Akun

I would only notice the music if it's a song I recognize and have nostalgia for or if it fits the scene perfectly on an emotional level. Most music I've heard in not just movies and TV shows, but also video games, I just don't find them all that memorable or interesting enough that I would pay attention to them. They're decent tracks, but they didn't really stand out as unique for me. What I classify as "unique" and "iconic" might be unreasonable though, because I'd call the Superman theme unique and timeless. Anyone could recognize the theme just from a few seconds of it. Whereas if you ask me to remember a single song from Telltale Games' The Walking Dead, or even in a movie context, the soundtracks from Gladiator, I can't hum a tune for you at all.

I don't like most nuts, especially walnuts and almond. And while I like peanuts, mixing them with chocolate brownies tastes weird. I prefer my brownies without nuts.

Definitely YouTube for the reason you mentioned; it's got a music video and everything. I'm more of a visual person than an audio one. I like my visuals. 😛 I do use my phone for music though when I'm on the can. 😜 Spotify is a great companion during bathroom breaks.

My smartphone, definitely, but it's beaten by my usage of my PC, which I use very often daily. I haven't used my TV in a long time, but that might change from now on, now than I'm back to binging TV shows.

It was probably around 1999 or 2001, when the Internet has finally resembled the kind we're familiar with today with Google and stuff. Online messengers like MSN Messenger and AIM were still a thing back then and I'd use them to chat with people from a Digimon forum I joined. It was an Acer PC, I think. I was very young at the time, just 9 years old in '99, so I couldn't quite remember the details. My monitor was big though, just a bit smaller than a CRT TV. My monitors would only get bigger down the years after I bought a 27 inch iMac, but it's now shrunk to a mid-sized monitor now on my custom PC.

Yeah, I relate to this topic and its OP so much because I've always felt this way. I've always been a single player gamer, and the few times I did play multiplayers, I'd either suck at it (Counterstrike) or just got burned through conflict with other players (World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic). I don't get along with people very well in life outside of gaming either, so social interaction has always been a big hurdle for me. I keep trying, particularly with forums like this, because humans are inherently social creatures whose social needs are as important as our needs to eat and drink, but I've failed more often than I succeeded in keeping close to a community without ending up in some argument. Even in this forum, I've argued with someone in just the short time since I've joined. I hate conflict like that; I'd much rather spend my time relaxing in some single player game. I don't find it particularly boring either, single player games, because I'm a weirdo who found more emotional attachment to fictional characters than with real people ever since I was a kid. Being in a virtual world feels more fun to me than deal with the real life drama of real people, especially in our day and age when everyone's gotta argue about politics or gender/racial tribalism.

I don't usually care much about unlocking achievements that require you to play some challenging minigames, but I do enjoy those trivial and funny achievements that were there as a joke or a reference to something. I did really enjoy Game Dev Tycoon's achievements whenever you recreate a famous game and gave it the same name (Halo, Half-Life, Starfox, etc.). It made the whole experience of going through the different video game industry era more immersive and meaningful.

Yeah. I have tons of games on Steam I haven't played for years and I can't get any monetary returns from them. I could sell my Steam account, but there's all kinds of issues with that, including security issues and breaking Valve's TOS and possibly getting the account banned anyway. It's just one huge chunk of money spent I couldn't get back, as opposed to physical games.

I do this quite often because my gaming chair setup is just a lot more comfortable than my 4K mounted TV setup. The TV's tilted in a way that I couldn't relax as comfortably. Still, I try to watch movies on my TV as often as I can because it's 4K after all, and I want my movie experience to have that kind of awesome visuals.

Nope. If you've bought them for more than two weeks (14 days), the refund isn't accepted. I've tried this with many previous games, including bundles of games I didn't have time to play.

Sold my entire SMT collection for $400. Not a bad return, considering I bought each 3DS game for about $110 on Amazon. And that's why I love physical copies of my games because I could resell them like this. By comparison, I probably can't get a refund for my Steam purchase of Soul Hackers 2 because it's been more than 14 days since it got released. Ah well. I'm ready to move on from my SMT days. It's been an interesting phase of my life, but that's all for now.

Finally finished Mass Effect 3: Legendary Edition again with the Audemus' Happy Ending Mod installed. It was refreshing to see the game with a different ending this time, albeit a modded, fan-made happy ending. This was the first time I played the game with one of these happy ending mods, so it was pretty cool. I might install other similar mods in my next replay to spice things up and make the experience feel even more different. But now that I finally finished the trilogy once again, it feels kinda tedious to go back to my usual routine of SMT games, especially when Devil Survivor: Overclocked reminds me how much I suck at the game. I think I'm probably gonna give up on the game soon, if not already. I'm stuck at the battle against the Shomonkai Founder and Belberith, and it really sucks how I can't just grind my level up to get better at beating it because the first playthrough has an xp-lock to keep you from being overpowered. I'm literally forced to fight a challenging boss battle with one hand tied behind my back. And sure, maybe that just means I need to "git gud," but I suck at strategy games, so there's nothing I could do about my lack of talent. I'm using vinheim's walkthrough on GameFAQ, and it still didn't help. These are the stats of my team. Maybe someone else could help me figure out what I'm doing wrong: Team 1: Protagonist: Level 64 Laksmi: Level 55 Astaroth: Level 57 Team 2: Atsuro: Level 60 Laksmi: Level 52 Orochi: Level 61 Team 3: Yuzu: Level 62 Norn: Level 58 Hecate: Level 52 Team 4: Mari: Level 61 Laksmi: Level 54 Cerberus: Level 55 I've leveled up my protagonist to 64 already and I gave my team almost the same demons the walkthrough instructed (except Behemoth, which the walkthrough miswritten as level 63 when it's actually level 70 or something, meaning I have to grind my protag to even get it, which is impossible very hard to do during the first playthrough). Maybe I should just get different demons from the ones stated in the walkthrough. Now that my protagonist is level 64, there are actually demons that are higher leveled than the ones suggested in the walkthrough, but I'm not sure if "higher level" equates to "better demons" in the context of SMT, because they might not have skills that are as efficient. But I guess I have nothing to lose by trying that out. I guess I could also try using the "Ban Element" auto-skills instead of the auto-skills suggested in the walkthrough. One thing that frustrates me is how my teams kept dying because they got one-shot by the enemies before I even got the chance to fight back (and forced to use Samarecarm/Recarm over and over again until my teams ran out of MP), so protecting my demons from attacks they're weak against might help. Another thing that frustrates me is how my MP ran out by the time I finally managed to beat the lackeys and lifted the required platform that I need to use to reach Belberith. It sucks how there's no MP-restoration items in this game. And of course, the worst part of all this is the skill-cracking part. Things would probably be a lot easier if I just gang up on a single demon at the same time, but that would mean missing out on cracking useful auto-skills because you need to have specific team members delivering the killing blow to get those skills. So I might just give up on cracking those stupid skills altogether if I ever feel like giving this battle another shot. The more I'm writing about the game though, the more I hate it and how annoying it is. Makes me feel like giving up on all the other SMT games I haven't played too, including SMT IV:A, Soul Hackers 2, and Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker, because this experience just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Leaving the game and coming back to play it after I've finished the whole Mass Effect trilogy clearly didn't help. I kinda wish there are cheats available for the game so I could get this game over with, because it's either forcing myself to lose over and over again or just abandoning the game altogether and wasting all the money I spent buying these 3DS cartridges on Amazon. I'm just so tired. Suddenly abandoning SMT games after I've been playing them for so long feels kinda weird though, especially when I haven't been able to finish them. I haven't even started New Game+ yet for the ones I did finish. I don't know. Maybe it's a good thing. I placed a lot of good TV shows I was binging on pause just to play SMT games, so this might be a good opportunity to get back to them. Maybe it's a sign from a higher power. lol Maybe I'm just not meant to finish this game, or those other SMT games I haven't touched (which might be a good thing, considering SMT IV:A's reputation).

Four hours maybe for one playthrough; half a day or so for replaying the other routes. It's been a long time since I last played it, but I can't remember if I've ever completed it because, like I said, the save mechanic (or rather, the lack thereof) sucks. I think I just didn't bother replaying at some point because doing so would mean going through the entire game again and picking another route.

Since most popular video games are American-made, and since I don't live in America, no environment would ever feel real to me. lol New York City would always be a fantasy world to me since I don't plan to fly to America any time soon. Besides, no locations in a game could ever be real enough for me anyway unless I could touch the grass and smell the polluted gas, something video games still couldn't achieve in 2022, unfortunately.

I follow a walkthrough. lol I just don't give a crap about gameplay challenges as much as most gamers. I just slap a walkthrough and get it over with 'coz I'm lazy like that.

It won't work because of how Hollywood makes movies these days. I enjoy depth in my characters as much as the next guy, and Daniel Craig is easily my favorite Bond of all time, but if you look at the older Bond films, you could see a workable template for Agent 47, where a perfect killer just goes around killing bad guys without mistake. That's boring if done poorly, but if his kills are executed creatively enough, that makes it fun to watch, the same way Bond films are fun to watch even though it's just some British spy killing shallow and egomaniacal villains trying to take over the world. The Jason Bourne films have a great template for this as well. The way he effortlessly kill people could be done for Agent 47 as well. I also feel like parts of Mission: Impossible 3 were the Hitman film we never got, especially the scene where Ethan went through several disguises while infiltrating the enemy base. That's basically what Agent 47 does, and Tom pulled it off with just as much professionalism and sleekness. Just repeat that, but with Agent 47.

You basically can't speak your mind on YouTube these days or you'd get demonetized, which is why a lot of the smaller YouTubers have to use "safe words" as replacement for controversial issues. Man, that's dystopic. Like 1984 Big Brother dystopic. Also, let's bring back the dislike bar and we'll see just how popular your Disney movie trailers really are.

I've only seen one movie and one TV show I liked so far in 2022: Movie: The Batman TV Show: Moon Knight Didn't bother with Top Gun: Maverick or any of the latest MCU renditions, because clearly, I'm not the target audience for the latter.

I got bored so fast playing Her Story. And this is coming from someone who loves reading visual novels. Simulacra was an interesting one-off experience that I never bothered to replay. I like its gameplay though, how it subtly judges you for your voyeurism in checking out someone else's phone. Late Shift was probably my favorite FMV game for an obvious reason: its branching narrative. It's just too bad that replaying the game to explore different possibilities is so tedious. It needs a better save mechanic. Otherwise, I love the Hollywood thriller adventure story that isn't just another mystery whodunit like most FMV games. Honorable mention goes to 428: Shibuya Scramble, which technically isn't FMV and more like FMP, using live action photos as opposed to videos to tell the story. It doesn't even have voice acting, which I usually dislike, but it's easily one of my favorite visual novels of all time because of its interesting and diverse range of characters, not to mention the endearing story that has a nice balance of different genres, from thriller to romance to action adventure. Plus, the feel-good ending is just so wholesome and charming. The music also really elevated the experience so much that you practically don't need voice-acting to feel the emotions of the characters. Amazingly made visual novel that's very underrated.

Well, I've played a lot of visual novels, but I'm not sure that count. lol I did enjoy Telltale's Walking Dead series, even if your decisions have less impact than certain other "your choices matter" games. There's charm in these games, I suppose, but I find the puzzle elements of these games boring and annoying. I've also played a lot of Newgrounds point-and-click flash games. Those usually had a fun and unique narrative you wouldn't get in mainstream AAA games. They're short too, making them easily digestible as you move from one game to another.

Finally reached the pinnacle of the Mass Effect trilogy, Mass Effect 3. Got me thinking about how 'safe' art is nowadays. The appealing thing about art is that it's provocative and encourages conversations on hard topics. Everyone wants an easy answer nowadays to social issues that our 'art' and entertainment in movies and TV shows become bland and uninspiring, just pandering to the most popular and ideals on Twitter and TikTok instead of bothering to improve and expand our perspective on life and society with controversial questions. Mass Effect 2 had a few great examples of what I'm talking about, specifically Mordin's loyalty mission. It has aged like fine wine, and it goes to show why everyone considered Mordin's character arc the best-written storyline in the entire trilogy. His dilemma and denial over the genophage, along with his subsequently remorseful realization in Mass Effect 3, brought tears to my eyes. I remember choking up when I was questioning Mordin during his loyalty mission about the ethics of the genophage, and I wasn't just tearing up because of how heavy the topic was, but more so because I could feel Mordin's guilt and sorrow over the dead female Krogans that met their fate as an indirect result of his actions. It was so beautifully tragic, Mordin's dilemma and perspective. But more relevant to my point is that, Mass Effect gamers also had many heated debates regarding the ethics of the genophage. You would rarely get that kind of interesting exchange over a controversial subject in media today because the big companies want to keep the narrative safe. And it's not just the genophage either, but also the Quarians' enslavement of Geths, which are essentially a machine race in the simplest definition. However, the ethics of the Quarians' actions were anything but simple, so the heated exchange about whom were in the right - the Quarians or the Geths - was just as intriguing as well. I love how a video game of all things would get people discussing about such interesting moral dilemmas, even if they aren't important issues in the context of real life. That's what art should be, provocative. There were times while I was playing the Mass Effect games that it felt like I was watching an episode of Star Trek, specifically The Next Generation. The older Star Trek shows had always tackled intriguing moral and ethical issues with such subtlety and intelligence that the Mass Effect games' handling of their issues bore great resemblance. And it's not just the big issues like genocide and slavery either, but also the smaller inter-relationship conversations, how the crew members talk to each other like adults instead of using simple, dumbed down dialogue a teenager would use. The Critical Drinker pointed out a great scene that exemplified such a conversation when calling out how modern movies and TV shows use dumbed down dialogue only children and immature man-children would use: I just love this exchange so much, and I remember a similar level of depth among my conversations with the Normandy crew as well, albeit not as subtle as the conversation above. For example, it's easy to just dismiss Ashley as only a racist without understanding the nuance of her motivation. I might not have supported Ashley's views on aliens, but even I could see there's nuance between her humanist biasness and Terra Firma's "We hate all aliens" point of view. Complex issues like racism never have an easy answer, especially in our modern times when everything's grey. People tend to miss that.

Really blasted my way through the Mass Effect trilogy since I last said that I'd be replaying it again. I'm already at Mass Effect 2, about to recruit Thane. So good to be back again with the beloved characters. Just like old times. 😆

I feel like it's hard to really single out any one franchise anyway if you really dig deep into it because every game has a flaw to it. Even if I would like to say The Elder Scrolls series (save Elder Scrolls Online), people will argue that Oblivion was tons better than Skyrim, and vice versa.