Category: Media

This is a container category for media reviews and related drivel.

Satisfactory: Two Years of Co-Op

We started this as a regular (mostly) Tuesday night gaming meetup in late 2022. Time flies when you’re having fun and tearing up the landscape and turning critter guts into shop tickets and building huge quantities of many things!

Last Tuesday evening, the kids and I completed our Satisfactory (Early Access version) co-op save game session. We sent up the Phase 4 space elevator shipment, which was the final thing-to-do that the game has available. (Other than sinking items for tickets to buy geegaws in the shop, that is.)

Spud had the idea of making a time-lapse sequence out of the end-of-day saves loaded into Satisfactory Calculator, so… I did that:

And now for a real break from the game. 1.0 releases in early September and by then I’ll probably be refreshed and ready for it.

4 August, 2024
Ryoko, More Or Less

I went through some of my storage bins Saturday afternoon as part of my ongoing effort to actually, you know, move in to this new house properly. Put stuff on shelves, put stuff in storage, live a bit less “in boxes.” That sort of thing.

In the process I came across some of my old Tenchi Muyo merchandise purchases, such as some “super deformed” figurines and a 6 inch tall McFarlane Toys rendition of Ryoko (complete with small companion Ryo-ohki).

On the back panel you could see the entire “Animation from Japan” line from this run of McFarlane Toys: Two characters from the movie AKIRA, Vash from the show TRIGUN, and Ryoko here. That’s it.

Then I realized… I have shelf space now. And it’s not like I’m keeping this for resale value as a collector’s item. Why not just… get it out of that packaging after all these years? So I did:

Poor Edelgard. First Holo the Wise Wolf, now Ryoko the Space Pirate. It’s getting crowded on that shelf.

The quality’s actually fairly decent overall. The “flowing robe” is sort of a rubbery plastic and holds its shape pretty well. Getting the “beam saber” into her hand was tricky and I nearly broke the thing in the process. Having the entire figure kind of leaning forward in an action pose isn’t the worst choice they could have made. All things considered, though… something looks off about her. It’s like some other figurine is cosplaying as Ryoko, which is a weird-assed thought to have but that’s what I’ve got. My brain is the way it is.

Anyway. Another fandom represented on the display shelves, this time one of the oldest of all my anime fandoms over the years.

Oh, right, I also unboxed my Zentraedi Officer’s Pod. Did I forget to mention that?

Alas, the regular Zentraedi Battlepod is in really bad shape and cannot stand on its own two legs. In the box it remains. By the way: Bonus points if you recognize the foam pickaxe…

So that’s the absolute oldest anime fandom of my life (Robotech!) represented. I’m such a nerd.

15 July, 2024
State of Play – July 2024

I’m basically just working, playing, and occasionally doing home improvements along with the regular daily/weekly chores. The big work project isn’t at a point yet where I can really talk about it much (not a matter of secrecy, more a matter of being in a state of flux) and chores are boring, so let’s talk about games.
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13 July, 2024
New Pantry Shelving Get

We knew going into this that the moving expenses wouldn’t end with the moving company and the setup of utilities. There’s also replacing outdated cooking gear, like the should-have-replaced-it-years-ago griddle, and adding shelving which would never have fit into the apartment, hence living partly out of boxes for most of the 8 years of that residency.

This week I ordered in new shelves for the erstwhile pantry space. (Basically, the “pantry space” is the walkway from the garage door & back door, past the kitchen, into the house proper.) This will allow us to, you guessed it, unbox more stuff.

Today we assembled the shelves. Okay, Vyx helped with the first one. I did the second unit solo.

On the upper right you can see the new Zojirushi griddle which arrived earlier this month, because yes we really did throw out the old busted griddle during the move.

I’m not wild about this construction style, but it beats the wireframe style, even though they both essentially come down to “beat this shelving mount into place with a rubber mallet until it stays put,” which is… certainly a thing, isn’t it. At any rate, soon these shelves will be covered in foodstuffs, cookware, and the board game library. (It’s well away from the cooking area, don’t worry.)

More and more, we’re making this our home. And I’m still loving it.

30 June, 2024
Hello, Summertime

It’s been a slow posting month, probably not helped by the fact that I’m essentially on a Satisfactory hiatus. (I’m expecting 1.0 to drop early in autumn but we don’t know for sure yet. Whenever it does, it’ll break all existing saves, so… why bother?) Is it time to find another game to post about? Maybe. Or perhaps I should post about a variety of games, since that’s actually what I’m playing now. Honkai Star Rail, Gems of War, Titan Quest (yes, the precursor to Grim Dawn which I like far better), FFXIV (some day I’ll reach level 50)… I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting.

Oh right, Unicorn Overlord, which I keep trying to gel with and just can’t for whatever reason. That reason is probably something to do with the fact that most of the actual strategy is in setting up “unit” compositions because once you’re in a battle scenario the outcome of any given clash is predetermined. How exciting. How fun. Let’s play 12-directional rock-paper-scissors without even the fun of directly controlling the output of a combat clash.

Anyway. Living in the new house is still going great aside from the screeching dishwasher, and while it’s a bit annoying to need to don two layers every time the AC comes on… I’ll take that over the AC simply having almost no effect (and being too loud to hear yourself think, on top of that).

Work is progressing along. The odds are good that I won’t be getting any time off for the next few months as we have a big migration looming. Yay? We’ll see.

Anyway. I hope your summertime is cool and cozy.

26 June, 2024
Shiny Platter Capsule Reviews

For part of my vacation time I’m actually using that 4K Blu Ray player that sits almost entirely unused in the living room.

Yesterday I watched the Genesis documentary/interview piece, Sum Of The Parts. Which is a decent, if highly condensed, overview of Genesis’ discography and how it came to be. (With one glaring omission.) They also dabbled in covering the solo careers, showing the “highlights” of Gabriel’s and Collins’ output plus brief mentions of Hackett’s first solo record (before the split) and Rutherford’s Mechanics project and Banks’ various efforts. Mind you… near the end of the whole piece they got to “Collins left the band in 1996” and immediately cut to the preparation for the 2007 tour. Hmm. Poor Ray Wilson, left out of the story again.

Today I watched the second Miles Morales animated adventure series installment, Across the Spiderverse. And it’s… good, overall. Almost continually quippy, though it managed to dial that down at some of the more appropriate moments. But that’s Spider-Man (and Spider-Gwen, and Spider-Woman, and, and, and, and…) for you, being quippy is sewn into the costume. (With one notable exception.) Visually, the team at Sony’s animation studio continue to push the boundaries using the first Spiderverse flick as a jumping-off point. It’s a delight for the eyes. Story-wise… I don’t know. It’s not done yet, so I can’t “sit” with it and get a feel for how well they’ve pulled that off. I’ve seen half a movie, now I have to wait for the other half.

No more movies this week, but maybe I’ll start on a TV show next. I’ll decide on that… tomorrow.

22 May, 2024