Weeknotes 88

On Tuesday the treadmill died in the middle of a workout and tripped the RCD. I didn’t want to deal with getting another replacement so I asked for a refund and on Thursday a van came and took it away forever. Goodnight, sweet prince.

In hindsight, maybe I should’ve read this damning review and saved myself some hassle.

Back to square one on the exercise front, then. I scoped out the gym on Friday morning outside of peak hours and it was almost empty, so maybe that’s becoming a semi-safe option again.

It’s a little frustrating to lose the efficiency of working and exercising at the same time. I suppose it’s possible that being more focused will improve the quality of both. Let’s see!

I’ve been catching up on the videos of Simon Anthony playing The Witness. They’re just as wholesome and reassuring as his more conventional sudoku videos, and he’s impressively fast at solving individual puzzles once he fully understands the rules.

At the same time it’s fascinating how incurious he is about the wider context in which those puzzles appear. He’s approaching the game as a fancy gallery of 2D mazes rather than a world rich with its own rules and meaning, and doesn’t seem to have any interest in engaging with it thematically.

He’s generally good at deducing the mechanics of the different symbols but doesn’t grasp any meta-rules (e.g. “there’s more than one way to look at it”) no matter how many times the game tries to teach them. He’s discovered the existence of the environmental puzzles but, again, shows no real interest in finding or completing them.

It’s hard to guess how and where it’s going to end. He hasn’t been paying attention to his surroundings so it seems unlikely that he’ll get the big final payoff, which I’m increasingly convinced is what the whole game is constructed around. He’s also missed several optional areas and has no obvious motive to go back and solve them. It expect he’ll either peter out after the first ending or succumb to taking advice from the audience to help him find the rest.

So, yeah, slightly frustrating, but he’s an entertaining character and it’s interesting to see how an expert in puzzles (if not video games) can excel in some ways and come unstuck in others. Until now I’ve been watching recordings of past streams but I intend to tune in live tomorrow night and shout at the screen in real time.

At first the Witness videos gave me motion sickness pretty badly but it’s eased off as I’ve watched more of them. Maybe I’ve just lost my sea legs because I haven’t had any good games to play for so long.

I’d been looking forward to the PlayStation showcase so I was a bit sad when it didn’t contain any new games I was interested in. It’s good that Uncharted 4 & The Lost Legacy are coming to PS5 but I’ve replayed them both once already so it’ll probably be a few years before I want to do it again.

In fact, Naughty Dog’s beginning to fade into the background when compared to Insomniac’s Ratchet & Clank and Marvel games. I assume they’re working on something genuinely new so I hope they’ll start talking about it soon.

I also thought the new system update would come out of beta, but no sign of that either.

I’d like to play Life is Strange: True Colors at some point now that it’s out. I got bored with Life is Strange 2 and didn’t finish it even though I loved the first game; True Colors looks like it’s revived the aspects that appealed to me (small town vibes, female protagonist, engaging characters) so I’m more optimistic.

I haven’t picked it up yet because the reviews aren’t great and £50 is a lot of money for yet another game I might put down after a few hours. Maybe when it goes on sale.

Shortly after last week’s hubris the weather got uncomfortably warm in retaliation. By the weekend it had returned to autumnal so that’s definitely the end of it.

15.0kg down.