seems like every time I mention EverQuest I or II, I inadvertently start a firestorm of blogging controversy. :) Even before I read Bhagpuss’s post, I was thinking I should probably expand my thoughts on EverQuest II*. It’s one of the games I periodically try to get back into, and one that I wish I was caught up with. I can’t precisely explain why I wish that anymore, though; I suppose it always felt like one of the most “complete” fantasy MMORPG experiences, representative perhaps of the pinnacle of what the genre is capable of. Or perhaps it’s more of an archival representation of what the genre used to be, a trip to a very interesting museum, in a way. (798 words.)

I don’t really plan my gaming very much, I tend to just play whatever I feel like playing on any given day. But I decided to make a list of the games that are currently on my highest priority “to play” list at the start of 2020, along with a rough estimate of how long they’ll take to play, according to HowLongToBeat. The obligatory blog post picture requirement that vaguely relates to the text. Also a cool screenshot from Horizon Zero Dawn. (980 words.)

Previously: Episode 2. As I’ve moved on to playing the next game in my list, which happens to be Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, a game whose story also requires a lot of processing, I’ve sort of lost interest in processing Death Stranding in writing. But I shall valiantly try to press on and remember some key points. This post covers Episodes 3 through 8, which represents the vast majority of the player’s time spent in the game. For me, getting through to the end of Episode 8 consumed about 70 out of the 80 hours I spent in the game. The final hours of the game is incredibly story-heavy, but I’ll get into that later. (2027 words.)