Finished last night with a twinge of disappointment. After all the build-up, all the questing, all of the beautifully aimless wandering around ingeniously deceptively unopen open worlds, it just sort of... ended. Sure: threads were wrapped up, there was some solidly maddening end-boss combat, but it felt like only two acts of the game ended and that the third act was a quick rush through, a return with the elixir in a shotglass barely passed around. Didn't make me love the game as a game any less or dampen my desire to replay it at some point but still, damn. Remains a deeply flawed masterpiece of game art; closest I can approximate to it would be LA NOIRE, all those years ago: a ridiculously accomplished swing for the fences from gameworld luminaries that left me wanting more. Taking a break for a palette-cleansing brainless romp through something else (I really need to use that Switch 2 for more than MARIO KART WORLD and BALATRO: recs welcome) before deciding whether to go SILENT HILL F or wait another week for GHOST OF YOTEI.

End of summer break inbound; whereas everyday felt, for the last eight weeks, like Saturday, now they feel like Sunday. And so it goes, through the next few weeks. Things in process:

Final Shed transition from writing space with tools to full-on industrial art workshop. Metal and pictures and words oh my.
Moving rocks around nuPond. New footpath in the works for optimal gill-baby viewing.
Drawing little things for a zine, maybe. Words eventually, again.
Reading: WE ARE WATCHING, by Alison Gaylin; LOWER THAN THE ANGELS: A HISTORY OF SEX AND CHRISTIANITY, by Diarmaid MacCullough
Watching: PARADISE, season one.
LISTENING: On a BRMC binge.
PLAYING: ROBOCOP: ROGUE CITY replay on PS5 because my brain can handle only wanton awesomeness and occasional quirk; BALATRO and MARIO KART WORLD on the Switch 2.
Toying around with new metal ideas, though I might wait for the blazing heat to fuck off to work on something bigger.

HELL IS US (III)

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