An interesting review

 I was browsing on Sulla's website last night and I came across his review of Galactic Civilizations 3.

Review

I forget how I first came across his content but I think it was based on Civilization 4 videos on Youtube. Sulla is not a full time content creator. He does stream and make youtube videos but he has a full time day job working for the government in healthcare administration. 

Basically, I think part of being a content creator is reading / watching other people's content. I think it is a good idea to point out things I like both as a service to readers but also as a record of content that I have found to be valuable.

Anyways, I thought this review was interesting because it was kind of a combination of the appreciate / enjoy duality I mentioned in my last post. In some ways he is complaining about the game not providing him with the sort of experience that he wants out of a strategy game. But at the same time he is very conscious that this is his taste and that there are other styles of play. A big part of his complaint is about an inconsistency of approach. He argues that the game was very clearly designed to function in one way but then that major changes were made after release that contradicted that.

So I just wanted to draw attention to this as a piece of writing that I thought engaged with the game and also with its development process in a meaningful way. He engages with the mechanics and gameplay in specific ways. I own this game and have played it some but I experienced it at a much more superficial level. I don't really like the game much but my complaints are more about some superficial issues. I don't like the aesthetics of the characters and I feel that the roles the various races have are very stereotyped. I also feel like in a lot of ways it is a pretty straight rip-off of Civilization.

Enjoy vs Appreciate

 This is kind of related to my discussion of fun the other day. Particularly the idea of being spontaneous or intentional.

I think a lot of people pursue video games by zeroing in on a genre or genres that they really like. Games are evaluated in terms of how close they are to some kind of ideal version of that kind of game. That ideal version can be a real game that they played and loved or it can be some kind of Platonic ideal. To me this is what I mean by enjoying in the title. You focus on pursuing what you enjoy.

The other model is appreciating. To me this means you make the effort to take a game on its own terms and you are open to new experiences. The point is that you are trying to engage with games for what they are trying to do moreso than on your own personal tastes.

I find I kind of struggle with both these models. As I said in the post on fun, a lot of times what is fun on day x is not fun on day y. I think that is a me problem. I am just very changeable and kind of moody. So I may enjoy an rpg one day and the next be in the mood for a factory sim. I also feel that sometimes it can kind of settle into a rut. I spent a lot of time playing the Elder Scrolls Online. I played it because I liked it. But at the same time, it got to be kind of a rut where I where I was just doing it because I didn't know what else to do. I kind of wanted to branch out but somehow other games felt kind of intimidating somehow. There were new things to learn and adapt to instead of the old familiar comfort.

In some ways I have made some effort to try to be a bit more intentional and to try to appreciate games on their own terms. I also feel that the mode of appreciating is more the place of the critic. The critic tries to speak more generally so they need to take games on their own merits.

But at the same time, sometimes I feel like this emphasis on trying to appreciate something risks turning a fun hobby into work. I start to feel that I have projects that I am "supposed" to be doing. It can feel a bit cut off from the spirit of fun.

Sometimes I feel like the key is excitement. When I feel excited about something then it is fun. But I just feel it is very difficult to maintain that sense of excitement.

 Anyways, as it always is, the balance is probably in the middle. There is always going to be an area you feel more comfortable with and areas you feel less comfortable with. I have determined that competitive multiplayer first person shooters are probably not my comfort zone. So much so that it is probably just a fact of my life that I will never be able to compare and contrast them in any intelligent way. So that is just one example of a limit on my willingness to appreciate. So it is just a balance. In some ways it is necessary to find your comfort zone but equally necessary to be willing to branch out and try some new things.

 

 

Professional vs Amateur

 Yesterday I was daydreaming about being a full-time content creator. Somehow it felt fun and exciting to think about that. But it is hard to tell how serious I am about it.

I really feel mixed about my actual real world job of teaching English to adults. Basically for the most part it is a pretty low stress job. I have a core group of three students that I get along with well and that make the job enjoyable a good part of the time. In some ways it feels really good to have a clear cut division between a job and a hobby. As jobs go it is really not all that bad and I like it significantly better than the main alternative of teaching kids. It also pays ok compared to my needs and compared to other kinds of jobs that I could actually get. On the other hand there is some feeling of like just getting by. Like some feeling of like not actually directing my life. Kind of just going with the flow. Part of me really feels like I would like to be more directed and like actually pursue my passion and try to find a way to do something that I really feel excited about and like I am actually living my life. Like part of me doesn't want to be stuck in this job and have no alternatives.

I guess it is just kind of difficult because partly it seems like I have to be realistic. I need an income. I also feel like to some extent I just have a mental block when it comes to work. I don't really like working. Part of me feels like if I chose to be a content creator and really got into it then it would become a job and I would start to dislike it and feel burdened by the things I had to do and start wishing I could do something else. That is kind of what I mean by having a clear cut division between work and play. Like for example it seems like I have a common habit of setting myself projects and then very quickly developing resistance to actual following through on it. That is just a funny quirk if I have a job and my projects are just for fun but it is an existential threat if I am trying to base my life on these projects.

 Part of me feels like being a full time content creator is kind of a daydream. Like it is kind of like watching a baseball game and daydreaming about being some MVP player. It is totally unrealistic. I also sounds good in theory but the reality of the situation is quite difficult. It seems like it would be fun to be a full time content creator but the reality is that there are a lot of problems and difficulties.

But on the other hand, I kind of feel like I will never know if I don't try it. I also don't have to go all in and quit my day job and then try to go super hard core. I can kind of try to work on it gradually and move in that direction and try some things and see what develops.

I guess I also feel mixed on the time front. Part of me feels like I am super on track and like my whole life has kind of been a gradual process of getting closer and closer to what I really want to be doing. But part of me feels like I am getting old and I am running out of time.

I think the main take away is just that I kind of like the idea of being a content creator but I have to sort of work on it in my spare time for the time being. But probably I should be more proactive and kind of try to take some more steps.

Update 9

Well, life is moving along. I seem to have finally beaten the pneumonia although I still have some episodes of coughing sometimes. Anyways I have been back to work this month. The boys traveled to England to start their semester abroad. Ellie went with them for about a week. I didn't really do much with the time to myself. Mostly just journaled.

Gaming-wise February hasn't really been that great. I have spent a lot of time journaling I guess. I finished up Hexcells as I reported. I also dug up John Walker's review out of curiosity. It was on Rock Paper Shotgun. Anyways, through that I learned that the creator of that game made some other similar ones. So that is something to look forward to at some point in the future. I also tried a game called Naboki that Walker had recommended on Buried Treasure. This one is ok but seemed too easy. It is a bit more of an observation puzzle than really figuring things out. I played it for a couple of days but it wasn't really scratching the puzzle itch. I believe it is a short game though so I will probably try to finish it just to notch another game up as completed.

The two main games I have played this month have been Newton's Cradle Puzzle Game and Chrono Trigger. The Newton game is a simple puzzle game. Newton's cradle refers to those office desk top toys with the balls that swing and knock against each other according to Newton's laws. This is another Buried Treasure recommendation. So far I like it but don't really love it. The soundtrack stands out as some jazzy guitar work. The puzzles are kind of mixed. What I mean is that there was a very smooth progression with Hexcells from easy to difficult. These Cradle puzzles seem kind of random in that sometimes they seem too easy and sometimes they are real stumpers. The puzzles are well designed. I particularly mean that they are economical in the sense that there don't seem to be any wasted elements. I believe I have solved 20 out of 32. I did glean a hint for puzzle 5 from Walker's review as he was also stumped by this one. Walker is clever and doesn't label it is a such. He just kind of drops some info that seems unrelated but if you are stuck with that puzzle it will leap out as a hint. Anyways, this was another very cheap (less than 1 USD) puzzle game to enjoy with morning coffee.

Chrono Trigger is a classic JRPG (Japanese Role Playing Game). Basically I got a bit curious about this genre because of that conversation that I reported at G8. So I searched online to learn what some classics of the genre are and this one got many votes. It is a pretty old game. It was released for the NES in the early 90s. I believe the PC port I am playing was released in 2018. So the graphics are very old school. It reminds me of the original Final Fantasy game for NES that my brother and I played and beat. I would say I am enjoying it but again, not really loving it. The whole vibe is pretty bubble gummy kids stuff. I guess in some ways I like that because I do get sick of the incessant darkness of some games. But on the other hand it kind of means that this game seems slightly insipid. I have been proceeding pretty quickly through it and plan to finish it. The run time seems to be around 26 hours. Anyways, it is kind of interesting to compare it with Persona 5 Royal that I played a few hours of last month. They are both considered classic JRPGs but they are very different. It is interesting to see if I can come up with any parallels that help to mark out the genre other than that they are both rpgs and they were both designed by Japanese teams. So far not much has occurred to me in that vein.

Overall I would say that I enjoyed my January challenge a lot. So I have kind of been trying to come up with some other kind of project that I could do but so far nothing really that great has popped up. For now I guess the project is just to work through my backlog. I have made a decision to focus on just two games at a time. One is my morning coffee puzzle game. The other will be a game that I am wanting to work through from start to finish. So far that has been going ok although I do feel some resistance. I feel a bit mixed about having a casual game in the mix. I guess I am mostly referring to Forza 4 (the driving game). Basically I have played a fair bit of this in mostly shorter sessions. It is fun to just drive around on the roads and occasionally do a race. I am pretty terrible and have finished last in all the races even after turning the difficulty down (at the game's suggestion). I am a bit torn between wanting to keep this as a super casual game just to pop into when the urge strikes or on the other hand wanting to practice and to try to actually win some races. So far I have mostly dropped this in February to focus on the other two games.

Other than that I have been sticking to the no spending money on games so far although I didn't really make it an official challenge or set a date that I had to make it to or anything like that. It was pretty easy in January as I guess felt sated by buying a bunch of games in December during the winter sale. Lately though I have been feeling more tempted again.

That's about it for February so far. Sorry the blog has been pretty quiet. I just haven't felt like I had much I really wanted to say.

The problem with fun

 Sometimes it pisses me off how complicated it is for me to have fun. What I mean is that I definitely have fun sometimes but there is no rhyme or reason to it. The thing I have a lot of fun doing one day seems like ashes or poison the next day.

A big challenge is the duality between being intentional about fun and being spontaneous. And I just struggle a lot to get the balance and it just seems like I can't get it a lot of times. Part of me believes that I should be super intentional about my fun and have projects and goals. Another part of me believes that all that stuff is the problem and I should just do as I please in the moment.

The reality is probably somewhere in between. Like if I just try to do what I feel then a lot of times I just end up journaling because I don't really have any idea what I feel like doing. Or I just kind of flop around doing a bit of this and discarding it. So some kind of direction and goals and making decisions and sticking to them is probably needed. But at the same time I feel like if I take those goals too seriously and get kind of grim about "I need to finish game x" or "I need to accomplish goal y" then I lose the spirit and I don't want to play any more.

There is just this issue of resistance. Somehow I often feel like I want to make a plan or a goal or a project. These always seem brilliant when I form the intention. But then quickly I develop some resistance to that intention. So the question is always do I force myself to overcome the resistance or do I believe that it is telling me something important. I feel like the thing that pisses me off is that there is no easy answer. Sometimes the resistance is just some kind of psychological barrier and if I overcome it then I will have fun. But other times the resistance is a result of something and when I try to force my way through it just feels terrible.

Right now I am kind of on the intentional side of things. Part of me wants to make "decisions" and stick to them. But I guess part of me feels like there is something about resistance being important. So part of me feels like that is a difference. Part of me feels like there is something about forming intentions and not giving up on those but at the same time listening to resistance and kind of not trying to force myself.

 Sometimes I think I am crazy for having these kinds of problems. But on the other hand I also come across a lot of Youtube videos and blog or forum posts addressing these kinds of problems. I don't know. Sometimes it just seems like the answer is that life has no easy answers and whatever you do there is going to be resistance and ups and downs.

 

Game Finished: Hexcells

 Basically I have discovered a couple of times that I really like doing puzzles with my morning coffee. I have discovered this with chess tactics and also with sokobond (a chemistry puzzle game similar to sokobon puzzles of moving pieces to get a solution). But for various reasons I have kind of forgotten or let this lapse.

Anyways, with Hexcells I rediscovered this fact and have been doing these puzzles with my morning coffee.

So basically in my mini review after I tried this game for the challenge I wrote that the puzzles were on the easy side but that there didn't seem to be a whole lot of them so I wanted to finish the game. So anyways I have been working on it. Basically the puzzles did get more challenging to the extent that like working on one and solving one with my coffee was pretty satisfying.

So overall I will say it was a pretty satisfying puzzle game. I do agree with walker that no guessing is required and that makes it better than minesweeper although I don't seem to be as enthusiastic a supporter of this game as walker. (I didn't read his actual review but he discusses the game somewhat in a review for another puzzle game on buried treasure. The actual hexcells review is on another site.)

Another thing that makes it better than minesweeper is that there are some extra types of clues involved. Basically in the same way as minesweeper if a hex isn't supposed to be colored blue then there will be a number in it stating how many blue cells are adjacent. But in hexcells there are some additional notational clues that indicate how these blue cells are arranged. If the number is in curly braces then the blue cells are all adjacent to each other. If the number is between two dashes then they explicitly aren't all adjacent. If the number is unadorned then it could be either. There is also a clue where a number can appear outside a hex at the head of a line of hexes. (this line can be a vertical column or horizontal or diagonal). The same notational features apply to these clues. That made the puzzles more interesting.

There is one big way that minesweeper is better than hexcells though. This has to do with the fact that the minesweeper puzzles are automatically generated. So any time you want to play one you just open the program and boom a new puzzle. As I mentioned the hexcells game doesn't really have that many puzzles and the first half are pretty easy. That being said, this complaint is very mitigated by the fact that the game is quite cheap. I got it on sale for 19 NT which is something like 60 cents. So you can get some handcrafted puzzles for very little investment.

One minor quibble is that I felt the tutorial puzzle for clue where a number appears at the head of a column, row, or diagonal wasn't very clear. It uses the word line. I didn't know what this meant and spent awhile trying to understand until I finally understood. One confusion I had was I thought line meant the line that defines a hex. Then I also thought it meant the line around the set of hexes, etc etc.

Another minor quibble is that I was quite disappointed with the last puzzle. I had been pretty happy with the second to last puzzle. It had been challenging but I had gotten through it with some elbow grease. I was quite looking forward to the last puzzle but it is just an excuse for the credits. This felt like a pretty big let down.

Anyways, the game is quite cheap and I did have fun with it so this is a definite recommend if you are looking for this kind of logic puzzle.

 

Update 8

 Well, I seem to basically be over my illness. I still have some coughing but it is much less than it was before. I will see the doctor again tomorrow but I am planning to go back to work now that the Chinese New Year Holiday is over.

Kind of feel like the holiday was a flop for me. I did spend some time with family but I didn't really get into anything. Basically there was one Chinese New Year a few years back when I played a slow game vs my Chess Master computer program every day of the break. Ever since then I have always had visions of having a very productive CNY break but it hasn't really happened.

I did finish my January challenge and in a lot of ways it was a success but I kind of ended on a weak note as the the last 6 days of the month there were 3 days where I didn't play a new game for it. That included the last day of the month when I was kind of wanting to play make up games for the other two days. But I did succeed on the no spending on games aspect of the challenge. There was a chess book that recently became available that I am pretty interested in but I didn't buy it. I also did it today (Feb 2nd) but I completed the vague 3rd part I had stated about organizing my games somehow. I created index cards for my games and sorted them into categories about things like play time, my interest in the game, whether I am stuck at some part, if I completed it or if I just feel done with it.

That brings me to the topic of limits. I think I just kind of hit a limit and felt I was kind of overdoing it. So even though there was part of me that wanted to play three games on that last day a bigger part just couldn't do it. So I guess it is good and healthy that I didn't force myself or really get bent out of shape about not doing it. So then on the first of February I decided I needed a bit of a real rest day so I did kind of a screen time fast. This was a bit inspired by conversations between my brother and his kid about screen time. I just felt I needed a rest so I spent most of the day just doing other stuff. Journaling in a paper notebook and also reading a paper book. I was kind of thinking of the youtuber "beard meets food". He is a competitive eater who does a lot of restaurant challenges where if you eat the whole thing it is for free. And yet he is quite lean and fit. From what I have gathered he is very disciplined about eating and fasting when he is not doing the challenges. He also works out. This just kind of got me thinking that maybe if I am serious about video games I will need to be more disciplined about my screen time and kind of try to balance my activities. Discipline isn't really my strong suit so I think setting up a strict schedule is just setting myself up for failure. So I think I will have to play it by ear. But hopefully I can be more conscious about this and try to have some balance between screen time and time doing other things like taking walks or reading paper books or journaling on paper.

Another thing that contributed to the feeling that the holiday was a flop was just the fact that my Total War Three Kingdoms project never really got of the ground. I think it was a combination of things but I just felt like most days I just didn't want to do it. I also didn't do a deep dive on any other game. So maybe it was just the whole hitting my limit thing I was talking about. Maybe it was just too much to try to do the January challenge and the 3 Kingdoms project at the same time.

So, looking forward I am a bit uncertain. Part of me would like to come up with some other challenge or project but nothing terribly appealing has come up. Part of me is wanting to do a project where I invest more time in games I have started but haven't gotten very far with. Part of me is wanting to continue the whole playing games I have never played before idea as I still have a lot of games I haven't tried. But both of those ideas have issues. So kind of mixed.

For the challenge

The 28th nothing

The 29th Tangle tower. This is a detective game recommended by John Walker on buried treasure. It has a very cartooney art style. The dialogue is ok but the specific brand of humor involved seems like it could easily start to get on my nerves. Feel interested in playing more.

The 30th Dishonored 2. This was recommended by a friend who kind of helped get me into pc gaming when I first felt interest. I finally got around to trying it. It is kind of not really my kind of game because it is a first person action game where reflexes and timing matter. On the other hand, stealth plays a big part which makes it more like a puzzle game in some ways which is appealing. Will probably try to give this one some more time.

The 31st nothing.