Update: Odd start to the year

Alright, so a couple things about the start of 2024. It's going to be a little odd. As you may have noticed, I didn't post anything last Friday. I also likely won't post anything this coming Friday, either. The first reason for that is that, as I discussed in my Retrospective 2023, I need a break so I'm taking January a little easier.

Which isn't to say I'm not writing, I do have a couple of articles cooking, many of which are for non-Steam games. I'm trying to focus on the games on consoles for now, I'm a starting work on the Year Plans on Nintendo consoles, and looking into the other games here and there that I'm interested in.

However, a lot of my year plans involve games I'd love to play but can't. I got myself a brand new computer late last year, and I'm already having issues that need repairs. Some games I played or tried to play - namely Valheim, For Honor, and Assassin's Creed III - would crash my computer a few minutes to half an hour in, provoking a BSOD. Needless to say, that's got me worried. So I'm going to take my computer in for repairs tomorrow morning and I won't have it until... well, I hope to have it back next Monday. Hopefully at little to no cost, seeing as it's still on guarantee.

While I wait for all that to be resolved, I'm at least planning ahead. I'll spend my few computer-less days watching the films I hope to cover... in February, I guess?

So, reviews proper will be the movies, then the non-Steam stuff. However, I am very tempted to have an unrelated long article to ease myself back into writing. Tempted to write about music. Yeah, you can expect an article about music soon-ish.

New Feature: The Index Page

Hey there!

To go with Planned All Along's 8th anniversary, I've decided to add a new page to the blog. I've already shared it around here and there, but now I'm making an official post about it:

The blog now has an Index page!

This is where you can go to find a full list of all the video games that have been reviewed on the blog, in alphabetical order. It also includes a list at the bottom for other media (such a movies, in the case of VGFlicks and the occasional review of a film I just saw in theaters, like the article on Space Jam: A New Legacy that I published yesterday). It's a very long list, so read through and see if there are any gams on the list that you'd like to know about.

I spent a few days working on this new page, hoping to have it ready before the 19th of July (which is when the blog was created, in 2013). I figured it would be cleaner and more interesting to view than the reviews posted in chronological order, on the Archive page.

Of course, the Paper Mario review will resume tomorrow with parts posted (if all goes right) on the next Mondays and Fridays, so on the 19th, 23rd, 26th and 30th.

After that point... I'll probably review more Steam games.

Movie Review: Space Jam: A New Legacy

Okay, where to start with this one...

(Warning: Spoilers!)

The story

Might as well start with the plot. Lebron James, a basketball player with a fantastic career, many life achievements and millions of fans, still struggles with letting his children have lives of their own. Instead of letting them do their own thing, he pushes them to become basketball players like he is. However, his younger son, Dom (portrayed by Cedric Joe), instead wants to be a video game developer, and already has dev skills that would put some professionals to shame.

Meanwhile, Warner Brothers (yes, the studio) has gigantic servers hidden far deep down under their offices, and it's home to the Serververse, a universe where all the WB properties reside on separate virtual "planets". That world is under the watch of an algorithm named Al-G (portrayed by Don Cheadle, clearly in it for the ride and having a blast no matter how silly/stupid things get), a program growing increasingly annoyed that he's not getting the recognition he feels he deserves.

Invited at WB studios with his son to discuss a new idea created by Al-G, Lebron dismisses the idea as stupid. After he gets into an argument with his son over their differing interests, both are taken by the algorithm to the server room and, then, in a machine that virtualizes them into the computer. ...What? That stuff never happens to you? Anyway, Al-G kidnaps Dom and challenges Lebron to an 18-hole in golf- nah, I'm pulling your leg, it's a basketball game. He then gives the star player 24 hours to assemble a team, then throws him to the planet of the Looney Tunes.

Update on my current situation

 Hey there. I haven't posted much since my last review.

See, I got a new job - it's a daytime job! Yay! I'm helping to prepare a store before its grand opening... in a little less than a week from now. I am also hoping to go back to 32 hours per week, which is what I did at my previous, nighttime job. The difference is that, this time, I could pull 40-hour weeks without ending up tired beyond words at the end of it! Also, yay, proper sleep schedule.

This week in particular, I'm at the tail end of a 40-hour week because I needed new glasses, and most of what I earned this week will be used to pay for that. Look closely on my next title cards and you'll probably notice them, the new glasses.

What does this mean for the blog? Well, I fully intend to keep on writing. Things haven't really changed on that aspect. I'm also still gaming, using my free time to do so. There was no new review last week, because I was coming off the tail end of a long review (I didn't intend for Ralph Breaks The Internet to hit 4 parts, I thought it would only get to 3), which itself ended an entire month's worth of reviews.

I'm already planning the next set of reviews. No movies this time, but I am hoping to do:

• A game I own on Virtual Console;
• Possibly a Top 12 list;
• A 3DS game;
• A Wii game - no, actually, make that two;
• Maybe slip in a game from UPlay in there while I'm at it;
• A couple one-part reviews of games on Steam;
• And then move into another series of quick reviews.

These are the games I'm hoping to cover throughout the next set of quick reviews:

As usual, I will probably go with the shorter games I can do for Wii and 3DS. There are games I could talk about as I've already played them at length, but many of those would require long reviews, and I don't know how much time I have for those at the moment.

So yeah, that's it for now. I need to adapt a little, but other than that things are fine. Now to hope this pandemic doesn't go on for another 6 months. See you soon, hopefully before the end of the year.

The future, and what it means for the blog

I guess I need to do a quick update.

I've quit my nighttime job. After over three years doing it, I was finding it harder and harder to find sleep during the daytime, and getting some good sleep at night during weekends also helped less and less. I liked that job, it wasn't stress-free, and it had its flaws (the usual issues of nighttime work), but it was a pretty good place to work at. I really had to stop for my own health, mental and physical. Thankfully, I had a great boss, and I gave my notice late in August, 5 weeks before I left, thinking it would suffice for him to find replacements for me.

What this means now is that I am taking a month off as vacation. But I won't be solely resting during that month, seeing as I am now on the job market and will be seeking a new source of revenue. A new job, hopefully something involving communications. Something about video games would be awesome, obviously.

Either way, while I do have a lot more free time for the next month, I won't have only free time. I do hope to publish reviews, as usual, and I will indeed have more time to write and game, but I don't have unlimited money so I'll have some priorities.

On the side, I need to get used to Blogger's updates to the text editor. Things have changed, it's... unusual. I still want to write my reviews on Word before bringing them to Blogger, but there's a few flaws here and there that I must learn to deal with.

In order to focus on job search, I've been thinking of doing a Movie Month special. I would do multiple reviews of movies about video games. I've got a lot of movies to look at still, and I figured it might be interesting to review a few. Most games I've got to play on Steam and in my Nintendo collection require a couple hours to get through, so I could also build a buffer of games at the same time.

For a while, there was also an idea going through my head that I could spend October reviewing various movies on the side, since I have a pretty nice collection of horror films... but I decided against it. It might be tempting at some point in the future, but it won't happen this month.

Anyhow, that's all for updates today. See you next Friday for... well, part 1 of a movie review.

Update: Sonic Month + Discussion on the Coronavirus/COVID-19 Situation

Hello. I've been pretty silent all month so far. Apologies for that... though, don't worry more content is coming to the blog soon.

I've been promising it for years now, I am finally going to get around to doing it: April will be a Sonic Month. I'll be posting 4 reviews of Sonic games. If all goes according to plan, the reviews should be:

Sonic CD (2011 digital remaster) - April 3rd;

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 1 (WiiWare/Steam) - April 10th;

Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity (Wii) - April 17th-20th;

Sonic and the Black Knight (Wii) - April 24-27th- continuing into May if necessary.

After which, I should continue with a review of a relatively simple Nintendo 3DS game, and do a series of quick reviews of Steam games as well.

Do note that I am still working despite the very peculiar situation the world is in right now, because gas stations are an essential service.

In fact, let's address the peculiar situation; let's not hide it anymore, it's the coronavirus, the dreaded COVID-19. You might be fed up of hearing about it, you might be tired of the forced isolation, the economy going to Hell, the constant paranoia. It's understandable. If you were unlucky enough to catch it or test positive for it, you have my best wishes and I hope you will come out strong from the estimated two weeks of intense respiratory pain the disease causes. I also wish a cure for it is found soon.

I will try to provide content to distract from this dire pandemic, because that's a thing I, and all content creators, can do thanks to the Internet. I am glad that everything I do for this blog only requires me to be at home, so it's not too bad. That said, I just write this blog; if anyone's worthy of praise, it's the nurses, first responders and doctors out there, fighting this new and dangerous illness, detecting cases before they spread to too many people... and the many workers who must go to work due to fulfilling essential jobs, even in the time of a pandemic.

I work nights at a gas station, so barring a number of tasks removed from my workload, my situation there hasn't changed. The government of Quebec has closed all non-essential businesses/work places, so I have a much smaller number of customers than usual; however, there is still the risk of serving a customer who carries the disease without them knowing. I am at risk, and I know it.

I am personally terrified of catching the COVID-19, and this for two reasons. The first is that I still live with my parents, my father, 68, and my mother, 71, both of whom would struggle far more in fighting the virus than I would, especially when considering the death rates of the disease. The COVID-19 has an approximated 14% death rate for people over the age of 70, meaning about one person out of seven of that age, infected with the disease, will die from it. The death rate greatly decreases the younger the infected person is, but it can still be deadly.

The second reason is that I read the newspapers, and I've read several stories of people either battling the disease or freshly coming out of it. It's scary; they speak of a loss of the senses of taste and smell for a while, horrendous respiratory failures (some have likened it to trying to breathe broken glass), and an extreme muscular weakness. People in great physical shape and with a better-than-average immunity system have come out of it feeling like they were going to die. On top of it all, it's extremely contagious, living within someone during an incubation period of a few days to two weeks before striking, and the person is at risk of infecting surfaces, objects, and other people, while they may be asymptomatic, AKA before they even know they are carrying it.

All the safety measures the governments are putting in place are not jokes. This is a new disease that the human body has never faced, has never built up an immunity against, one for which we have yet to create any sort of medicine or vaccine for, and while existing medicine is being tested, it will take some time still. It spreads like wildfire among people. As annoying and paranoid as these words of advice might sound, they're the only precautions we have right now. Wash your hands as often as possible for at least 20 seconds each time, disinfect surfaces that need to be disinfected. Try to touch your face (eyes, nose, mouth) as rarely as possible. Be mindful of others, by coughing in your elbow, by keeping 6-7 feet of distance between you and another person. Stay home as much as possible and only go out when absolutely necessary. If you come back from a trip, self-isolate for two weeks. If you have symptoms, self-isolate for two weeks. If you test positive for it, SELF-ISOLATE FOR TWO WEEKS. Avoid group gatherings. Take all of this advice and then some if you have a weaker immune system, if you're elderly or living around older people. And most importantly: Do NOT take it lightly.

Mankind has seen worse throughout its history. We've always survived. Though science has improved drastically over the last decades, and we're better equipped to fight such an illness than we've ever been, this will still be a battle on all fronts. We can fight it. We can't prevent all deaths, but we can collectively do our best to prevent as many deaths as possible. We can flatten the curve of the infection. I'm not going to pretend that it's going to be easy, that it will be over by Easter, by May or June or even July; we can wish, but it's unlikely. Our lives will be a mess for a while, and the pandemic will have ramifications on the economical, personal, and social sides that we can't even start to envision yet. But hope isn't lost, and if we all do everything we can, each and every one of us, we can pull through.

Man, my talk of reviews at the start of this article feels so out of place with all this. But if it can bring a smile to a few readers, I will consider my task accomplished.