My daughter and I followed through with our plan to watch the Switch 2 presentation together this morning! I put it on my TV while I worked, and she pulled out the bean bag chair.

We both walked away mildly disappointed-- we're both still going to buy it, but we were expecting a little more than what we got. It kind of starts with the price; at $500 for the bundle plus tax, plus I know I'll want to get the Pro Controller, that's one heck of an initial expenditure to get into the new platform. And if you want the camera, tack on another $50. Additionally, it looks like retail games for the system are going to be a whopping $80!

So then you start to analyze, "Well, what do I get with the new platform?", and the value proposition is just not very high out of the gates. Nintendo basically only showed two first-party games, Switch 2-exclusive games that I can remember-- Mario Kart World, and the new Donkey Kong title. The rest of the video was mostly very rough looking third-party ports of games we've already had for years on the PlayStation 5, and which look and run about ten times better on that system. And the PS5 is actually cheaper than the Switch 2 if you get the version without the disc drive!

But the PlayStation 5 isn't a handheld-- fair enough. Tack on a PlayStation Portal to quasi-equalize the feature set, and you're looking at a $600 entry point to the PS5 ecosystem, if you want to lay on the bed and play on a smaller screen.

So how about compared to the Steam Deck then? Given the dearth of first-party games shown on the Switch 2 so far, all that's left is a "it can run Hades 2 and Elden Ring" sort of a deal-- but so can the Steam Deck, which can also run literally tens of thousands of other Steam games, which you can buy for pennies-on-the-dollar from places like Kingguin and CD Keys! If anything, I thought today's Switch 2 video was a good advert for the myriad of PC gaming handhelds out there.

I'm also worried about the Switch 2's level of power.

I was hoping it would be at least a small upgrade in performance from my OLED Steam Deck, if not even a bit more than that-- but every game Nintendo showed had lousy framerates and tons of shimmering plus aliasing. Overall it just doesn't look as powerful as I thought it'd be, based on the game footage they've shown so far at least. This is a problem, because the Steam Deck is basically incapable of running 2025-era triple-A games-- which means the Switch 2 will be a completely non-viable "primary console" just like the original Switch was.

Again, it goes back to value proposition: now we're talking a $500 console, where you still need another platform just to play the latest games!

All of that said, having a Forza Horizon with a Mario Kart skin on it is going to be super fun, especially since you just know it'll have that trademark Nintendo level design, with clever little secrets filled in all over the place. And I'm sure Nintendo has a lot of first-party games brewing, including an inevitable Splatoon 4, for which both my daughter and I are excited.

For us, it's worth getting into the system on day one if we can, since we know we'll inevitably buy one anyway. But for a lot of other people, I'd tend to recommend a PlayStation 5 or to at least do some homework into the various PC-based handhelds-- especially the superb, essentially hassle-free Steam Deck.

I played around with "Minecraft RTX" on the 9070 XT today, and not only got the path tracing fully functional, but with FSR 2 on top of it! The game runs at least as well as it did on my 4070 Ti, and looks brilliant!

First, install the Bedrock version of the game using this third-party launcher. Second, install plus launch the game via the aforementioned launcher. Third, download and install the Vanilla RTX pack, along with any add-ons you want-- simply run the Bedrock version of the game via the launcher, and double-click on the .mcpack files, then activate them in the game's menu. Third, download this mod and follow the instructions. When you run the game, there will be an FSR 2 option in video sub-menu.

Flip to ray-tracing mode, toggle FSR 2 on, and prepare to see AMD veritably and almost unbelievably caught up with Nvidia in terms of ray-tracing! Now if only I could get "Super Mario 64 RT" working-- for some reason it draws the HUD, but nothing else. Oh well, one step at a time!

I had an extraordinary thing happen during confession a couple of hours ago.

Last night, our Pastoral Council group was asked for volunteers, from our council, to wash feet during Holy Thursday, symbolically right after Father and the other priests present would begin that portion of the Mass. I was extremely reticent and mostly avoided making eye contact with the chairman as he was soliciting for the help.

This had been weighing very heavy on my heart all day, but I made no mention of it to anyone other than Jesus.

During confession today then, I opened my heart to the confessor, explaining in very high level terms-- not mentioning the feet washing, Holy Thursday, or any specifics at all-- how much I'm struggling with anxiety, and how I've wished and prayed for sometimes even preposterous circumstances to spare me from having to do the various things of which the Lord is asking me. In other words, I've been disobedient to His will.

To my complete and utter astonishment the priest said, "For your penance, I want you to be as involved as possible during the Holy Week liturgies." Stunned, I left the confessional, drove home, and emailed the chairman to tell him I'd do it.

The other thing my confessor said was that to get over my anxieties, I needed to say to myself "To heck with my role in all of this, it's not about me it's about the needs of others, and I can't do a single thing without the Lord anyway." I had been wondering for some time if, deep down, my anxiety was borne out of pride, ego, and arrogance which is why I was and am so afraid of making mistakes. The priest confirmed this suspicion of mine.

Imagine a soul as a ship on the open waters. At slow speeds, it dips and slops deep into each undulating wave, whereas a speed boat moving at high velocity will merely skip and leap from crest-to-crest. When I go several days without taking Abilify, my soul feels too deeply, and I fall into each dip, barely able to handle the emotions, both good and bad. When I go on Abilify for even just a day or two, my soul is the speed boat-- I don't wallow in fear, but I can't connect with positive emotions very well either, and I experience great spiritual dryness.

Knowing which mornings to pop one of those pills, and which mornings during which to abstain, is key.

On a totally different note, I've been enjoying the PlayStation 5 a lot more as the system ages. In terms of creativity I still think this is the weakest the industry has ever been-- but at least the experiences, however derviative, have been fairly robust. Just in looking at my shelf I see "Astro Bot", "Gran Turismo 7", "Monster Hunter Wilds", "Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart", and "Street Fighter 6"-- all solid games which give the system at least some identity. They are all sturdily-made games with good graphics and lots of content.

It's nice that the PlayStation 5 has literally all of the mainstream stuff on it too. Also on my shelf I see "EA Sports FC 24", and a pair of "Maddens". Not to mention, the unit plays almost every single PlayStation 4 game, and also has almost every downloadable or indie game one could possibly want to play. I've been using the built-in guide videos for "Astro Bot", it's really neat having that integrated right into the dashboard without needing my laptop and YouTube. Plus, the controller is a total gem.

All-in-all it's a solid system on which I've made some decent gaming memories over the past few years.

On a church note, great change is coming to the organization of the diocese of which I am a part, and I learned some of the first details last night. I've been in almost constant prayer and reflection since then. Tonight, it's a community soup & sandwiches reconciliation event, and I've been spending a lot of time examining my conscious in preparation to have a thorough confession, as well as coaching my kids through that kind of preparation.

"...in my thoughts and in my words; in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do..."

In the spirit of making myself available to others in service, I had a really nice phone call with an elderly friend of mine today. I am going to his house next Tuesday to help him install a new laser printer he bought, plus to take him out to lunch at our favorite Chinese buffet. It's always a pleasure to hang out with him, he's a good friend, and a good person.

Yesterday I entered into a crazy week. So much so that I decided to go back on the Abilify, just for these several days.

I was lector at Mass; today I have an afternoon full of errands, including the chiropractor plus getting the summer wheels put on the 86; Pastoral Council meeting tomorrow; a parish Lent and reconciliation event on Wednesday night; then a Stephen Dinner on Thursday evening. Friday and Saturday will be the days I hopefully return the myriad phone calls I need to make, plus finish the first phase of helping my friend out with his gun shop business website. I also have a lot of cleaning to do.

Then on Sunday, I am going to step up and help be an altar server at Mass again, something which fills my heart with great anxiety, but which I know the Lord wants me to do. If we have three servers, we can have two hold candles on either side of the ambo during the Gospel reading, which adds that extra bit of reverance. Eventually I'll bring my son into the altar serving.

As for work, I have a hard go-live on April 1, and a ton of work to do between today and then to get all of the various pieces in place. And on top of that, I am on call for support all week, including through next weekend. I also just remembered that I need to order more liquid propane-- I used up everything I had on contract, so that will be a multi-hundred dollar bill. Thankfully, money is one thing I have no need to be stressed about, which is a blessing.

Speaking of God's graces, I was asked by Father to attend the April 10 Chrism Mass in St. Cloud at the Cathedral, over which the Bishop presides, in order to collect the sacred oils which we will use at my church over the course of the liturgical year. What a blessing and an honor!

Other than all of that, I have had a little time to continue playing "Astro Bot" and "Monster Hunter Wilds" on the PlayStation 5. I also pulled the "Street Fighter 6" disc out and refreshed myself on how to play the characters "JP" and "Manon". I'd enjoy buying the other, DLC characters but they are so expensive! It would cost the entire price of the game all over again, virtually, to purchase the two "season packs" or whatever they are called.

It's also my son's twelfth birthday coming up very soon! We are going to the Pizza Ranch buffet tomorrow to celebrate. Parenting at this age is difficult-- my kids are both phenomenal, but it's the most confusing time of life during human development. I pray every day for the Lord to help provide me with the tools to parent well, and for them to turn to Jesus in times of question or need.

Pray for me during this trying week, and I will pray for all of you!

Monster Hunter Wilds is such a mixed bag, what a shame!

Wifey wants to get into the series, so she's exploring getting the Windows version to play with me over on the PS5 Pro-- but apparently the PC port's performance is awful, with microstutters and the like no matter how good your system is. I also think the game's art direction is extremely hit and miss: some scenes and fights look truly cutting edge, with particle effects flying everywhere, while other moments-- such as at a camp, during a storm, and so forth-- are muddy and ugly, with no self-shadowing on the characters and poor lighting overall.

Also, from a co-op standpoint apparently you can't do the story missions together! And for some bizarre reason which eludes me completely, Wilds is extremely story-focused, to the point where you're dragged into lengthy cut-scenes and story elements constantly. I'm not even through it yet at the sixteen hour mark, albeit I am doing all of the optional quests as I go. So in other words, there is a perhaps twenty hour barrier to entry to have a functioning co-op system, before it becomes a "real" Monster Hunter game; you can do optional quests together, but need to constantly re-join each other's parties before each one.

A temptation is to just buy two copies of Rise and its expansion on CD Keys for thirty bucks each, for Windows, and just play that with my wife. Yes you're not getting the triple-A graphics, but Rise has superb art direction, brilliant screenspace reflections on its water-- better than Wilds' ray-traced ones to be honest-- and I'm sure I could run it at 120 Hz at 4K on my RX 9070 XT, being it's a port of a Switch game.

In any event, we had seventy degree weather where I live yesterday, now today we're getting perhaps eight inches of snow. Incomprehensible weather patterns! My daughter's workplace messaged and they are closed today-- so we'll just bunker in and play lots of video games I'm sure, which will be fun in any event! I really want to get back to the Nintendo 64 at some point here, I should select a game to play and review next.

Installed the RX 9070 XT into the PC just a bit ago, and dropped the 4070 Ti into the wife's PC-- which I can finally deliver to her, it's been waiting on a video card since December! It's really weird being back in camp AMD after something like a straight decade running Nvidia hardware.

The kind of sad part; which games did I run to make sure the new card was working? Path-traced Doom, and Shogo. Sometimes I wonder why I bother keeping up with modern game hardware, because modern game software just doesn't do it for me, by-and-large. I'm playing "Monster Hunter Wilds" on the PS5 Pro, and boy is that one ugly game-- I think triple-A games are getting worse looking over time!

Then I look at lists like this, and literally every game is a sequel, or continuation of some existing franchise. What happened to all of the new and novel stuff? Seems to have disappeared about twenty years ago, and never came back. And yet, I'll probably be a sucker and buy a Switch 2 anyway, playing Mario Kart 57 and Metroid 25.

Back to the 9070 XT, the only thing it doesn't do well is path-tracing-- it's just a hair slower than the 5070 Ti otherwise, and that includes ray-traced workloads. But path-tracing has been such a disappointment! I don't even care about it anymore. It's been relegated mostly to poorly-supported tech demos-- and the handful of triple-A games which use it, "Cyberpunk 2077" aside, frankly don't look as good artistically as triple-A games from maybe ten years ago, with baked lighting and software GI!

All of that said, path-traced Doom runs fine on the 9070 XT-- the game supports some form of FSR in the menu, and after I enabled that performance seemed about the same as my 4070 Ti, looked really smooth. Minecraft RTX is a different story, super glitchy with lots of weird artifacts-- unplayable, and performance isn't very good either.

Lots of church stuff going on lately: I lectored at the Ash Wednesday Mass last night, then I'm volunteering at both a fish fry tomorrow evening, and a pancake breakfast on Sunday. I also served at Mass last Saturday and Sunday both. I'm feeling much more relaxed today. I think Mass serving will be fun once I get the process down; I did ok on Saturday, even going in cold with no real training.

I've been taking Abilify all week: it speeds up my brain so that the mental freight train zooms past anxious thoughts, at the cost of feeling unable to connect with my emotions. Some weeks it's a net benefit to take it, other weeks it's a net loss. This week it's been a net gain.

I finally managed to land a new video card! I've been trying for weeks to get an RTX 5070 Ti-- at which point, my 4070 Ti would go to wifey; I've had a PC one hundred percent built for her since December, it's just been waiting on a GPU. After carefully studying benchmarks, I decided this morning that I was going to try landing a 9070 XT-- and I was able to do so! It arrives on Monday.

The card is a PowerColor Hellhound RX 9070 XT, with 16 GB of VRAM. In both raster and, almost unbelievably since this is AMD we're talking about, ray-tracing performance, it's a small upgrade from my 4070 Ti-- not to mention the extra 4 GB of VRAM. I'm also sick to death of Nvidia, between melting power connectors, them lying about the RTX 50x0 performance levels, 5090s starting on fire, missing "ROPS", exorbitant prices, and all the rest.

This feels like a Ryzen moment for AMD, just on the GPU side this time. Even though the 5070 Ti is faster-- and at least two hundred dollars more, mind you-- I'm willing to take a small performance loss to support AMD, just like I did with my original Ryzen 1600, which I bought the day those came out. I think AMD have the platform with RDNA4, onto which they can build additional software support, such as FSR4.

Also in gaming news, my copy of Monster Hunter Wilds came in on Monday. I haven't had much time to play it, but in the little bit I have it seems ok so far. I'm running in the balanced mode, with no framerate cap, on the PS5 Pro, on my LG C3, in a 120 Hz container. It's amazing how much graphics have plateaued, I don't think Wilds looks radically better than World, and in fact I prefer the more Japanese aesthetic from Rise. All the same, it's Monster Hunter and I'm sure I'll have fun with it.

Back on to a God note, I thought this model was cool-- it's the three conditions of good prayer: humility, perseverance, and conformity with God's will. I've been reading Saint Faustina's diary, and hit this part-- bold emphasis are the parts where Jesus is speaking:



This passage reminded me of Matthew 7, verses 13 and 14:



The gate is narrow... even the smallest transgressions will have to be accounted for... it makes me realize just how superficial my past confessions have been. I need to do a much more thorough, prayerful examination of my conscience: really dig deep and turn over the furniture.

God's mercy and love may be infinite, but at the same time this isn't a game-- the fate of our souls is on the line, and He has told us how to act, how to think, and how to live. Heaven is not automatic, and in fact I now suspect it's even more difficult to get there than today's church and Christian culture at large lets on! It makes me all the more want to live a pure life, the way the Lord wants me to.

Yesterday, my kids and I got a few hours in a local arcade with all of the machines set to wide-open free play, thanks to our 4H club. This arcade is in the middle of practically nowhere, yet has so many great machines! I took some pictures of just a few:













From the top, Galaga is one of my favorite arcade games of all time, it was surreal playing on an actual cabinet, even if I don't think it was a 100% authentic original. He had some great combo machines, like Double Donkey Kong and Centipede / Missile Command / Millipede.

My kids are total suckers for racing games, so my son played a ton of rounds of Cruisn' Exotica, and was just busting a gut at the antics the whole time. The three of us rotated for quite a while on Daytona USA 2, holy buckets are the graphics in that game good.

The final picture is an authentic Asteroids Deluxe cabinet he had. It was super tough to capture what I was seeing with my phone-- you basically duck your head into the cabinet to block out surrounding light, and the experience is incredible! The vector graphics have aged super well, but the most amazing thing is the contrast as the phosphorous bullets streak and blur as they move: the contrast ratio is insane, better than any 2025-era OLED TV even I'm sure-- and this is a game from 1979!

It shows how we've gone forwards in a lot of ways like resolution, but backwards in a lot of ways too. The people working on the technology for these games back then were absurdly talented. I also give major props to the owner of this arcade for keeping all of these machines running-- that is no easy feat, there are some serious soldering, oscilloscope, and electric understanding going on behind the scenes undoubtedly.

In other news, I've finally decided to burn a vacation day at work, this is exactly what the doctor ordered! I got to sleep in, and sit here on the MacBook, sipping coffee while puttering away on some things. Wonderful! My copy of Monster Hunter Wilds for PS5 should come in today at some point as well, via Amazon. I'm currently plugging through Astro Bot-- solid game, with some occasional moments of real creativity.

For the first time in literally months, my in-laws are all gone for twenty-four hours and I can live with my wife and kids like a normal family, versus being trapped in the basement by myself like some kind of prisoner. It's weird being near so many windows, feeling actual sunlight on me, listening in on the normal daily activity of my own children, the tick of a nearby clock, hearing cars drive by, and so forth.

Just for one day, we get to be a normal family again. It's a very emotional experience for me-- like I was released from jail for a few hours' worth of visitation.

A couple of nights ago I read the intro to the diary of the woman who was receiving the visions of Jesus's Divine Mercy, and who instructed the course of the painting. I don't have it in front of me, but the intro contained excerpts like "I never said 'no' to God", and "even though my nature quaked at what He would ask me to do, and even though those things seemed beyond my capacity, I did them anyway."

That's how I'm trying to frame my present ordeal: God has me on this crazy road for some kind of purpose that only He understands. I'm trying to say "yes" to things even when they are challenging. But at the same time, what I wouldn't give to "undo" so many things in my life.

My latest tribulations have involved running multiple church-related meetings over the past few days. I'm good at it and I see that the need is there, which is why I've stepped in to fill that void. But boy is it stressful. We also have a need for more Mass Servers, and I made an agreement with my son: if I learn how to do it first, he will join in after I can instruct him. But that's yet another source of anxiety for me, as I have to perform this new function during Masses on both Saturday and Sunday mornings.

So it's another church meeting presentation on Friday, followed by the two Masses this weekend. Then you get to my career, which is a complete cluster.

I've been tasked with "modernizing" some applications, which involves re-writing chunks of them so they work in what's idiotically named "Kubernetes". I have twenty-seven years of professional IT experience. This "Kubernetes", "Terraform", "Azure AD", "GitHub Actions", and all the rest of it is the worst technology stack I've ever encountered. It's duct tape and bailing wire. Rather than solving business problems I'm having to spend hundreds of hours just getting what used to be basically automatic stuff going, like deployments and security. I'm absolutely miserable at work.

I also have a lot of stressors with parenting, in large part because I essentially don't live with my kids-- so rather than being present on a daily basis to make little course corrections, I'm finding out about stuff sometimes weeks later, then having to do re-teaching and damage control. It all just feels so wrong.

On a different subject matter, the kids and I have been trying to squeeze in episodes of the anime "Code Geass", and have been really enjoying it. In fact, we think it's something of a masterpiece. I've also been watching "Gintama" on my own, lots of hilarious episodes-- my favorite of which was the one where the ninja chick is supposed to assassinate this rat crime guy, and convinces the tagging-long Gin that the crime boss is her father, and that Gin is to ask for her hand in marriage. "Who are all of these guys??" "Uhhh, they're... all ex-boyfriends!"

Finally, my daughter just had her fifteenth birthday and is going to start Driver's Ed soon-- she is very much looking forward to that. The old WRX is just sitting there waiting for her!

It's been another several days since I've been able to write here.

Life has felt like a tornado going a thousand miles per hour; the Lord has me on this path where I'm taking on more and more responsibility with the church, but with my anxiety every single meeting is a source of distress for hours beforehand, and hours afterwards-- to the point where I feel like I'm on the outside of a train car, holding on to the handles, my hair whipping in the wind, hanging on for dear life as the locomotive careens down the track.

It's like I need a day of vacation after each "burst" of activity-- but don't have the adequate time to decompress from it or digest it all-- like I'm perpetually "running behind", so things feel very harried, and I feel deeper and deeper underwater as I go.

This past weekend for instance I spent helping a church friend with the website for his business. I'm happy to do it, but it definitely took away from my ability to unwind and relax. Yesterday, I went to Mass in the big town near me, and was initiated into the Knights of Columbus-- again, happy to do that, but it was a big source of stress as well, socializing with strangers whom I'd just met, which has always put me in difficulty.

This week, I have a Faith Formation class for my kids on Wednesday night; I got invited to a dinner to explore becoming a deacon, on Thursday night; then on Friday night I am running my church's Liturgy Committee. I'm "on call" for production support at work even through this upcoming weekend, where I'm lector and sacristan; plus the usual full slate of work involving my actual career. I wish I could take a multi-month sabbatical from work to sort of "re-form" my identity, or wrap my arms around everything.

At the end of the day, how I unwind is doing fun video game-related projects. But when I do have the spare time, I don't have the energy.

Add to it my living arrangement, where I feel like I live in a different home from my own wife and kids, and it's a lot to deal with. I've also been stressed about my weight; I was 147 lbs when I first moved "up North", now I'm 162 and counting-- yet I just can't seem to keep my eating on track through all of the anxiety. In all of this, I've been just trying to turn to the Lord in prayer, asking Him for some relief: I know He wants me on this road, every single signal he gives me is "full speed ahead"-- so I just have to trust in Him!

Tonight I'm supposed to attend my first-- one day after becoming a part of the group-- Knights of Columbus meeting. But it's at 8:00pm, and just to get some semblance of sleep in the midst of my constant "fight or flight" mode, I need to have "lights out" at 8:30pm, otherwise I'm trashed the next day. And unfortunately, my team at work has sprint planning first thing in the morning tomorrow-- so I'm going to need to set some boundaries and, sad to say, skip tonight's meeting.

If only I didn't have this anxiety and derealization! I'm broken, somehow.


The Diaconate

The aforementioned meeting I have on Thursday involves a few people trying to convince me to become a deacon. The diaconate is a funny thing: I did a lot of prayer and reflection, and came up with a "pros and cons" list. On the "pros" side is that I think I would make an awesome deacon: I have a lot of passion for liturgical matters, and I can readily envision myself in my "mind's eye" doing baptisms, funerals, giving homilies, and the like. It's a great intersection of my gifts, and the act of serving.

On the "cons" side is everything I just described above. How in the world would I add years of training, getting a master's degree in Theology, and so forth to the mix? Even setting aside my anxiety issues, mathematically when would I even have time to attend class, or study? I'm going to need to head into the meeting with the communicated expectation that I'm only there for information-gathering. Maybe in my fifties, if I can retire or go down to part-time work, I could become a deacon for the latter decades of my life?


The Pope

I thought that this article was well-written. I don't know enough Theology to say whether God can be proven purely via reason, but the back three-quarters of the article really strikes a chord with me. The crux of it is here, bold emphasis is mine:



It's important as a Catholic to remember that the Pope is human and thus fallible, just like the rest of us; the only time what he says is treated as official church doctrine is under very specific conditions. This concept is explained in great detail in articles such as this. So when the Pope speaks off the cuff and expresses some political opinion which doesn't quite seem to make sense on a Theological or even logical level, that shouldn't put us Catholics is any kind of grave difficulty.

It's important not to lose faith, even when the Pope is playing politics.

The trouble is, these actions do set a bad precedent. Many lay Catholics I know, at this point, ignore just about everything the Pope says-- even in those situations when it is an "official doctrine" kind of situation! In fact, people sadly tend to roll their eyes when the name "Pope Francis" is even mentioned. Just as the author puts it, the credibility of the Church starts to take a hit, and I've seen it myself.

It's a shame because the Pope also says a lot of really good things-- but one "bad apple" remark tends to ruin the bunch, as it is with anyone.

Finally got the mighty GR Corolla back from the body shop! Way back in early December, a pheasant flew out of the ditch, struck an oncoming vehicle, then point-blank, rapid-fire spiraled into the engine bay of the aforementioned Toyota. Even though it took almost exactly two months to get it fixed, it's good to finally have the car back without a smashed-in front end.

I have a dinner coming up on February 20 with multiple deacons, and other men who are considering becoming one. I need to start kicking up prayers for discernment up a notch. I'm at this juncture where I'm trying to decide what to do for this chapter of my life. There are reasons to suspect that permanent work-from-home positions like mine are in jeopardy, broadly speaking-- what then? Does the diaconate have some role to play in that future? Or will I need to relocate back to the Twin Cities?

I've had the flu since last Thursday, finally feeling a bit more "over it" this morning. I was able to go to Mass yesterday, but not much else over that period. I laid in bed a lot and played "Kingdom Come: Deliverance" on the OLED Steam Deck. The battery life on that system is so bad, I just leave it plugged in the whole time I'm playing. But the game looks very modern, and performance is great! It's cool to see something like that running on a handheld.

It's really neat having a living, breathing, fully-Catholic world in a video game, with zero percent wokeness: just pure history. The codex entries discuss the liturgy, complete with liturgical terms I still use with priests while preparing the Mass in 2025, like ciborium, paten, and monstrance. All of the buildings in the game are modeled after the real things, and it was incredible for me to wander into a Catholic church in the year ~1400, and be able to compare and contrast it with my real-life church from 1916.

As a game I'm of mixed opinions: on the one hand I installed the "Monster Hunter Wilds" beta on PS5 and found the lack of realism-- the fantasy elements-- to be ridiculous and off-putting; so "Kingdom Come" makes it difficult to play other games now. On the flip side, the latter is a very fussy game; not being able to save anywhere is fine, makes it feel like "Shenmue", where you have to plan your day out-- but many times deaths feel a bit random or unfair, sometimes due to bugs, sometimes due to strange quest designs or other odd happenings.

I'm a little worried about the sequel: apparently there is a gay sex part, plus there is a woman soldier on the cover art. Did the developers cave and ruin the good thing they had going?

"Monster Hunter Wilds" is interesting. I'm not sure I like it. The game looks and plays fine on the PS5 Pro. The artwork is so-so, not sure it's as pretty as "Rise". Does the game not have a proper hub town? I don't like how the mounts run on their own, was fishing for a setting to turn that off completely, but couldn't find one. No wirebugs either? Instinctively I kept trying to use them to recover after a knock-down, and nothing would happen.

I think I'll still buy it, but overall I think I like the gameplay, art style, and music better in "Rise". Maybe I'd have more fun just buying the "Rise" expansion on Switch, which I've never played? Oh well, better get to work.

Posted a couple of new reviews over at the 'Wharf, including for "Metro Awakening" and "Splatoon 3". Next up on the dockets are "Astro Bot" for the PlayStation 5; the "Arizona Sunshine Remake" for PSVR2; and the original "Kingdom Come: Deliverance", which I just started on the OLED Steam Deck.

I have what I think is influenza-- my sleeping schedule the past few nights has been, asleep by 8:30, wake up at 3:30. Last night it was more like, asleep by 9:00, awake at 2:30-- so I'm feeling pretty tired today. The one advantage to these early mornings is that I can get a lot done, such as writing the two aforementioned reviews.

Off topic completely, but I think Trump has a chance to be a historically good President this time around. I thought he did a good job the first time-- but it was mostly trimming around the edges, status quo. This time he's all-in on the kinds of mega ideas which define a nation: "Let's make Canada a state", "Let's take over the Panama Canal", "Let's turn the Gaza Stip into a new French Riviera", "Let's build our own iron dome", and so forth.

Big ideas! Even if they are largely for negotiating purposes, it would be interesting to see some of them implemented. And they make the Democrats look downright silly-- what have they to offer in contrast? That's why their party is floundering, with historically low approval ratings. They have baby killing, fifty genders, gay comic books for Costa Rica, and David Hogg-- yikes. Even their "call everyone a Nazi" strategy doesn't work anymore-- literally no one cares; all credibility has been lost.

Woof, these past couple of weeks have been so brutal that they've almost delivered me a knockout punch. Work is a total cluster; I've had church stuff several nights; chiropractor appointments; driving my daughter to and from work; helping a neighbor and friend with PC stuff; then on the rare occasions when I have had a couple of hours of actual free time, I'm so exhausted that I can't really focus on or enjoy anything.

Thankfully, this upcoming week is looking a little better. Monday afternoon and evening I have a chiropractor appointment followed by helping my aforementioned friend again-- but then Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights I am wide open. Hopefully I can use those evenings to rest and recuperate my mental energies, at least a little! Starting with getting some actual sleep-- I haven't had a good night's sleep in over a week.

A lot of right-wing news sites picked up on this recently, with headlines like "We [the globalists] Have Lost To Trump". While that microsection of discourse was interesting-- and it caused Ian Bremmer to become visibly irate-- I don't think that was by far the most interesting thing said by this panel. Some observations of mine, after having listened to the whole thing:

• As a preface, the four panelists are Ian Bremmer, Graham Allison, Allison Schrager, and Walter Mead. I wasn't familiar with any of them, so I looked them up: "authors", "political 'scientists'", "intellectuals", and so forth. It's very clear from listening to them talk-- they are very high IQ individuals. I thought much of their commentary was spot-on in terms of nailing down specifics, and taken from a sort of neutral-observational standpoint. They are also on the spectrum somewhere between "amoral" and "actively malevolent", which I'll get to more in future bullets.


• Lots of compliments are paid to Donald Trump-- the panelists call things as they see them, and they're not above giving credit where credit is due. At the same time, the entire conversation is set against a sort of wistfulness, that things aren't going "their way". There were even a few audible groans from the audience at certain remarks made.


• Trump uses tariffs as a negotiating tool-- I call them "threats": and they work! He takes the maximalist position, then walks down from there. One theme which begins very early on this panel is a begrudging acknowledgement that there is a marked shift from large, globalist organizations towards smaller groups of countries making bilateral agreements with one another-- with a sort of reluctant acceptance that the globalist order did have cracks, it wasn't going perfectly by any stretch.


• Trump views himself as both an expert negotiator, but also a peace maker: he is vehemently opposed to wars, There was a repeated theme of Ian Bremmer and Graham Allison disagreeing on how successful Trump will be at foreign policy negotiating, especially when it comes to China: Allison emphasizes the close relationship between Xi and Trump, whereas Bremmer thinks that Trump's obvious "China containment" posture will drive a large wedge between the two nations. After all, Trump is trying to squeeze China out by being tough with other nations, like Vietnam or even Mexico: "I'll talk, but no China deals for you."


• Isreal repeatedly wins wars, but can never establish a sustainable peace after that. Walter Mead celebrates that enormous damage was done during the Biden regime to Iran and its proxies-- but that it won't matter, because "that's not how the Middle East works"-- there are multivarious factors which destabilize the region.


• The Trump administration's economic policies are pro-growth, but not fiscally responsible either: they may run into issues with bond yields, and trying to fight off price inflation as they enact their agenda. At this point on the panel, Allison invokes the "animal spirits" argument, saying "Trump's cabinet and the people around them are self-made billionaires, why can't there be more people who do it our way?", a "feeling of excitement." My personal view is that while economics is partially numbers and math, we're dealing with human beings-- the culture, morale, etc. all play a huge role.


• Regarding Tik-Tok, Allison equated it to prohibition: "If 170 million people like something, it's not very smart to be against it. And Trump won't be against it. Are there deals to be made? Sure, of course, and deals will be made." Once again, disagreement between Bremmer and Allison; Bremmer views Trump as such: "Let's not act like Trump is just another President-- don't normalize this... he doesn't view himself as being constrained by the rule of law... if Modi sat down with Elon and launched a cryptocurrency, we'd call that a kleptocracy, but because it's Trump and Elon in America, we're complicit with it." Allison? "Trump is an unprecedented phenomenon-- yes it's not normal, but it's amazing and we should study it."


• The globalist's failure, as summarized by Walter Mead: "We, the professional, administrative, managerial class thought that history was over, and that all we had to do was manage things according to rules which were all clear and known, that everything will be incremental going forward. But the reality is, that's not how things work in moments like this. And let me throw in, part of the 'us' which is losing here is Europe."


• Lots of astonishing remarks were made, such as equating globalism with indoor plumbing. There is an interesting summary by Ian Bremmer of the current Trump coalition: "You have 'Dark Maga', Elon, wants more free trade, deal on China, H1Bs-- and 'Deep Maga', populists afraid of uniparty, believe all these people are just out to screw them, don't mind a big state but just want it to take care of average American... Trump's big personality will paper over the cracks in the short term, but those cracks are just going to keep growing."


• Then, The Big Quote, which really frames these WEF-adjacent people in a nutshell. From Walter Mead, channeling Bill Clinton: "'Shame only matters if you let it.' You just keep putting one foot in front of other, don't let those other people barking and screaming bother you, just keep moving forward." Remember: the "other" people "barking and screaming" are the electorate! They are you, and me! They are hundreds of millions of ordinary people, who have a mandate to rule. How many elections has Walter Mead won? How about Ian Bremmer?


• At one point, Ian Bremmer let slip: "Remember, everyone here is a lot of equities at stake, when talking China." Is that what this all boils down to? In the next breath: "Let's not act like Trump is just another President-- don't normalize this... he doesn't view himself as being constrained by the rule of law... if Modi sat down with Elon and launched a cryptocurrency, we'd call that a kleptocracy, but because it's Trump and Elon in America, we're complicit with it." Then in the next, Allison Shrager: "Populism is just a reaction to the tech revolution, just like it was to the industrial revolution."


• I was curious who was in the audience-- a curiosity which was soon satisfied in the "Q&A" section at the end, opening with a journalist from... the Washington Post. As the questions proceeded, it was obvious from the tone that all of these people, very much including the supposedly-neutral "journalists", are all insiders to this brazen cabal.

Never before have I heard such an obviously smart group of people get the particulars so right, while simultaneously extrapolating all of the wrong conclusions.

In their view of the world, everything should be like "Star Trek": one giant government run by managerial technocrats, and that by their sheer administrative brilliance they can circumvent The Fourth Turning and human nature. To them, their current failure wasn't due to their model being flawed-- it was simply down to mediocre execution-- and that next time around, the plebes can be made just that little bit more complacent, so that they go along with "the rules": fifteen minute cities, eat zee bugs, men can have periods, and all the rest of it.

The arrogance and hubris of this group was and is without limit. There is zero humility, or recognition of "you know, maybe we're not as smart as we think we are, and the populists have a point?"

Really curious to see how the Switch 2 will do. On the one hand you have opinions like this or this, both of which have merit. On the flip-side, I was playing Splatoon 3 the other day, and saw a ton of player-submitted Switch 2-related artwork in the game's city area. Albeit I'm sure those posts are curated and moderated-- still, among the Gen Z crowd, the interest may very well be there.

Speaking of Splatoon 3, I borrowed the game card from my daughter and have actually been having fun with the single player mode-- a mode I didn't particularly care for in the first two titles. There is some almost "3D Mario"-levels of creativity in this third title's stage themes. Other than that, just been chipping my way through the ultra atmospheric "Metro Awakening" on PSVR2.

After weeks and weeks of waiting, we finally got an official "Switch 2" video from Nintendo-- and it's very low-energy and rushed feeling, probably their hands were forced by the fact that the entire console and joy-cons were already leaked and shown off very publicly at CES. Here is what we know about Switch 2 as of now:

• What It Looks Like: The units on the CES showroom floor were not fake-- they were identical to what is shown in this video. Weirdly, Nintendo "blanked out" the C button in this official video, for reasons which aren't clear yet. Maybe they just aren't ready to discuss "Campus" yet?


• Campus: The Switch 2 will have some kind of Discord-like voice chat feature, with screen sharing, called "Campus". Probably, that's what the C button triggers. I think this could be really cool: Nintendo could integrate it directly with games in creative ways, plus put their own personality into it-- just like how Miiverse was on Wii U.


• Mouse Support: The new joy-cons have very visible mouse-style optical sensors-- then in the official video, the joy-cons are shown sliding around on those sensors. This could be used for all sorts of things, even beyond the obvious RTS or FPS use cases.


• The Clock Speeds: We've known the chipset for ages, but the clocks were a mystery. However, these were discovered just a handful of days ago-- ~560 MHz in handheld mode, and ~1010 in docked mode. This comes out to 1.72 and 3.09 teraflops respectively, in terms of raw GPU math processing power. Meanwhile, the CPU will be clocked at ~1000 MHz and 1100 MHz, respectively.


• Full Backwards Compatibility: Sure, there will be a handful of games which won't work correctly, just like was with the case for the PlayStation 5. But almost everything will probably run. We know that the new game card slot is wider, so it'll probably have some internal spring or guide mechanism for when a Switch 2 game card is plugged in.


• The Price: Persistent rumors suggest a $450 MSRP. There was a rumor of two SKUs, but I haven't heard that one in a long time. Also, at CES one of the units shown was white, so perhaps there is something to the "two SKUs" notion, like how the Wii U had the cheaper white model (which was the one I owned, incidentally)?

To be honest I'm a little worried about Switch 2-- it has something of "Wii U" or, in the best case scenario, "3DS" written all over it. Will the average consumer want to pop $450 for a Switch with a slightly larger screen? For a tech enthusiast like me who understands what the specs mean, what DLSS is, and so forth, it's a no-brainer upgrade. Heck, I even bought the OLED model right when those came out!

But as we saw with the Wii U and pre-price-drop 3DS, even hardcore Nintendo fans will not automatically buy new hardware if the value proposition isn't perceived. After this lackluster initial video, I think Nintendo had better knock it out of the park in April, and in these "hands-on" events, from which we'll undoubtedly get all sorts of primary-source information.

I'm also not sure showing that Mario Kart footage was such a great idea, since it graphically looks virtually identical to Mario Kart 8, which is a zillion years old, and reinforces the notion that the Switch 2 isn't much different. But what do I know! I do wonder if Nintendo is not very confident in this whole thing, which is why they've been dragging their heels for so long.

There is very much a phenomenon of media figures getting too close to the very subjects they are supposed to be critically covering, to the point where their objectivity becomes corrupted by the special dispensations and privileges of being connected.

Take the first half-odd hour of this Digital Foundry CES coverage as a case-in-point: Alex Battaglia brags about his personal connections to all of these Nvidia figures, then-- by his own admission, unashamedly-- walks up, salivating, tongue wagging out of his mouth, hat in hand, to Nvidia's tech demos... an actual journalist would keep a neutral expression, cast a healthily suspicious gaze on proceedings, and ask the tough questions: but not Digital Foundry! Totally unadulterated fanboys and industry insiders.

Back in 2018, I too thought Nvidia's RTX technologies were cool. But then I've watched over the subsequent six years... where has this technology gotten us exactly? Same thing with Unreal Engine 5 since its release. Games-at-large have horrible performance, such as "Wukong's" 29 fps on the $2000 RTX 5090, are blurry plus full of ghosting, and are plain-and-simply using features such as DLSS as a crutch just to make their titles playable. Meanwhile, they flip on Unreal Engine 5's slow, half-baked features such as "Lumen" and "Nanite" without the foggiest clue how to optimize their actual game.

You can even see Digital Foundry's coverage proving my point, accidentally: the game they covered as being the most high-tech-- "it runs at a gazillion fps!"-- doesn't even use UE5's features; the developers rolled their own tech! Also, the Nvidia tech demo Alex goes on and on about-- a tech demo-- apparently uses 80 gigabytes of disk space. And don't even get me going on what's happened to game financial budgets during this Nvidia-Unreal Engine period.

The philosophy is to make the games skinny, and the GPU-plus-engine fat: the game developers will just tick a few boxes, and outsource the expertise to Nvidia and Epic. I think this "skinny game" approach has demonstrably turned out to be the wrong path. We should be having the expertise with the people writing the game software, and where the GPUs and-- if they are used at all-- off-the-shelf engines are simply basic building blocks with which the game programmers can go nuts. It should be "fat game, skinny GPU", or something along those lines, versus the other way around.

I'm tempted to pre-order this, which sounds like "Phantasy Star meets Dungeons and Dragons" to me. I've already got buy-in from both of my kids plus my sister-in-law to play it with me.

In other news, the Switch 2 has been unveiled-- by third-party accessory makers! The entire system, the joy-cons, and the dock are just sitting out on full display on the CES trade floor, if you know where to look. Pictures are everywhere. While it's true that conjecture-based renders of video game systems have always shown up in magazines and the like before those platforms' releases, I can't think of a time in forty years in the hobby where a company's new console "in the flesh" has been unveiled by third-parties, with total mums from the manufacturer.

As per my 2024 retrospective post, I did indeed emphasize PSVR2 by buying "Metro Awakening"-- and it's fantastically memorable so far! My daughter was watching me play via the TV, and we had tons of really funny situations occur in the game. Our favorites involved the stealth melee: because it hardly ever registers the first time I clobber someone, I swing my arm back and forth across the NPC's head-- this causes the ragdoll physics for their bodies to behave oddly.

On a totally unrelated note, I was talking to a family member recently, and he said "how cool would it be if advancements in medical technology via AI would allow for people to live two hundred years?" My question: why in the world would anyone want to live two hundred years? We're just pilgrims in this world-- just passing through. I want to go be with my Heavenly Father! I think if I live to be seventy five or eighty, it's really going to start to feel like "what's the holdup-- time to move on." I think this is the difference between a Christ-centric view of existence, versus more of an atheistic orientation.

There is a specific person in my life who is mean and cruel to everyone, who is self-indulgent and narcissistic, yet never faces any obvious consequences. "But they won't go to heaven" came to mind-- however on further reflection, is it not true that someone could be a horrible human being their entire lives, and still go to heaven if they repent and accept Jesus at the last instant?

This raised a spiritual question for me: why bother following God's commandments if one can live however they'd like and wind up with the exact same outcome as a virtuous ascetic monk, or something along those lines?

I found a great answer to that question here. The crux of it is the notion of "leaving things too late": only the Lord knows when your life on Earth will end; you could get scrubbed in a car accident in an instant. Further, only God knows when Jesus will return-- it could be tomorrow even, who is to say? Better accept Jesus now.

The other aspect of it is muscle memory: even our aforementioned ascetic monk sins, and he's devoted his whole life to following God's will. How will someone who has spent an entire life flagrantly sinning and not caring, one hundred percent diametrically have the capacity to reverse course just as the paramedics are arriving and the person has five minutes left to live?

It's not impossible, but it's difficult to put it mildly: if they didn't have the capacity to do it at any other point in their life, what makes them think they will have the capacity later?

And of course, this is side-stepping the "virtue is its own reward"-line of thinking. It's like St. Theresa of Calcutta's "Simple Path": "The fruit of silence is prayer; the fruit of prayer is faith; the fruit of faith is love; the fruit of love is service; the fruit of service is peace." The individual I opened this post mentioning is perhaps the most wretchedly miserable person I've ever known, which is a negative consequence in-and-of itself.

All of the hedonism and sinning-- doing the opposite of the "Simple Path"-- is intended to achieve peace. But in fact it's a fool's errand; it's going about the goal via the totally wrong means.

Lots of web sites put together "game of the year"-style listings for 2024, and it got me wondering what I'd done within the hobby in that time. So I sorted the 'Wharf database descending plus perused some blog posts to craft a summary:

• Nintendo 64: Looking back on 2024, the real highlight for me were some old games I picked up for the first time. I bought an "Everdrive 64 x5" flash cart for my Nintendo 64, hooked the system up to my dad's 1989-vintage 27" Sony Trinitron CRT television, and enjoyed titles like "Turok", "Doom 64", "Diddy Kong Racing", and especially "International Superstar Soccer 64" which is probably the best arcade-style football game ever made.


• PSVR2: 2024 was the year of PSVR2 for me, and I played a number of maybe not great, but at least memorable games for it such as "Kayak VR: Mirage", "C-Smash VRS", "Arcade Paradise VR", and "Ancient Dungeon VR". The best thing I played on it was "Horizon Call of the Mountain", in spite of its woke character designs. I really should emphasize buying more games for this thing: they tend to stick out a lot more to me-- har, har-- than "flat screen" modern-day releases.


• Collector's Items: I had never played the original "Phantasy Star" before-- so I bought the incredible Switch version, and made a new friend during the process of buying an equally-incredible hint guide from him. I also went in on a modded GBA, which is something I've always wanted to add to my collection.


• Game Development: I taught myself game development in HaxeFlixel, and started working on my very first release in it. There will be a lot more to come in that area, but over December of 2024 I got the whole title screen and menu systems fully-implemented, on top of the full CI/CD pipeline I'd created the prior December.


• Modern Games: It's surprising how few conventional, modern titles I actually played in 2024! These days I'm more compelled to spend my time within the hobby in other areas. Some I did play included "Palworld" and "Flight Simulator 2024", both on PC, along with "Madden NFL 25" on the PlayStation 5, and "Super Mario Bros. Wonder" on Switch. Probably the most interesting "modern" games I played were remakes of old titles, such as "Quake 2", "Killing Time: Resurrected", and the remastered original "Baldur's Gate".

Outside of gaming, 2024 was the year when my daughter landed her first-ever job; it was the year when I was elected to my Area Catholic Community's Pastoral Council; it was the year my wife became Catholic; it was the year where I had big breakthroughs in terms of my nervousness to participate in the liturgy as lector and sacristan. Unfortunately, my living situation remains just as nerve-wracking to me as ever-- hopefully 2025 will provide some kind of resolution on that front.

In terms of 2025, it will be the year of the much-belated "Switch 2", so I expect that platform to mostly dominate things for me. And as for life itself, who knows! Hopefully it will be a prosperous year where I can be consistently close to the Lord, something I struggle with at times.

Wifey, each of my kids, and I each maintain our own gaming PCs. Here is what all of the specs will be as of hopefully just a few weeks from now, if RTX 5000 is out by then:


Sniper's PC

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9700X
Motherboard: Gigabyte B650 Aorus Elite AX
RAM: 32 gig. DDR5 6000
Video Card: RTX 5070 Ti
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB
Power Supply: Corsair RM850x
Case: Corsair 3000D White
Operating System: Windows 11 Pro
Display: LG C3 OLED, 4K HDR 120Hz


Angel's PC

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7700X
Motherboard: Gigabyte B650 Aorus Elite AX V2
RAM: 32 gig. DDR5 6000
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Eagle OC 12 GB
Storage: Samsung 990 Pro 1 TB
Power Supply: Corsair RM850x
Case: Corsair 4000D White
Operating System: Windows 11 Pro
Display: Vizio P50-C1, 4K HDR 60Hz


Spacemario's PC

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5800X3D
Motherboard: MSI B450 Gaming Plus
RAM: 32 gig. DDR4 3400
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 WINDFORCE OC 8GB
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB
Power Supply: Corsair TX750M
Case: DIYPC D480-W-RGB White
Operating System: Windows 11 Pro
Display: AOC Q27G3XMN, 1440p HDR 144Hz


Hennapon's PC

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5700X
Motherboard: ASRock B350 Pro
RAM: 32 gig. DDR4 3400
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 6GB
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB
Power Supply: Corsair TX750M
Case: DIYPC D480-W-RGB White
Operating System: Windows 11 Pro
Display: AOC Q27G3XMN, 1440p HDR 144Hz


I think the next upgrades will be GPU-related: Spacemario would like something with a little more performance, maybe a 5060 or something is on the cards at some point in the next twelve months? As for Hennapon, I'm seriously looking at Intel's Arc as a possibility given the low pricepoints and her specific game use cases-- seems like a good fit.

To open up 2025 and while I'm on a list kick, why not refresh my favorite metal albums of all time ranking?

1. Rising Force - Yngwie Malmsteen (1984)
2. Resurrection - Galneryus (2010)
3. Invictus - Virgin Steele (1998)
4. Angel of Salvation - Galneryus (2012)
5. Rust in Peace - Megadeth (1990)
6. Dust to Dust - Heavenly (2004)
7. V: The New Mythology Suite - Symphony X (2000)
8. Phoenix Rising - Galneryus (2011)
9. Trilogy - Yngwie Malmsteen (1988)
10. Images and Words - Dream Theater (1991)
11. Epica - Kamelot (2003)
12. Hall of the Mountain King - Savatage (1987)
13. Power Plant - Gamma Ray (1998)
14. Land of the Free - Gamma Ray (1995)
15. Crystal Logic - Manilla Road (1983)
16. No Smoke Without Fire - Anthem (1990)
17. Destiny - Stratovarius (1998)
18. Ecliptica - Sonata Arctica (1999)
19. Sign of the Winner - Heavenly (2001)
20. Dawn of Victory - Rhapsody (2000)
21. Defying the Rules - Hibria (2004)
22. The Black Halo - Kamelot (2005)
23. Chapters from a Vale Forlorn - Falconer (2002)
24. Reign in Blood - Slayer (1986)
25. Temple of Shadows - Angra (2004)

As an added bonus, here are some metal-related YouTube videos I return to over and over again, in no particular order:

• Yngwie Malmsteen - Far Beyond the Sun live.
• Galneryus - Tear Off Your Chain live.
• Galneryus - Departure Cover, (the "Hunter x Hunter" opening song) live.
• Heavenly - Virus live.
• Rainbow - Kill the King live.
• Slayer - Raining Blood & Angel of Death live.
• Gamma Ray - Razorblade Sigh live.

This video is "Sega Lord X's" equivalent to my favorite games of all time list, it seems-- he just uses different language to describe the idea: "These aren't the best games I've ever played, but they are my 'comfort games'." We even have some overlap, which is fun!

I don't update my list very often-- which makes sense, since forty years into the hobby my taste is pretty-well refined by now-- but his video gave me inspiration to do the first new revision in quite some time. Head over there to take a peek!

The big change involves me replacing the original Sonic with the "Sonic Origins" collection-- I quite literally don't even play the original ROM or cartridge anymore, plus the collection has rejuvenated my love for all of the Genesis Sonic titles, including "Sonic CD" which I adore now. The collection is the definitive way to experience them all, even with the missing Michael Jackson-associated music.

Nintendo also pops into the list for the first time ever, with several entries-- all made possible because I blew the list all the way up from thirty-five to a massive fifty. I could have kept going, and maybe I will some day. I could probably double the size, but by that point it would start to defeat the purpose, which is "what games do repeatedly play over and over?"

This is super cool: it's an emulator of the very first web browser, on a subset of the very first world wide web. Totally awesome!

While my dad and I did have a CompuServe membership in the very early 90s, we didn't jump onto the actual internet until 1994 when we got one of those "Internet in a Box" packages, which came with Mozaic-- so that was my first exposure to the web. I soon taught myself HTML and within months was making my own web pages. Good memories.

On a totally unrelated note, I'm going to memorize this-- the Aaronic Blessing-- and bless my kids with it whenever appropriate:



On yet another unrelated note, I've made substantial progress with my game: the intro and title screen sequence plus menu are complete; the options menu is done, with saving to and loading from disk; and I have the resolution plus overscan correction working on my CRT TV, along with the game looking fantastic on a modern display in 16:9.

The next step are the save and new game screens, with name entry. The latter will be an interesting challenge to implement.

I've seen a lot of commentary online about Nintendo having "learned their lesson with the Wii U", and thus going conservative with the Switch 2 to guarantee success. But I think it's a lot more nuanced than that:

• NES: Risky, success.
• Super NES: Conservative, success.
• Nintendo 64: Conservative, didn't really pan out.
• Gamecube: Conservative, didn't really pan out.
• Wii: Risky, success.
• Wii U: Risky, didn't really pan out.
• Switch: Risky, success.

For the risky designs, that's 3 successes and 1 failure. For the conservative designs, it's 1 success and 2 failures. It's less clear on the handheld side for Nintendo, since they've always been dominant no matter what they've put out, setting aside the early period for the 3DS.

What I see is that playing it safe or taking a risk can either be winning strategies, and actually Nintendo tends to win it the biggest when they do take risks. I think people are reading too much into the Wii U's failure, then extrapolating to infinity overall generalizations which don't hold.

Will the average person on the street really want just-another Switch but with marginally-- to the ordinary person, that is-- better graphics, at a premium price point which could be as high as $499? I don't see that idea catching "lightning in a bottle" like the original NES, the Wii, or the Switch-- but maybe I'll be proven wrong.

I know that I'll buy one-- I've been on the Nintendo train since fall of 2012 via the Wii U, and I've already got the money earmarked in my March budget. But I'm also an enthusiast who builds gaming PCs and owns a top-of-the-line OLED Steam Deck, a PlayStation 5 Pro, and innumerable other things. The potential mainstream success of the Switch 2 is what I'm curious about.

I'm not traditionally a huge movie guy, but I'm starting to come around.

Over the past few days, my daughter and I watched the first two "Sonic the Hedgehog" films, then we went as a larger family to see the third one in theaters last night. The first movie was a dud I thought, but the second one was very entertaining-- and the third one was excellent: I was smiling throughout the whole thing. Without giving any spoilers, the end credits of the third film will have you super pumped to see the fourth one.

Before watching the movies though, my daughter watched me play through Sonic 1, 2, CD, and part of 3 & Knuckles via the "Sonic Origins" collection on PS5. That wound up being a smart decision, because she picked up on tons of references in the films, to the games.

In other news, I've been working on my HaxeFlixel game a bit over the past two days. I'm pretty nervous for all of the lectoring I need to do for upcoming Masses, so this has been a nice distraction. So far I've just been implementing a dynamic menu system, which I will be able to use in the game proper for both character dialog, and for the settings menu I'm creating. The people on the Haxe Discord server have been super helpful when I've had questions.

In any event, Lazio play Lecce soon. After that huge "back down to Earth" Inter loss, I'm curious to see how the team responds.

One thing which has helped me from having a "wandering eye" when it comes to women is the realization that God has a model, which he wants for all of us: a husband, a wife, and children-- what one might call a family. He wants everyone to be a mother or a father or a brother or a sister, a son or a daughter-- to be a part of a family. Then, all of the families interconnect to form the larger body; imagine a honeycomb, with all of the different compartments joined together.

If I were to sin with another woman, not only am I corrupting my honeycomb cell, but I'm corrupting hers as well. I'm robbing both of us of our ability to have God's model. But it's worse than that: the dropped pebble has ripple effects outward, as the sin sets a bad example for others, causes children to be deprived of their proper parenting which will cause them issues, and myriad other problems.

I think this honeycomb metaphor can be applied to sin more broadly too. The Lord has a moral code He wants us to follow. Any time we deviate from that code-- i.e., we sin-- we are introducing corruption into the larger honeycomb lattice, weakening its walls and structural integrity.

So when I see a pretty lady these days, rather than experience desire I think to myself, "I hope she finds a wonderful man with which to raise children and create a family, if she doesn't have one already."

I can't get over how silly Naughty Dog's latest game looks. It features a black lesbian shaving her already shaved head, because why not belabor the message, along with other "girl boss" characters with as much charm as bags of rocks. To be clear, Naughty Dog haven't released a game I've been interested in since "Crash Team Racing" on the PSX-- but even by that low bar, what lessons have they and Sony learned from "Concord"? Apparently nothing.

On top of that you've got the latest example of a virtual sex swap with "The Witcher 4". As was the case above, I tried all three of the titles and couldn't get into any of them-- but for fans of the series, isn't playing with Geralt, or some equally-cool protagonist, the whole point? I mean, they are character action games, correct? How many white males, which probably make up ninety-plus percent of the game's audience, are going to want to play with this ugly boss woman character?

On the positive side, the 3DO is in the process of receiving an arcade perfect port of "Mortal Kombat II", out of nowhere! I was always more of a "Street Fighter" guy, but have been wanting to give Midway's famous series a shot over the past few years-- this port will be where I jump in I think. Or, maybe I'll start with the original on the Mega Drive? Haven't decided yet.

I've been playing quite a bit of the "Flight Simulator 2024" career mode. Unfortunately, I hit a point where I seemingly can't progress: I spent all of my money buying a helicopter, since I'm seriously interested in getting good at flying those-- only for the game to not have even a single mission I can perform with my new company. I even ground out some employee missions to get cash to relocate to one of the noted "hot spots" for winter, and still the map is empty. I think it's simply a bug.

Speaking of helicopters, I always wanted to go on a ride in one-- but not anymore now that I understand how they work. Airplanes are intrinsically stable-- in tune with the laws of physics. You set your aileron plus elevator trims, and away you go, plane practically flies itself. But helicopters need constant fussing: anti-torque pedal pushing to prevent the thing from spinning in circles, there is a huge delay between cyclic activity and the chopper gaining and losing altitude, the aircraft wants to constantly drift all over the place... they are extraordinarily dangerous!

Finally, I'm planning to write my "Killing Time: Resurrected" review today. I also ordered one of those "better-than-the-original" long box repros for Saturn, this time of "Saturn Bomberman", should be a blast once it comes in. And on a non-gaming note, Lotito made his long-awaited "Stadio Flaminio" presentation, it looks like it's going to move full steam ahead from here. I'm thrilled beyond belief at the extraordinary season Lazio is having, this is one of my favorite squads in the whole twenty years I've been following the club-- what a team!

One of my all-time most memorable 3DO games-- Video Game Esoterica's favorite game of all time in fact-- is Studio 3DO's Metroidvania-FPS hybrid, "Killing Time". Along with "The Need for Speed", I think it has the best graphics on the system-- I mean, just take a look at this picture I snapped several years ago:



I finally got around to buying the Nightdive Studios remaster on PlayStation 5. This new version of the game runs at native 4K, 120 fps, with HDR, and has completely re-worked visuals. In fact, they even went frame-by-frame through the FMV and touched all of that up!

In preparation though, I fired up the RetroArch Opera core on the Steam Deck OLED, and played through the game's opening few areas, capturing some screenshots as I did so. Let's start with the intro FMV-- here is the original game's:





And here is the remastered version:





Original title and name entry screens:





New title and name entry screens:





The original's opening forest area:





One thing I wasn't expecting is that the game uses the PC port levels, which are totally different than the 3DO's. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, since I like the 3DO rendition's areas. But here is the closest apples-to-apples shot from an opening area of the remastered edition:





The mansion foyer, original version:





The mansion foyer, new version:





And finally, screenshots of some of the enemies, original game:





And some screenshots of enemies, remastered game:





The Bob Vieira soundtrack and all of the sound effects made it over to the remastered version, which is fantastic! There are also improvements to the minimap, the player can now jump and crouch, which is kind of weird, and there is gyro aiming to boot. It's a typical A+ job from Nightdive Studios, expect a full review in the coming weeks.