The Weekly Update Volume 8
I'm still thinking about changing how I write these. Not sure if I want to make these post less frequent or just make them significantly more informal with no categories and just general stream of conscious writing with minor editing.
Games
- Xenoblade Chronicles DE - The journey continues. It's crazy that I’m 20+ hours in and barely halfway through the game (just finished CH 9). I don’t trust Alvis at all, he seems to up to something. The lore build up in chapter 9 is pretty cool, its shows just enough to make the player want to find the answers.
- Marvel Rivals - I wanted to have a longer post of my thoughts up before today, but sadly I don't see me getting it done until the back half of next week.
- Overwatch 2 - I don't really know how to feel about the perk system. It feels like they are making the same mistakes they were making with Overwatch 1 aka not sticking with a consistent design philosophy. Also why are they giving supports the ability to headshot? I feel like their perks should make them more supporty and less dpslite.
Reading
Reading Catenaccio and then the newer chapters of Blue Lock made me realize two things: I like more grounded sports manga, and baseball is way too team focused to be a manga series. Now don’t get me wrong baseball can be done as a manga, but the more recent attempts have not done it well. Strikeout Pitch relies too much on one-dimensional characters and Nine Dragons’ Ball Parade was too in the weeds and too slow paced. I don't know what the right flow is to make good baseball manga, but my first thought is to make the central protagonist be a pitcher or catcher.
- Catenaccio - I found it to be pretty decent.
- Blue Lock - Coming back to this after reading both Embers and Catenaccio makes this series kinda hard to follow. They are just so many moving pieces. There too many keys players and "fights" happening in one single match.
- One Piece Ch 1140 - I feel like the pacing is going a lot too fast now. I that wish the characters and world could breath a little bit more. This pacing was fine for what Egghead was but now I just want to experience what Elbaf is like rather just jump into the fights that feel will come sooner rather than later.