Rainy and Cloudy

It rained for most of the past week, so I didn’t have an opportunity to get out and do much of anything interesting. I hit Hunter Rank 40 in Monster Hunter Wilds and went on a losing streak on eOthello.com. The Pistons found themselves in a funk, losing what should have been an easy game to the Wizards. I’ll feel more confident if they can handily beat the Heat tonight.

Monster Hunter Wilds felt on the easy side of things, minus a few noticeably difficult fights. I’m enjoying my time with it and will grind for the foreseeable future, but there seemed to be little challenge in leveling and it went by quickly. It might be that this is my fifth or sixth game in the series and it’s ingrained in me. It might be ::looks at in-game clock:: that I’ve spent far more time playing than I’ve realized. The previous entry, Monster Hunter: Rise, was almost perfect in my mind, so I had high expectations. Wilds is every bit a fun Monster Hunter game, but not the series’ high point.

I’m working on how to play the edges in Othello and it’s proving difficult. I have a win rate of slightly over 50%, but it has been in jeopardy lately because I keep overanalyzing things. I often get like this with things. I gain a base level of knowledge of a game, improve naturally, hit a wall, and then study strategy. The thing is, I always try to implement that strategy poorly or try to force it into a game. Sometimes opponents make bad moves. My problem is I always think a bad move is a trick and I often think myself out of the most obvious, and correct, move. I’m sure this is something most players of strategy games go through, but it can be frustrating!

Yokoi Kids Volume 2 is at the printers! We’re very excited. If you haven’t heard, it’s a Game Boy fan zine my friends and I put out based on entries we receive at yokoikids.com. Each zine is for charity with all profits for this one going to Out Youth LGBTQ+ youth center in Austin, Texas. It covers 24 games over 110 pages with entries ranging from reviews, comics, art, fan fiction, a couple of skate trick pictorials, a simple solo journaling RPG, and more! If you’d like to support it, you can still pre-order a copy here!
 
https://itsmerickv.storenvy.com/products/36893423-yokoi-kids-volume-2

-Ian