Metal Mondays

Watching

Currently I am loving all the Let’s Plays of Baldur’s Gate 3 on youtube.

PartyElite’s LP is my favorite at the moment because he is doing a full character roleplay and overall he has a relaxing delivery and mood.

YouTube Sessions

DannyMalt basically reads comics on youtube. All his videos say “Comic Story Explained” but the dude reads comics on youtube with very little interpretation or analysis. He does grade each volume after he reads them but “explained” is a stretch.

Importantly, I enjoy these videos because Danny has a genuine delivery and affect. I can only describe his mood as “Canadian”. He unknowingly mispronounces words (Adorably: “tubor” instead of “tumor”. Infuriatingly: “meesa” instead of “mesa”.), he attempts to do accents and often giggles at his own commentary.

Danny is currently going through Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing run but I started watching his channel during his series on Grant Morrison’s Animal Man. Now, I’ve read Animal Man before, but I read it back in 2011, which fans of my lore will know I was very drunk during that era. So it’s fun to recap with a goofy nerd who laughs at himself when he does a particularly bad english accent.

Reading

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie author of the Ancillary trilogy si-fi book series. This book was recommended by Max Read over at Read Max and though I rarely read “fantasy”, I am thoroughly enjoying the first half of Raven Tower.

I finished book 4 of the Night Lords Omnibus and I absolutely love when authors understand that there are no “good guys” in Warhammer 40k. The main character is deplorable, petty and does not regret a single horrible thing he does.

Listening

I’ve been listening to old standup specials that were cornerstones of my pre-teen/young adult personality.

Nick Swardson’s album Party used to cure my hangovers I swear. It’s childish, impish, dumb af and it still cracks me up. My go-to “old person” voice is Nick Swardsons. And anytime I listen to this album I have to re-watch Swardson’s failed pilot; Gay Robot.

Mitch Hedberg’s special was so ubiquitous in my dorm my freshman year of college that there was a copy of it in every room. Infinitely quotable and uniquely delivered this special is evergreen.

Dave Chappelle’s For What It’s Worth live in San Francisco 2004 is one of the best comedy performances of all time. “Smooth as eggs” is a universal sentiment and can be used in any situation.

GAMZ

Remnant 2 is still very, very good. I still haven’t finished it because I am grinding out all the secret areas and weapons. Another thing this week that has prevented me from finishing R2 is…

Escape from Tarkov had a wipe this week. Now Tarkov is a very interesting hardcore-shooter that has been in development since 2017(?). StoneMountain64’s video does a great job of breaking down what makes this game so special.

One thing that really draws me into Tarkov every wipe (A wipe is when a new 0.0 version is released and everyone’s progress is reverted to level 1.) is that no matter how good another player is, if you get a lucky shot off and shoot them in the face, they’re dead. The highs and lows of Tarkov are immense which is why the cheating problem it faces is so demoralizing.

The way Tarkov is set up makes it very difficult to determine if you have been killed by a cheater. However, earlier this year youtube creator g0at conservatively estimates that he ran into cheaters in 60% of his raids. This makes it very hard to dismiss a sus death anymore. I am not a good player, especially with mouse and keyboard but even so, just knowing that -odds are- a cheater just caused me to lose hours of progress by killing me with a cross-map headshot is heartbreaking.

So, this wipe I decided to check out Single Player Tarkov (SPT) a mod that, well, makes Tarkov single player. It takes the game offline and fills the lobbies with bots. It also allows you to add copious amounts of mods to make the game easier, add or remove content and of course, anime girl gun sights.

I won’t lie and say the bots are anywhere near as dynamic as actual players but I’m still having fun and enjoying the offline gameplay loot loop. So much so that I haven’t really been able to think about anything else. I want to play right now. Bye.