Poorly written diatribes about video games and other shit in my life.
Why the fuck cannot I not ever find what I am looking on the web anymore? Google almost never returns anything useful, DuckDuckGo is just a worse version of Google and YouTube's search is utter dog shit.
I was just looking for tutorials on something on YouTube and all I found were irrelevant tutorials and click-bait garbage. I checked Google, same shit as YouTube but also irrelavant Reddit posts included, goodie! DuckDuckGo might as well not-exist, the results are the same or worse than Google. The only nice thing about DuckDuckGo is that I don't have to solve a fucking captcha everytime I want to search something with a VPN enabled and they have a Javascript free version.
God Damn, I am so sick of the web at this point. It feels like there are only a handful of websites and they all center around trying to sell me shit that I don't want or need. I really miss when people put shit on the internet for no other reason than that it was interesting to them. I just really hate the modern web and modern life actually. Can I just go back to 1998, please?
Well I got laid off recently and it is the first time in my life that I have ever been laid off. I didn't especially enjoy my job but it was really easy and good money so this sucks pretty bad. I really have no idea what I am going to do. I don't have much of a professional network and the few connections that I do have, have nothing availble right now. All of my fall back ideas for jobs, stuff I used to do, aren't there. The jobs just aren't available. I'm pretty fucked. I didn't get much in the way of severance so I will be relying on unemployment until that runs out. I'll most likely have to give up my apartment and move back in with my mom. This is probably it for my career and any hopes I may have had for a normal life.
Funny thing is, recently I had been really trying hard at work. I had been making more of an effort to do my job well and be more social. I was feeling pretty positive recently and of course this is how I am rewarded for putting in effort and being positive. It wasn't really my fault that I got laid off, the upper management at the company are just fucking idiots. I still learned my lesson though, life won't reward me for being positive and trying to better myself. There is no point in even trying in life, I should just give up and accept my destiny as a fucking loser.
The way I see this playing out is that I'll only be offered some shitty assembly or warehouse jobs. I don't see myself getting anything better. I don't have much experience in what I was doing previously, only like 3.5 years. That basically only qualifies me for the entry level jobs and all my experience was in a weird niche industry without a lot of carry over into other industries. Honestly, I'm fucked. In a few months, when I haven't found anything, I will give up may apartment and move back in with my mom. Then maybe I'll keep looking for similar jobs to what I was doing but more realistically, I should just find a shitty job that will actually hire me. At least at that point I will have money coming in so I can buy games or whatever I want again.
The good thing about the position that I am in is that my mom actually wants me to move back home. That is a better situation than other people might find themselves in so I can be thankful for that. On the other hand, I don't see myself moving back out of her house if I do go back. If I move back in, I am probably going to stay there for good. I know I could move back out eventually if I ever find a better job again but at this point in my life, why bother? What's the point? My only motivation to live on my own is to not look like a loser to women but women aren't interested in me anyway so screw it. I haven't been able to get a girlfriend in years and frankly don't see that changing anytime soon. I'm not good looking and even if I got in better shape, I would still be ugly. There's just no point anymore.
It is over for me. I just don't see any positive way forward and I really don't see me being successful in my professional life again. When I accepted my last job that just laid me off, I actually had a similar job offer but for less money, I really should have taken that job. I'd probably still be employed. Oh well, I guess this is how it was always going to end up. I would lose my job one way or another and be back living with my mom. It's fucking depressing but that's life I guess. Fuck it.
Westerners should leave anime to the Japanese. It is one thing to take inspiration from Anime or for Western companies to work in concert with Japanese studios on anime, but even that usually results in shit. Anime is special because it is uniquely Japanese. The soul of anime is in its Japanese roots, to remove that leaves an inferior materialistic husk of a product. It is just that, a product, to be exploited for profit, it ceases to be art. That is not to say that the Japanese themselves don't shovel out sub-par anime series every season with the only goal being commercial success, because they do. However, it is theirs to do with what they please and those series are still aimed at a Japanese audience.
Am I, a non-Japanese person, trying to gatekeep anime for the Japanese? Yes, I am. I feel that way because I care about anime and I don't want to see it change for the worse. I want anime to continue to be marketed exclusively to the Japanese domestic market. The core of anime is Japanese. Everything from the storytelling, characters, events, morality, sensibilities and worldview should all remain Japanese. The art style has changed over the years but the core nature of anime remains and that is what makes it special. To strip those things away and replace them with a Westernized version will destroy what makes anime special. This is why I vehemently oppose any Westerners using anime styled art and support gatekeeping anime for Japan.
The popularity of anime in the West could prove to be the downfall of anime as an artform. This rise in popularity has been building for many years, the once beloved niche hobby is now risking turning into a crass commercial product based on its current trajectory. My biggest fear is that the domestic Japanese market stops being the primary consumer market for anime. As the market for anime expands in the West, Japanese executives could decide to fund series that will appeal to the West instead of Japan. I don't think this fear is unfounded either, you can look at any number of cultural exports from Eastern countries that appeal to the West only to be bastardized and made into Western slop like the American "Chinese food" available across the country. It is nothing like authentic Chinese food, instead it is just another form of Western mass produced fast food. Sure it tastes good and might even have been cooked by a Chinese person but that food isn't Chinese, it's American. I never want to see American anime, we already have cartoons that we make for our domestic audience, we don't need the "Chinese food" equivalent of anime.
Often, you will see a game that uses anime style art that isn't made by a Japanese studio. Some of the games are even quite good but they should use their own art style. It comes off as lazy and pandering to blatantly rip off Japanese anime styled art when the creators are not Japanese. I especially hate when a game will use an anime art style without making any effort to change it. They either completely lack any creativity or it is simply pandering in hopes of getting sales from the anime consumer market. It is uninspired and lazy to rip off an art style without making an effort to make it your own. Not only does it usually look terrible, it also strips away the core essence of anime and tries to usurp it with Western values. It is stealing art and subverting it for commercial use. Plain and simple. If an artist simply wants to create this style of art with no commercial ambitions, that is not relevant, I am specifically referring to commercial products. Even Western created doujin don't really matter, they are all dog shit anyway.
Western sensibilities and culture will destroy anime like it is destroying all other forms of entertainment. A large part is the "progessive" politics injected into everything which immediately repulses most sensible people save for the most terminally online morons. Another aspect that will ruin it is the crass commercialism of Western culture. Every single thing in Western life is something to be exploited for money. Have a hobby? Monetize it. Have a car? Monetize it. Have more than 1 free second of your day? MONETIZE IT! It's fucking grotesque. There is no respect for anything unless it can somehow make you money, otherwise it is a waste of time. That's obviously an exaggeration and most people don't live that way but that is the way Western companies will treat anything that they can get their hooks into. They will bleed it dry until all that is left is a rotting corpse of what once was someone's creation.
To me, there is no more egregious example of exploitation of the anime art style than Western vtubers. Jesus fucking christ is that ever unbearable. There is nothing more cringe than Western women trying and failing to talk like a female anime character while streaming. Streaming alone is unbearable when anyone does it. I can't stand it. But vtubers take it to another level. At least when Japanese women do it, they are able to accurately create a voice similar to a female anime character for the simple fact that they speak Japanese and have Japanese accents. Even if a Western vtuber tried to speak Japanese, they would sound like a Westerner speaking Japanese. I don't like Japanese vtubers either but Western vtubers are the single worst thing that has ever been spawned off from the anime art style. It is worse than e-girls/gamergirls and that is saying something. It just sucks seeing something you love be destroyed by normies.
The situation we are in now with Anime is precarious. We have Western artists, from indie artists all the way to large corporations, copying Japanese art for commercial use in games or other sources of entertainment and supplanting Western values in place of Japanese values. Mix that with Japanese executives seeing the potential for distribution of anime in the West as a rapidly growing market and it paints a grim picture for the future of anime. I fear that anime will continue to grow in popularity in the West and it will result in anime being made to cater to the West. It will start small but it will snowball and eventually take over the market. Anime in its truest form may still exist in Japan after the West destroys it but it will be an ever shrinking portion of the market. One day, anime could be as ubiquitous in the West as "Chinese food". Fast food anime made for the West.
Based on the last several years of anime, is it worth saving at this point? I am not even really sure. I know that it can't be saved and that it is too late already so why am I even bothering writing this? I guess just to express how I have felt for many years at this point. There's probably no saving it at this point. However, it is possible, if my predictions are correct and anime starts being developed for the West, with Western values that it will eventually run its course and die. That would be a blessing and anime could go back to being a niche hobby for Westerners while being popular in Japan. That is a very unlikely outcome but it is my only hope at this point. I should give up all hope at this point but I will foolishly cling to the hope that the Western appetite for anime dies a swift death.
Anime is dead. Long live anime.
I used to love TCGs, particularly Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. However, after having been away from actively playing/collecting TCGs for many years, I find myself unable to reconnect with any of them. I have tried several times over the past 10 years or so to get back into multiple TCGs and I cannot recapture the love I used to have for them. I could attribute this to my lack of having kept up with the games and feeling overwhelmed but that feeling usually passes as I keep digging into a game. I could also contribute the feeling to not wanting to spend a bunch of money on the game but that bothers me a lot less since I just take money from my video game budget to buy cards. In reality, there are 2 things that primarily killed my love of TCGs. Rich douchebags and the internet.
I grew up in what I consider to be the golden age of TCGs, a period of time spanning the late 1990s through the early 2000s. The big 3 TCGs were all present, MTG was in full swing at this point, Pokemon was very popular and Yu-Gi-Oh was just getting started. This was also a time when a lot of popular IPs were creating TCGs in attempts to capitalize on the rising popularity of the market. Every week at my local game store there seemed to be new IPs releasing TCGs. My first foray into TCGs was with Pokemon. I eventually completed my collection of the 151 first generation Pokemon cards which I ended up selling to a local game store, something I definitely regret now. Then my obsession shifted towards Yu-Gi-Oh which I collected and played constantly in the early days of the game. I am most nostalgic for the early days of Yu-Gi-Oh. The game was nothing like the game is today. It was pretty simple and the Yugi and Kaiba starter decks were everywhere. You could buy one of each and play with friends for hours. Back then we actually came up with our own decks and bought booster packs to make them better. I miss those days a lot.
Fast forward to today, the cards from my childhood cost hundreds or thousands of dollars and everyone uses whatever the latest netdeck is with no variation. Pokemon cards I would like to buy are completely unaffordable thanks to rich douchebags who keep driving prices up and using people's childhood memories for profiteering. It is disgusting and it keeps happening with everything that I loved growing up. I hope these assholes all get some kind of karmic justice in time but I won't hold my breath. Even trying to find cards for current sets of TCGs can be impossible to get because of scalpers. I had potentially been interested in Disney Lorcana last year when it came out but scaplpers ruined that completely and now that it is in stock, I am not interested because I know the same thing will happen with every new set. Why should I bother?
Netdecking completely ruined the fun of opening packs and building decks. Now, everyone just uses whatever the latest "meta" is and buys the individual cards. Not that this is an entriely new phonomenon at all but it wasn't the norm. Most people liked to build their own decks with starter decks and booster packs, at least the people I played with did. We did occasionally buy indidual cards from a local game store but it was more fun to try to pull it from a pack. I was also a kid at the time so if I were an adult, my view would probably have been different and I would have bought more individual cards. Deckbuilding was a lot of fun and I used to spend hours building different decks with cards that I had then trying them out against my friends. I would regularly go to Yu-Gi-Oh tournaments on weekends and while I usually lost in the first round, I still had a lot of fun. Notably, people would use all kinds of different decks and strategies, no netdecking, no "meta" and at one time no ban-list. Good times were had all around and just being in that environment was great. Tournaments still exist and there are options to avoid netdecking like drafts in MTG but my experience with those has been bad. As a newcomer you just end up feeling like a burden to the other players and no one really seems to want you there.
Internet "communities" around TCGs have also utterly ruined the games for me. Most of these groups, especially on reddit are full of gatekeeping assholes who are rude and unhelpful to newcomers or they are mind rotted idiots who want to inject politics into the game. Most of the people on these forums don't even seem to like the game. They all come online to bitch and moan about the game, talk about something being "broken" or speculate on sets that aren't even out yet. What's the point in these internet "communities"? They don't support new players at all, they don't improve the game, in fact they likely deter people from getting into the game entirely. No one is going to want to play the game if everyone associated with the game is so shitty.
I know I am wearing nostalgia glasses when looking back on TCG past but I think it is hard to argue that many things were better. The cards were affordable, there was creativity in deckbuilding and it was possible to play in a tournament every weekend with whatever deck you wanted without worrying about netdecking. Those days are long gone and there aren't any new TCGs that are replacing that feeling for me so I am probably done with even trying anymore. I give up. Yet another hobby ruined by money and the internet. Thanks assholes.
R.I.P. TCGs
I hate everything about reddit. I hate the sub-reddit system. I hate the stupid mascot (snoo?). I hate the moderation system that has created the lovecraftian horror that are reddit mods. I hate the gold and silver reward shit. I really hate the karma and up/down voting system. However, I hate nothing more than the redditors themselves. They make the website truly insufferable. The way they talk and act is so fucking cringe and stupid it makes me want to jump out of a window.
I have gotten to the point where I have to block reddit using a browser extension just in case I click on a link to that shit hole site. I can't suffer through the comment section of another reddit post, I just cannot do it. It is truly the worst place on the web. Try searching for anything on Google that you need help with and since Google has completely fucked their search engine results, the only place to find an answer is reddit, tragically. You will be immediately directed to the comment section of the post because of all the places on the internet, Google's dog shit search algorithm produces the result that it is the best place to find the solution to your problem. It isn't. You will find the most cringe and unhelpful bullshit comments you can ever possibly imagine.
I remember being frustrated with a game once. I googled something about that part of the game being hard/sucking, simply to see if other people sucked at the game as much as me in an effort to make myself feel better. Someone had posted on reddit expressing a similar sentiment so I read their post and found it relatable. The comment section on the other hand made me want to stop playing the game entirely. The comment sections of posts on any remotely challenging game are filled with the "git gud" and "skill issue" comments, which are not even remotely helpful, but they aren't supposed to be. Once in awhile someone will actually share their strategy and be helpful, those people should consider finding a new website to hangout on, they are too good for reddit. However, no one is worse than the redditors offering emotional support. Just fuck off with that shit, it is so fucking cringe and self-serving. Don't tell me to "take a deep breath", "eat my favorite snack" or whatever other stupid advice they spew. Just fucking stop.
No one on reddit wants to help you, they just want to appear to be helpful so they can look good to the other assholes on reddit and get more karma. The most obvious example of this is if you ever look at a post even remotely related to an emotion someone might be feeling. If someone is having a tough time and posts about it, that post will immediately be bombarded with comments telling the person to "get therapy" or "talk to a therapist". Go fuck yourself, that isn't helpful. Everyone knows therapy exists and why it exists, they don't need to be told that. Redditors also love to talk like therapist, which is beyond annoying and they may even suggest conditions the person might have. Hell, I have even seen people recommend medication. What the fuck are you doing?
I think the way they talk bothers me more than anything else. It isn't even all that "kind stranger" or "updoots" shit either, it's that they use the same words to describe things everytime they come up. Graphics are always "beautiful", they are always "having a blast" playing a game, and every decent game is a "masterpiece". Can they not think of any other adjectives? Go look at any post about any game on reddit and you will see the same words/phrases used over and over again. Another thing you will see is horrendously bad memes about highly specific things that only chronically online redditors on that specific sub will understand. They aren't clever or funny even if you do get the reference. Shitty memes have become a substitute for discourse on the modern web so I guess I can't blame them for indulging but still, they suck.
If you ever want to stop liking something, look at the subreddit for it. You'll immediately be so put-off by the cringy elitist pricks on there that you will lose all interest in that thing. That has happened to me with nearly everything that I have ever enjoyed and made the mistake of looking at the related subreddit. A great example is anime, take one look at any anime related subreddit and you'll just stop watching it altogether (maybe for the best anyway). Fans of anime have always been cringe but it is on a different level on reddit. Imagine unironically referring to yourself as a "weeb". That alone is vomit inducing. I grew up in the era where you would get bullied for liking anime so my tendancy is to not advertise my enjoyment of anime. I don't blame people for openly admitting they like anime now that it is more mainstream but reddit utterly ruins anime for me. The same issues arise of people saying the same shit on every post about any given anime, horrible memes, elitism and constant jokes/complaining about loli. It's just fucking stupid and even serious discussions are marred with the same adjectives/memes they use for everything to the point where it makes my eyes glaze over as soon as I see them. Can no one be original in these stupid fucking cesspits of "fandom"?
The fact that reddit is ever treated as a source of truth is absurd. The people posting/commenting on reddit are the opposite of authority figures on any given topic. In fact, you could not find a less authoritative source on any topic if you tried. It is home to elitist, wannabe intellectuals who will masquerade as authority figures to a small group of sycophants. This is the nature of the sub-reddit. There is no peer review because any disenting opinion is downvoted until it no longer shows up or can be deleted altogether by the moderator of the sub. Anyone who dares to question the status quo are often banned. You can see a lot of posts on reddit saying someone was banned from a sub for being critical, it happens often. All of this creates an environment of groupthink and cult-like adherence to the sub-reddit's doctrine. And god-fobid you should express a political belief right of Mao Zedong, you'll immediately be labeled an alt-right nazi despite what your beliefs may be. It's irrelavant anyway, as reddit is not a place where any meaningful discourse can ever occur despite what the virtue signaling commenters want to believe.
I don't know if it's the circlejerking groupthink that incentivises redditors to be so annoying or if the most annoying people on the web are the ones commenting on reddit posts. Either way, reddit is shit and it has always been shit. Ever since tumblr stopped allowing pron, it has been even worse and now that twitter is circling the drain, it is getting worse again. The web has been entirely overrun by normies at this point and we're at a place in time where there isn't anywhere to go anymore.
Fuck reddit and fuck the modern web.
Black Myth: Wukong is, by most measures, a good game. I don't deny that. The graphics are great, the combat feels fluid, the story is interesting and it's decently challenging. This should have been a game that I really enjoyed but I didn't. It did not click for me at all and I don't think I am going to keep playing it. I am just not having fun.
Early on, I had planned on playing the game at launch but didn't go so far as to pre-order it. Then in the weeks leading up to the game launching, I grew less excited about the game so I was leaning towards waiting for the game to go on sale to pick it up on PS5 (in hindsight, I wish I had stuck to this plan). I followed the news about potential performance issues on PS5 prior to the release so I figured I would at least wait to see what others were saying before making any decisions. In the end, I gave into the FOMO and bought the game on launch day after reading reviews during my lunch break at work. I bought the game on the PS App and had it start downloading so it would be ready for me when I got home from work. I left work feeling excited about playing the game which made my commute home even more insufferable than usual.
When I started the game, I was greeted with the intro to the game which was really cool and I thought it was living up to the hype. I also didn't notice any performance issues. I was running the game in performance mode, motion blur off and camera shake at 5 on my shitty 4k TV. However, after playing for awhile and getting past Lingxuzi, the white wolf, I felt like I was done. I could tell what this game was going to be and I didn't have it in me to keep playing. I have played enough of this type of game to know what was going to be in store for me and I just couldn't do it. I also felt like my reaction time might be too slow to properly dodge. I was really struggling with how fast the enemies were moving. This is probably just from me getting older and never having been good at this in the first place though, not a fault of the game.
Truly, I think the game is really good but it is sadly not clicking for me at all. I just cannot be bothered to slog through the boss rush that is this game knowing what that is going to entail. I don't have it in me anymore. I had similar feelings when playing Shadow of the Erdtree. I put hundreds of hours into Elden Ring doing multiple playthroughs with different builds but the DLC fell flat for me. I have other critiques of that DLC which contributed to that feeling as well but this might be the main reason why I didn't like it. I think I am just kind of done. Maybe I am just burned out on these types of games? Or maybe my taste in games is just changing?
Whatever the root cause of my feelings, I think this will be my last time buying a game like this, be it souls-like or GoW-like. I just do not find it fun anymore. This could be a temporary feeling of being burned out on this type of game and maybe in a few months I will circle back to Black Myth: Wukong and really like it but I doubt it. I'm getting older and I'm starting to struggle with my reaction time in these types of games. I also have less time to play games in general and I don't have the motivation to push through games that I don't find fun anymore. I also have to rely on memorization and enemy tells to make up for my poor reaction times which makes playing games like this more time consuming and difficult. So yeah, I think I am done. I have been enjoying other games a lot more recently so I think I will retire from this playing this genre of game.
I will however come out of retirement when Team Ninja makes another game.
This morning, a trailer dropped for a game called DEFECT from stuido emptyvessel and it reminded me of the 2012 Judge Dredd film to an alarming degree. So much so that I thought it was a Judge Dredd game until the end when I realized there was no tie-in with the Judge Dredd IP. Was this at one point supposed to be a Judge Dredd game and there was an issue with the license? Or were the developers just heavily influenced by the 2012 film?
The first thing that caught my attention was the building in the opening seconds of the trailer. It looks very similar to Peach Trees from the 2012 Judge Dredd film, to me. The design of the building in the game has similar architecture but varies slightly. It varies enough to say that they may just have been going for a similar dystopian style. I would give them that, if this were the only instance of similarity.
The next thing that I noticed was the pistol that is shown in the trailer as the shot of the city spins and pans out. The pistol looks somewhat similar to the Lawgiver pistol used by Stallone in the 1995 Judge Dredd film. It doesn't look much like the Lawgivers in the 2012 film though. The main similarity is that both weapons have red lights on the side. I don't think the red lights on the side of the weapon from DEFECT serve a purpose, it looks more like it will be there just for aesthetic reasons, which is odd. Why would it be there if not to be similar to the Lawgiver in the 1995 film? Maybe there is another reason but I can't think of one.
Next, the character's helmet in the DEFECT trailer has a similar form to the Judge helmets. It has a different design but the helmet covers most of the character's face and exposes their mouth just like the Judge helmets. The DEFECT character also has bulky neck pads similar to the 2012 design of the Judge uniforms and the DEFECT character has similar looking shoulder pads to the Judge uniform. This one, I just cannot look past as coincidence. The similarity here is striking and for me, this is the strongest argument for this game having at least been heavily inspired by the Judge characters.
Lastly, the interior of the building in DEFECT looks smiilar to the interior of the Peach Trees complex in Judge Dredd 2012. This one, if it were the only similarity, I wouldn't have noticed it. I mean, if you're going to design a building like this with combat encounters in mind, you don't have too many options. It looks similar to the Megabuilding H10 from Cyberpunk 2077 too so I am not giong to blame them much here. However, combining all the other factors, this one is harder to ignore or pass off as coincidence.
Last Friday night, Type-Moon did a live stream where they announced the details of the upcoming re-release of Fate/stay night REMASTERED.
I was anxiously waiting for the announcement of the game, I even stayed up late to watch the live stream but didn't make it long enough to hear the announcement. There was a great deal of preamble and showmanship before they announced the games including Q&A with Kawasumi Ayako, Ueda Kana and Shitaya Noriko, which was interesting. Not interesting enough to keep me awake apparently but had I not been so tired, I am sure I would have watched it. The next morning, I found myself in a nightmare from which I have yet to wake. Fate/stay night REMASTERED will be DIGITAL ONLY and only on Steam & Switch.
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!?!?!
Why the fuck were there limited edition physical releases of Witch on The Holy Night and Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon if you aren't going to do one for Fate/stay night? Aniplex, take some fucking responsibility for people who want to collect the physical products your putting out! You can't just take the mainstay of the entire Fate franchise and only do a digital release after doing limited editions for the prior games. That makes no fucking sense! You couldn't at the very fucking least done a standard physical edition?! Hell even a Japan only release would have been fine! I would have gladly picked up the standard Japanese release on Switch! But no, you made it digital only and now the only ones who might make a physical release could be Limited Run which I won't buy because fuck Limited Run. The most mind-boggling thing is that there are no Playstation versions when Aniplex is ownded by Sony! Honestly, what the fuck are you doing?
The only glimmer of hope left is that since it was also announced in the same livestream that Fate/hollow ataraxia REMASTERED will be released at some point, they will pair them together for a limited edition physical release but I'm not holding my breath. I don't expect them to do the right thing here at all. They will leave Fate/stay night digital only and never do anything else with it. Mark my words. Their focus will be remastering a few more of the early games from the series, all of which will be digital only and then return their focus to FGO with regards to the Fate franchise. After Fate/hollow ataraxia REMASTERED, they'll go onto Fate/Extra Record and that will probably be it. I expect Fate/Extra Record to get a phsyical release since Bandai Namco is publishing it and it's coming to all major consoles. I have no interest in it based on the trailer, looks like all shitty anime games do now. Pass. I was in a rage for multiple days about this whole situation and seeing Fate/stay night be a top seller on Steam on launch day didn't help. I was happy to hear there were issues with the English localisation and some issue with sprites being copy pasted poorly. I didn't look into it too much since my rage over the lack of ANY PHYSICAL EDITION AT ALL is still smoldering.
At this point, I may be done with the Fate franchise as a whole. They have been doing things to push me away for years at this point but I have largely ignored anything beyond the core stories and some of the spin-offs but if this is the amount of respect given to the part of the franchise that I enjoy the most, I am done. I will probably wait a year to see Aniplex changes course on this or does some kind of limited edition of Fate/stay night and Fate/hollow atraxia but as I mentioned before, not holding my breath. If nothing changes, I might sell my copy of Witch on The Holy Night and Tsukihime: A Piece of Blue Glass Moon limited editions. I just don't want to have anything to do with these remasters if this is how it is going to go. Not to mention the amount of typos and localisation issues in Mahoyo is inexcusable. Honestly, I just don't understand why the fuck they would do this...it makes no sense and it ruined any interest I had in playing these remasters. I won't be playing anymore Aniplex games if this is the final word on Fate/stay night.
In conclusion, FUCK ANIPLEX & TM! Have some fucking respect for your fans and your IP.
Update 2024:14:08: I purchased Fate/stay night digitally on switch...I have no self-control.
I don't give a fuck about having a corporate career. I do currently have a corporate job at a small company and I don't fit in there at all. I can barely handle the corporate bullshit at my very small company and it's extremely casual. There's nothing wrong with my job but once in awhile I get the urge to find a new job at a big company where I can do something slightly different. However, I am always quickly dissuaded of this notion as soon as I have an interview. I have bombed almost every single interview that I have ever done with a few exceptions. In the cases where I have bombed, only once did it result in me getting a job despite my interview performance but otherwise it has gone as expected with me being rejected. It's fair. I suck at playing the corporate game and so I don't blame them for not hiring me.
My most recent interview experience was a total disaster. It was a virtual interview with a panel of 3 people. That is always tough for me as I cannot handle group conversations, let alone group interviews. 1-on-1 interviews, I have a slightly better chance at success but that's only because I can pretty much only handle talking to one person at a time so my ability to communicate is somewhat existant in those scenarios. Anyway, I had practiced common interview questions and came up with scenarios of when I had been successful in my past jobs. I thought I had done enough prep work to have decent answers to their questions. Apparently not though because as soon as the interview started I felt like I was going to have a panic attack. I couldn't remember a fucking thing so I stumbled through every question and it was obvious after the first couple questions that they had lost interest in me. The guy leading the interview obviously cut it short and then asked if I had any questions. I had prepared some but I truly didn't feel like asking any. Nonetheless, I asked them, simply waiting for the interview to end and pretending to care about the answers. At the end they thanked me for my time and I theirs, then after closing the video call window, I let out a sigh of relief.
I was relieved that the interview was over and that I had bombed again. I had a glimmer of hope that maybe this time I would do okay but I failed as usual, which provided me an odd level of comfort. Almost like the pressure of succeeding was gone and I no longer had to worry about it. I still had my current job to fall back on so nothing was lost except a few hours of PTO. Even when the stakes were low, I still failed. That's fine, I don't mind failing at things, like most people, I am used to failing. That's how I like to learn, by doing and failing a bunch of times until I get it but not in this case. I don't want to get it. I don't want to be good at interviewing, I don't want to fit in, I don't want to be successful in the corporate world. That just does not interest me at all. It is not a fun game and not something I will be putting my effort into anymore. I don't want to do the job they are offering anyway so I won't be putting myself through that shit anymore. I quit. Fuck that game, I am not playing anymore.
Fast forward a few days and I got the email confirming what I had expected, I had been rejected. The recruiter also offered to have a call with me to go over the feedback the panel of interviewers provided. An offer I refused through my lack of any response to the email. I know some people would jump on that "opportunity" to be told they're shit at interviewing, but not me. I don't want to hear it. Nothing against any of the interviewers or the company, but I don't fucking care. I don't want to be good at interviewing for those types of jobs. It does not interest me. Am I being immature and stubborn? Sure, maybe but I don't really give a shit. Maybe if I had kids or someone else I had to support it would be different. If I only need to worry about taking care of myself, I am not going to force myself to try to fit into the corporate world. I only wish I had realized this a decade ago before I spent all that money on a college degree in Business Adminstration, a largely worthless degree as it turns out. If I could do it all over, I would study CS or CompE or have gone into a trade, something that I am actually interested in doing. I fucking hate business and the corporate world. I know it isn't too late to change careers but I don't have the motivation to go back to school nor do I want to spend more money on school.
I can't stand any of it: the buzzwords, the upbeat, positive attitudes that people fake, the happy hours, the small talk, the politics and ass kissing, the KPIs and performance reviews, the "corporate culture", skill building or whatever the fuck else is involved in the corporate world. I hate all of it. It's inauthentic bullshit that I cannot abide. I can't fake it, I just can't. I've tried many times, even going so far as to take medication and do therapy to better fit into the corporate world and I just can't do it. I can't take it. I'm not cut out for it and I don't think I should keep forcing myself to try. Honestly, I don't fit in anywhere else either but it has never really been an issue at my past jobs outside the corporate world. Socially inept weirdos like me were common place in some of my jobs and as long as the work got done, it was never an issue. That's the environment that I do well in, one where I am measured on merit not my social acuity. I am someone who struggles to hold conversations, can't maintain eye contact and cannot be around people most of the time. I say that I am painfully shy despite other, possibly more fitting, clinical definitions of my dispostiion. If I fixed this, would I fit in? Nope! My interests don't align with the socailly acceptable list of hobbies that are corporate America approved for discussion such as sports, family and social events. Should I dare to be authentic and share my actual interests at work, I would immediately be seen as even more weird that I already am.
Maybe one day I will change my tune on this and try again but for now, I am not going to put myself through it. I just don't care about fitting in with the corporate world and unless I make an effort to fake it, something I suck at, I never will. I suspect most people are faking it but I can't bring myself to do it, I never have been able to. I wear my heart on my sleeve for better and for worse, more often the latter. I am mostly okay with not being successful in a corporate career, but there's a small part of myself that is terrified that if I don't do it, I will end up broke later in life. I can even see myself taking enough meds to fit into society, get married, buy a house in a cul-de-sac, have kids and become an upper manager at a big corporation. A small part of me must want that kind of life but the rest of me wants to puke thinking about it. For now, I may be a failure but at least I can live with myself and be authentic.