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Time Flew
Wow. Middle of May without a single post since January. Obviously haven't tried that hard did I.
With the whole pandemic thing going on I guess I haven't really been feeling like writing up anything in particular. Haven't played too much for video games either with the exception of Minecraft and Romance of the Three Kingdoms III. Yes. III. Genesis version. Beyond Rot3K6, I haven't had much fun with any of the other games in the series I've tried - admittedly I've only played II, VII, and VIII. Wonder if I even know how to play VI anymore.
The places around here are beginning to open up again - our numbers are actually pretty good, being down to just 1 known active case. Like most of the cases we've had, it's travel related so there's no evidence of community spread. We would have seen a spike in numbers by now if there was anyway.
That being said I doubt I'll be going to the stores very much anyway. Ebgames will be opening up soon (Big surprise 9_9) on Tuesday but I suspect they'll be getting VERY little attention from me due to the whole stunt gamestop went on with refusing to shut down and calling themselves "Essential Services". For those who don't know, Ebgames and Gamestop are essentially the same company and have been for a very very long time. Case in point, I remember seeing a copy of the covid response letter gamestops in the US had put up detailing what they were doing to keep customers and staff safe - I saw pretty much the exact same letter on the front of the ebgames here in town. I doubt they were any more truthful up here than they were down there given all the things that came out afterwards. Just my gut instinct on that of course, and while it may be unfair to say it, that's the kind of vibe I get from the ebgames up here no matter what store I seem to go to.
Regardless of that - I was planning on doing less business with ebgames for a long time so we'll just let this be that tipping point. There's just one game that I'd like to buy there that comes out in June (or was..) and then I doubt I'll step foot inside the store much at all. I won't call it a hard boycott, like say the hard boycott I have on Sony Music (Haven't bought a CD from that label since their whole rootkit bullshit, and I don't feel like anything of value was lost.) but it does mean I won't be going in there most days on my way to work just to see what they have and potentially let myself buy something. Will I buy games from them after that? I won't say 'no', but I'll have to know in advance of a game I want, when it releases, etc. At which point I'll at least make an effort to pick up a copy. If they don't have a copy on launch, I'll just amazon it. Yeah, I just verbed it.
The only other store I'm actually hoping to go to again is Chapters. You know, that place with ground up dead trees and ink. I finally started buying from their online store indigo since the backlog of things I was waiting on was piling up. finally got "the first shipment" on Friday. And noticed I accidentally bought 2 copies of one of the books. X_X Returning shit like that, usually, is easy. I just have to take the book and the indigo invoice form... to a Chapters store! So hopefully they'll actually reopen the stores soon as it has to be done within 30 days. I might be able to get some leeway on that given the stores are closed. If not, oh well, I'll have to shut up and pay the "stupid tax".
This weekend I'll try to finalize the second order. Things are delayed these days due to the Christmas level volumes at the post office, but I'll probably still get the next package in the first week of June or earlier.
I should also take another look at Bloodstained. Never did get back to that after the apparent new character play through dropped a week ago.
With the whole pandemic thing going on I guess I haven't really been feeling like writing up anything in particular. Haven't played too much for video games either with the exception of Minecraft and Romance of the Three Kingdoms III. Yes. III. Genesis version. Beyond Rot3K6, I haven't had much fun with any of the other games in the series I've tried - admittedly I've only played II, VII, and VIII. Wonder if I even know how to play VI anymore.
The places around here are beginning to open up again - our numbers are actually pretty good, being down to just 1 known active case. Like most of the cases we've had, it's travel related so there's no evidence of community spread. We would have seen a spike in numbers by now if there was anyway.
That being said I doubt I'll be going to the stores very much anyway. Ebgames will be opening up soon (Big surprise 9_9) on Tuesday but I suspect they'll be getting VERY little attention from me due to the whole stunt gamestop went on with refusing to shut down and calling themselves "Essential Services". For those who don't know, Ebgames and Gamestop are essentially the same company and have been for a very very long time. Case in point, I remember seeing a copy of the covid response letter gamestops in the US had put up detailing what they were doing to keep customers and staff safe - I saw pretty much the exact same letter on the front of the ebgames here in town. I doubt they were any more truthful up here than they were down there given all the things that came out afterwards. Just my gut instinct on that of course, and while it may be unfair to say it, that's the kind of vibe I get from the ebgames up here no matter what store I seem to go to.
Regardless of that - I was planning on doing less business with ebgames for a long time so we'll just let this be that tipping point. There's just one game that I'd like to buy there that comes out in June (or was..) and then I doubt I'll step foot inside the store much at all. I won't call it a hard boycott, like say the hard boycott I have on Sony Music (Haven't bought a CD from that label since their whole rootkit bullshit, and I don't feel like anything of value was lost.) but it does mean I won't be going in there most days on my way to work just to see what they have and potentially let myself buy something. Will I buy games from them after that? I won't say 'no', but I'll have to know in advance of a game I want, when it releases, etc. At which point I'll at least make an effort to pick up a copy. If they don't have a copy on launch, I'll just amazon it. Yeah, I just verbed it.
The only other store I'm actually hoping to go to again is Chapters. You know, that place with ground up dead trees and ink. I finally started buying from their online store indigo since the backlog of things I was waiting on was piling up. finally got "the first shipment" on Friday. And noticed I accidentally bought 2 copies of one of the books. X_X Returning shit like that, usually, is easy. I just have to take the book and the indigo invoice form... to a Chapters store! So hopefully they'll actually reopen the stores soon as it has to be done within 30 days. I might be able to get some leeway on that given the stores are closed. If not, oh well, I'll have to shut up and pay the "stupid tax".
This weekend I'll try to finalize the second order. Things are delayed these days due to the Christmas level volumes at the post office, but I'll probably still get the next package in the first week of June or earlier.
I should also take another look at Bloodstained. Never did get back to that after the apparent new character play through dropped a week ago.
no subject
If I ever do get back into console games, I'll probably go to Lost Ark for most things, as that's where I sold all my consoles, and it looked like a pretty cool place. (They let me into their arcade for free while they took an hour or so to tally up all the shit I'd brought in.) I've only ever been there the one time, though, to sell all my shit, as I never really had a reason to go back after that, since I don't have the shit anymore.
I haven't really thought of Bloodstained at all since I made the post the other day about them saying Zangetsu mode would be available soon. I never even finished the new game+ playthrough I started a while back. (It was just too grueling to have to go back to moving so slowly at the start of the new game, after being used to the end-game traversal shards... ^^;)
As far as buying things when you already have them. I bought a game on GOG the other day because it was marked down to like $2 or something... then found out I'd already bought the same game on Steam (and I haven't touched it yet on either platform and probably won't anytime soon, likely not until the next game is similarly priced [and I'll try to make sure not to buy it twice this time]). And I'm pretty sure that's not the first time something like that has happened, either. >_>;
no subject
When Prelude to the Fallen was on preorder back in jan-march, I avoided preordering with them in particular because I didn't really have any confidence that they'd still be a store by March. It's not like the franchise is doing so hot even without a pandemic after all. Probably should have preordered on amazon I guess but I hate buying from amazon. This is the only game I really planned on buying this year either way. It's very likely I'm going to be bowing out of consoles except potentially Nintendo consoles this gen.
Xbox series died to me with the 360 where I found it overwhelmingly unimpressive - and noticed that the only reason I had "a lot of games" for it was because I was deliberately evening out the cross-platform games between the PS3 and 360. Xbone wasn't touched at all thanks to what they attempted to do to the industry as a whole with respect to killing offline gaming and secondhand sales. (24hr check in, and all that other rot) Needless to say this Xbox Series X/S BS for next gen won't even be looked at. Given I never once felt an urge to buy a xbone this gen means I'm pretty serious about this stance I guess.
PS5 doesn't look like it's going to impress me either to be honest, and you can see how they're trying to kill physical discs by offering a "digital only" version of the console (microsoft is doing this as well of course). Also while they push for digital, they're also doing what I predicted would eventually happen - the loss of REAL digital sales events. Yes, every week they still have things on sale but it virtually never goes as cheap as it use to back when they were trying to show how digital could be cheaper and more economical. I regularly see games on there in their 'flash sales' that are like 40-50% off! And still costing 80-100 bucks because the only version of the game that's on sale is the "deluxe edition". I can only see this practice getting more out of control next gen.
Speaking on another point for next gen, they're already saying next gen games are going to cost an extra 10 bucks USD. I think this means you guys are going up to 70 bucks per game now? You know, not including the 100+ bucks of DLC. If that's what Americans are going to be paying - 69.99 - you can expect Canadians will now be paying 90+. Already the standard price tag of a new release console game is 79.99 up here. For the same games Americans pay 59.99 for.
At those prices, along with shit quality launch printed on the discs, massive amounts stripped out of the game for DLC, among other issues... yeah, I'm out. If anything it means I'll be posting more of my Game Night reviews/thoughts on older games I have lying around. Which isn't a bad idea anyway.