My cat is sad, and it's making me sad.

It may also be the case that I am sad, and I am, as a result, ascribing human emotions to my cat. But I choose to believe that she is sad. Regardless of whether or not she actually is sad, she's definitely been acting a little out of the ordinary recently, and that makes me worry about her.

When we got Meg, she had clearly always been with Ruby, who passed away in November after an accident. We're still not to this day sure if Meg was actually Ruby's mother or not, but we suspect that may have been the case. Meg seemed to cope reasonably well after Ruby passed on, though it was clear she was looking around, wondering where her former companion had been.

She also watched us while we buried Ruby in the garden, so I think she knew what was going on; we saw her sitting on Ruby's grave on more than one occasion, and while this was probably a coincidence, again I like to think this was Meg going to see her departed friend.

Just recently, Andie has been building a "catio" on the back of our house. This is an enclosure that we'll be able to let Meg out into without her (hopefully, anyway) being able to get out and roam anywhere that she might get into an accident. I suspect Meg is better at taking care of herself than Ruby was — Ruby's eyesight was quite bad, for example — but we still don't want to take any chances.

I'm not sure how Meg is going to take to this. She doesn't roam very far, but she does like to go out, torment the neighbours' dog and have a shit in someone else's garden. I think the building work has stressed her out a bit, which is why she's been behaving a bit out of sorts, but I suspect she's also feeling lonely — she's become quite "clingy" over the course of the last couple of months, always wanting to be in the same room as both of us whenever possible, even more than she already did. And with us both out at work for most of the day on weekdays, she's left by herself in the house with no company, feline or otherwise, and I think that's starting to take its toll a bit.

As such, now the "catio" is pretty much done — aside from various accoutrements inside to make it more interesting and fun for Meg, such as platforms for her to (not) jump on and a scratching post for her to (not) sharpen her claws on — we think we're going to seriously look out for a new playmate for her. The fact we've built the catio means that we're able to seriously show that we understand the circumstances under which we lost Ruby, and that we want to prevent that happening again, so hopefully that will stand us in good stead with the local adoption places.

The challenge now is in finding a cat up for adoption who is okay with other cats. And then introducing them to Meg. But that's a bridge we'll have to cross when we come to it!

For now, we're doing our best to take care of Meg and let her know she is very much loved by both of us, and that we'll do everything we can to keep her safe and make her happy.

I'm going to write more about this on MoeGamer soon, but I thought I'd share some initial thoughts about Ace Combat 7.

Short version: it's fantastic. It's Ace Combat for the latest generation of consoles, and it's a beautiful thing. Namco hasn't tampered with the formula too much, and that's very pleasing indeed; it feels like a proper Ace Combat game, which after Assault Horizon is exactly what everyone wanted and needed.

What do I mean by a "proper Ace Combat game"? Well, I mean real world jet fighters participating in a futuristic war. I mean going up against terrifying, impossible in the real world "superweapons". I mean insanely dramatic music. And I mean a thing showing up on your radar as "unknown" being a very scary thing indeed.

In many ways, Ace Combat does for flight sims what Metal Gear does for "soldier" games. It's grounded in real things and has an actual message about the real world to deliver to us, but it does so through exaggerated, comic book-style action with heroes and villains, triumph and tragedy, alliances and betrayals.

I won't go into too many details about the plot for now, but suffice to say it takes you through some enjoyable twists and turns, and keeps you in your toes. There are some memorable characters in there too; Ace Combat hasn't always emphasised characterisation, but it started making a few moves in this direction from 5 onwards with the while Wardog/Razgriz squadron, and it's doing some interesting things here.

It has to be said, it looks absolutely gorgeous, too. While Unreal Engine makes the PS4 fans run in overdrive as always, it's worth it for the magnificent visuals and its excellent sense of speed. The weather effects, the big new addition to this installment, are particularly cool – – there's one terrifying mission where you're flying through a thunderstorm, and yes, you can indeed get struck by lightning.

I'm probably about halfway through the campaign so far and am having great fun. I'm looking forward to how it all winds up — Ace Combat games tend to have absolutely amazing finales, and going by how things have been so far, this one is likely to be no exception!

Now, I've been playing it all evening so I should probably get some sleep… Trigger out.

It was a good day for new game acquisitions today, as a few preorders showed up all at the same time!

First up was Senran Kagura Burst Re;Newal (or however it's punctuated) — I preordered this ages ago and decided to hang on to it even after the unfortunate news that Sony had started tampering with vaguely sexual game content. The actual cut content isn't something that was especially important to me, so I was keen to continue my physical Senran Kagura collection; it would have just felt wrong to not have one of the games in the series on my shelf — particularly after making a point of getting Bon Appetit from Limited Run Games a while back! Plus Marvelous Europe's limited editions are always really good, so I jumped on board primarily for that. I haven't cracked it open yet; watch out for a post on that subject soon.

Secondly was Travis Strikes Again for Nintendo Switch. Now, I don't really know the No More Heroes series at all despite owning both for Wii — they're games I picked up during Game's Troubles a few years back because they were cheap and I had heard they were good. I did, however, want to support Travis Strikes Again's physical release because its one of several games recently that I feel is doing a good thing — the digital version is cheaper, but the physical version, costing the price of a "normal" game, comes bundled with the Season Pass, providing access to all the post-launch content.

Now, I'd rather Season Passes and post-launch content weren't a thing, to be perfectly honest — just finish your fucking games before you release them, this was not a problem for six console generations — but if I have to put up with this bullshit, I'd rather it was handled like this, rather than the more common approach of having to buy the game and then having to spend the same amount of money again if I want all the stuff that wasn't ready to put on the disc when it actually released. And it sounds as if Travis Strikes Again's additional content is going to be a lot of fun, so I look forward to trying that. Eventually. Perhaps as a whole No More Heroes feature one month!

The final game that arrived today was Ace Combat 7 for PS4. I've been idly looking forward to this for a while, but I got very excited about it in about the last week or so after reminding myself of how good the older games were. Actually, specifically it was hearing some of the music that someone shared that made me want it; really good music has a habit of doing that, and Ace Combat has always had amazing soundtracks.

I've spent most of the evening playing Ace Combat and I'm delighted to report it's wonderful. It's an Ace Combat game brought right up to date for the latest generation of consoles, blending the familiar arcadey air combat of the earlier games with some gorgeous graphics and spectacular weather effects. The latter actually play quite an important role in the gameplay now — you can use cloud cover to your advantage, but in doing so your canopy gets wet and eventually freezes up if you spend too much time in there; in other missions, you might have to deal with turbulence (normally while you're attempting to "thread the needle" somewhat); in others still, the weather is simply used for impressive atmospheric (no pun intended) effect.

There'll be more about all these games on MoeGamer in the very near future, but for now having been feasting on Ace Combat all evening I should probably go to bed…

Good evening. How are you, dear reader? I've… been better.

I've been struggling a bit with anxiety and depression recently. I'm not entirely sure what, specifically, has triggered it recently — I suspect it is lingering emotional side effects from ever since Ruby passed away — but it's been quite bad over the course of the last couple of weeks in particular.

Thankfully I find throwing myself into the stuff I do for my videos and MoeGamer at home helps to stave these feelings off somewhat, and it's hard to stay sad when the main games you're playing are Atelier games. But you can't be playing Atelier games (or writing about Atelier games) at all hours of the day, so occasionally some of those bleak feelings sneak in.

It doesn't help that my day job has been a bit quiet and boring lately. Things will likely pick up quite soon, but as I'm sure most people will be able to relate to, if you get out of a "rhythm" of doing something and perhaps fall into bad habits, it's hard to get that mojo and enthusiasm back. I'm sure I'll get there eventually, though. Hopefully.

One positive thing to counterbalance all this — and something that's made me feel a bit better this evening — is that the Slimming World programme is working for both me and Andie once again. I lost 2.5 lb this week, which means I've now lost a stone in total since starting, which is a satisfying feeling. It's even more satisfying knowing that we're saving money on food by doing "proper shops" each week rather than piecemeal (and takeaways), and that we're getting into good habits with "proper cooking". Although since getting a slow cooker for Christmas, the vast majority of our meals for the last few weeks have been slow cooked. Not that this is a bad thing at all; slow cooked food is goooooood.

I'm already feeling positive effects, too; I'm having less difficulty getting to sleep because I'm less uncomfortable, just generally "getting around" feels like less of an effort and, err, my trousers keep falling down. Okay, that last one may not be a "positive" per se (particularly when I keep having to hold them up at work when walking from my desk to the coffee machine and vice versa!) but it's certainly a helpful reminder that something positive I am doing for myself is actually having an effect.

Andie and I both have tomorrow off work; Andie is going to try and finish our "catio" for our cat Meg, and I am on hand in case she needs me to be taller than her at any point — she's fitting the roof tomorrow, so it's entirely possible some height will be required!

When I am not required, I intend to be writing about Atelier Totori and placing Ace Combat 7. Because oh man am I in the mood for some Ace Combat right now. But I think that's probably a topic for another day! So I'll save it.

Hope you've had a pleasant day and that your mind is in a nicer place than mine has been recently.

I've spent most of my afternoon swearing at one of several proprietary software tools I have to make use of in my day job… and it just makes me wonder — not for the first time — how and why companies end up thinking using such crap is a good idea.

Since my experience over the last few years has primarily been in content management of various descriptions, what I'm talking about here primarily applies to content management and localisation systems, but I'm sure someone from another sector that is heavily reliant on software will have their own horror stories.

It seems like there's some sort of perception that in order to be "legitimate" you need to produce your own software, or at least butcher the hell out of an established tool until it's barely recognisable from its original form, runs like garbage and is more of a pain than it's worth to make use of. And, I have to wonder, with so many great "off the peg" solutions available these days — many of which are free or open-source — why?

Prior to starting MoeGamer, I worked on a number of different sites, all of which except one made use of their own proprietary content management system… or in a couple of cases, a tool that was emphatically Not Right for the Job. The one which used an established CMS used WordPress, a package with which I'm intimately familiar (MoeGamer is built on it, and prior to that I was using it for my personal blog) and respect a great deal. All the others were, not to put too fine a point on it, absolute crap.

I think the worst one I used was one of those "Not Right for the Job" situations. It was during my time at energy company SSE — one of the most awful periods of my life from a mental health perspective, but that's probably a story for another day for those who don't already know it. Initially, they made use of a tool called "Ektron", albeit a version that had been extensively modified and tweaked over the years. Ektron was shit in the first place, but all the various plugins and extensions that had been bolted onto it meant that it ran at a snail's pace as well as being a pain in the arse to use. Want to just edit a page? Good luck finding the piece you want to modify when literally every paragraph on that page (sometimes every individual sentence) is its own separate piece of content.

While I was at SSE, the company was in the process of changing over to a new CMS and revamping their website. At the time I joined, they'd already been at it for four years, and by the time I left they still hadn't finished. They'd literally hired out a whole building off their main site to try and get it up and running. And you know what? The new software (Oracle WebCenter Sites, if I remember rightly) was also a big pile of shit that also made use of this inexplicable "fragment your content as much as possible" model.

I guess there must be a reason for companies making use of such seemingly ill-designed tools, but I'm buggered if I know what it is. I say keep it simple, stupid!

I failed in my habit-establishing today. I either slept through my alarm or just fell asleep again. Either way, my body was apparently telling me I needed to rest a bit more. So I did.

I'm not going to let this discourage me, however. Establishing new habits takes time and willpower, and there will be failures along the way. And that's fine; failures are part of those challenges, and when they're failures that don't really affect anyone or let anyone down, I don't mind them too much. (Failures where I do feel like I've let other people down, meanwhile… I will dwell on those for weeks, months, years afterwards.)

I've been up and down fairly wildly in terms of mental health and overall emotional wellbeing recently, but today I'm feeling reasonably positive. I'm pleased with how the latest episode of The MoeGamer Podcast came out, I'm enjoying the things I'm writing about and I'm making my best efforts to improve myself in a few ways, both physically and mentally. There will continue to be struggles, I'm sure, but for today at least, I don't feel too bad. Aside from the usual desire for the working week to be shorter, but I don't think that's particularly unusual for anyone to be feeling at this time on a Tuesday.

I spent some time recording some new Atari ST A to Z videos last night, including a number of games that I haven't tried before — Quartz by Paul Shirley was a particular highlight, and you should see that later this week. I've also been playing a bunch of games on the Atari Flashback Classics collection and found myself worryingly addicted to Pool Shark, which is a stupid game, but an entertaining one. Sometimes stupid is good. Sometimes stupid is ideal for playing on the toilet. Sometimes you want to keep playing stupid until you achieve some sort of arbitrary goal like, say, potting all the balls in the space of 30 seconds. (I did it. Eventually.)

Later today, we've got a new Atari A to Z video and an article about a long-awaited (by me, anyway) sequel to an RPG/visual novel/life sim hybrid I liked a lot when I played it a few years back. And more Atelier Meruru… God, I love that game.

In the meantime, I have a working day to get through, so wish me luck with that, and I hope you have a good day!

I feel like I've developed something of an appreciation for virtual costume design quite recently.

I mean, I've always appreciated a character with a good, interesting design, but just recently I feel like I've been enjoying a particular appreciation of how a character dresses: as a means of that character expressing who they are, their role in the story, the themes of the story and all manner of other things.

There are simpler ways to enjoy costumes too, however, and I've been feeling these things quite acutely recently.

I'm quite a "tactile" person, for want of a better description. I enjoy the sensation of touching things, feeling their texture and perhaps how they "move" if they're a container of some sort. I'm particularly fascinated with very soft textures; if I find something that is particularly pleasing to the touch in this regard, I'll often spend a very long time idly touching it in various ways. It's why I enjoy petting my cat so much; she is very soft.

I believe all this is something to do with being "on the spectrum", as it were, although I believe sensitivity to touch relating to autism more commonly manifests itself as an aversion to touching things or being touched, so I don't know. I don't pretend to understand it all. All I know is soft thing good.

Which is why I like Meruru from Atelier Meruru so much.

Meruru's design is pleasing to me in so many ways. And although there's little doubt that she's an attractive, cute girl, the things I feel about her when I look about her aren't sexual; they primarily relate to her costume, and the tactile feelings I've just described.

I find it very easy to imagine how different parts of Meruru's costume feel. Particular highlights for me include the silvery-white corset that forms the front of her dress, and the inside of her cape. I imagine the corset as feeling like soft satin (in certain artwork and the in-game 3D models, it appears to have a slight "shine" to it, which emphasises this feeling) and the cape lining as being extremely smooth silk — the kind of silk that you touch and your fingers just glide across, sending shivers down the spine in some cases.

I also like her boots, but not in a particularly "I want to touch them" sort of way, I just think the way they look suit her very well.

To reiterate, the things I'm describing here are not sexual in nature; I'm not saying that if Meruru was real I'd feel an uncontrollable urge to grope her, because come on now. I just find the way she's depicted to be a particularly, oddly strong stoke to the fires of the imagination, particularly with regard to an aspect of sensory perception that appears to be quite sensitive in me.

This is probably more than you needed to know about me, but it struck me this morning, and I thought it was vaguely interesting. Please continue to go about your day!

Yep, late again. In my defense, I was editing a new episode of The MoeGamer Podcast all yesterday so… that's not really an excuse, I know! Apparently I need to take my own post about establishing habits to heart a little more…

Speaking of habits, though, I've been doing well at hauling my considerable arse out of bed of a morning and ploughing through a Fitness Boxing routine. And while I hesitate to say I'm "enjoying" it, because exercise, it's certainly quite satisfying to get through a complete routine and not be dead.

I find exercise most satisfying when there's a bit of "stiffness" afterwards. Not… that kind of stiffness, but, you know, muscle stiffness. Before any exercise junkies jump in at this point and say "you should be stretching", I am stretching (it's part of the Fitness Boxing routine), I am just also extremely unfit! The stiffness, for me, is a physical manifestation of my effort; it reminds me that I did something I didn't have to do, but which will ultimately (hopefully) be good for me.

As I've been progressing through the software, the workouts have been gradually getting more complex. I quite like the way the workouts are paced; it seems that they tend to follow a set routine that goes something like this: Stretches > Short (5 min ish), easy workout you've done before > Long (10+ min), moderate workout perhaps introducing one new move > Long, challenging workout, perhaps again introducing one new move > Short, easy workout you've done before > Stretches > Done. By doing this you get a mix of the familiar and stuff that pushes your "limits" a bit; at present, the "easy" workouts tend to be simple punches, while the more difficult ones incorporate dodging of various types — ducking, dodging to the side and weaving to the side.

The punches are fine. The area I need to work on a bit is evidently my legs. The ducks and side dodges are killer on the legs. Since I'm a big fella, my legs have to work pretty hard just to hold me up, so getting them to do things other than holding me up is a significant challenge. Not impossible by any means, but a challenge, certainly. It also doesn't help that I have a bit of an ache in my left knee at times, and bending it in the "wrong" way can sometimes provoke that somewhat. Perhaps I should invest in one of those oh-so-flattering knee supports; I don't know how effective they are.

Anyway, it's going reasonably well so far. At the moment, I'm establishing a routine of getting up early every weekday to do Fitness Boxing, then taking the weekend off so I can enjoy a bit of a lie-in. This feels eminently doable; as I said the other day, it's just a case of estabishing that habit.

Now if I can just do the same to remember to write these posts on the correct day! Sigh. Oh well. I guess I'll see you again later today! 🙂

I finally got around to replacing my Atari 8-bit's dead 1050 disk drive, which means the system is fully functional again.

I was sad to see the 1050 die, as it was the original model I'd grown up with, so it was like an old friend. I was also reminded quite how much I'd missed the noise that old disk drives make — for me, it's an important part of the old computer experience, and one that, sadly, you don't really get to experience with emulation. (That said, I believe ST emulator STEEM does have a "simulated disk drive" noise, but it's not quite the same!)

I dunno, it's a weird thing that I don't expect more modern gamers to understand, really, given how quiet today's consoles are. But I've always drawn peculiar comfort from the sound of disk drives through the ages, and this love stretches right back to the 8-bit era. The only disk drive noise I didn't like was that of the Atari 810; that actually used to frighten me as a child, because coupled with that drive's hideous gaping maw and its alarmingly industrial red activity lights, I found the whole thing a bit disturbing. The 1050, however… I came to associate that chook chook SNARRRK noise with good times, happy times; whenever I heard it, I knew that something I enjoyed was going to follow.

This is why I've liked certain consoles over the years for the strangest of reasons. People mock the Dreamcast's noisy GD-ROM drive today, but I loved it; it reminded me of the trusty old 1050. Likewise, I like it when I can hear the drive reading on systems like the PS2 and Wii — the original Wii has a particularly good drive noise.

The things you come to draw comfort from over the years are strange and wonderful, aren't they?

Talking of old habits, man, I sure am sucking at remembering to do this, huh? I think I need to establish myself a routine for remembering to do this too, preferably not "shit something out at 2am because I forgot" as I occasionally did with my old blog!

Anyway, my "excuse" this time is that after a long and quite tedious week at work, I sat down and played some Atelier Meruru. And, well, I frigging love Atelier Meruru. Don't get me wrong, I love Atelier Rorona and Atelier Totori too, but there's something really special about Meruru. I am now understanding why the Atelier fans I know tend to highlight it as a particularly good part of the Arland trilogy.

I'll obviously write more about the details of Meruru when we get to it in the current Cover Game feature on MoeGamer, but suffice to say for now that it takes all the interesting and fun bits from Rorona and Totori and wraps them in an immensely satisfying game structure with an adorable protagonist and some wonderful supporting characters.

Meruru herself is an absolute delight. I've always had a soft spot for the "spunky princess is bored with being a princess" archetype, and she inhabits that role perfectly without feeling like a trope. She's friendly, she's pleasant, she cares for her friends and she's a bit of a nosey bugger too.

Most importantly though, she gets things done. More than the previous two Atelier games in the Arland subseries, in Meruru your actions have a very obvious effect. Areas outright change in response to the tasks you complete: buildings appear, forests are cleared out and become farmland, old ruins become a formidable fort. It's incredibly satisfying to see the world evolve and change as a direct result of what you do; it gives you that real sense that although Meruru is a thoroughly personable protagonist, she's also quite an "important" one who is able to achieve things like this. This is a marked shift from Rorona and Totori, both of whom very much had to sort of "prove themselves" to the world over the course of their respective adventures.

But enough ranting, otherwise I won't have a Meruru article left to write in a couple of weeks! Have a wonderful weekend, and I'll be back… uh, later today 🙂