Weeknotes 344

Hello there.

Three gyms. Onion smell by the treadmills. My weight’s fluctuating a lot but the overall trend remains gradually, haltingly downward.

I’m approaching the halfway point of Redemption Ark and the pace is at last picking up. Threads connecting! Events occurring! It now seems more likely that I can finish this, even though it’s going to take the best part of six weeks to get through the remaining sixteen hours. See you in weeknotes 350.

An absurdly busy week. I felt spread thinly between competing demands on my time, many of which ranged from merely unnecessary to exasperatingly unprofessional. I sweated at home on Monday but returned to the air-conditioned office from Tuesday, so at least my vital organs were kept refrigerated while my piss achieved a rolling boil.

Rain fell for all of five minutes on Tuesday, which likewise felt like a blessing. The parks remain parched, the pavements filthy.

I’ve had a comparatively peaceful weekend: no plans, no travel, just rest. Next week will be stressful and the weather’s threatening to get hot again so I’m taking the opportunity to restock my emotional bunker while I can.

I saw Exit 8 and thought it was pretty good. Both the production and the typography are very well designed, and it does a decent job of teasing a story from a setup which otherwise doesn’t suggest one. A nice effective little film that does exactly what it’s supposed to.

I’m still playing bits and pieces of Donkey Kong Bananza and, to be clear, I’m enjoying it. The Bananza transformations are fun, smashing up the environments is satisfying, and it’s generally enjoyable to explore the sandbox levels to whatever extent I’m in the mood for. It’s not a bad game.

There’s just so much that’s wrong with it!

The engine’s ambitious but wonky. DK’s climbing feels so fragile and unstable: once you’re holding onto a surface, you might fall off at any time just because you moved. I keep getting stuck in half-destroyed geometry and the camera’s all over the place most of the time. The end result is that I never feel relaxed and in control; it’s always like, the camera’s careening about, DK’s climbing when I didn’t want him to (or vice versa), bits of the environment are popping in and out for no reason… it’s just chaotic and there’s no opportunity to feel calm mastery of a rock-solid and fully responsive character, which, yes, is what makes Mario so satisfying.

The quality-of-life aspects aren’t much better. It only lets you pause when it wants you to be able to pause, versus whenever you get interrupted in the real world, which is a rude and inconsiderate bit of game design. Likewise it parcels out infrequent save points like they’re a special reward, which I think means it’s not safe for me to quit and switch to another game if I feel like it. And because some finite resource (other than lives) gets depleted when you die, I feel discouraged from trying things out and experimenting with new ideas, because I know I’m going to get my wrist slapped every time I do something wrong.

The consequence of all this is that I’m not getting the most out of what the game has to offer. The size and nonlinearity of the levels already makes them feel a bit overwhelming, and I’m reluctant to try any of the more challenging side content in case I get punished for dying because of the dodgy camera or controls, so I’ve started ignoring everything but the direct path to the goal for the sake of making progress and getting more upgrades. I’m hoping by the end of the game I’ll have the confidence and enthusiasm to come back to do the bonus levels and find all the hidden gubbins.

It also doesn’t help that DK’s sidekick is voice acted with intense “focus, M” energy. Ah well.

Still, maybe we’ll be getting Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet next year?

In a typical piece of me behaviour I’ve been saving the new Bobby Fingers for the perfect moment to watch it, which inevitably means I haven’t watched it yet and perhaps never will. Doesn’t the potential always feel better than the reality?