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Another week is over, and it kind of feels like it's flown by! I've got lots done, achieved some things I'm pleased with and have some things I'm genuinely excited about in the cooker. So far I think it's safe to say that 2021 is off to a much more pleasant start than I ever expected, so I have to express some gratitude for that — both to people who have stuck by me during more difficult times (which I'm sure there will be more of in the future) and those who have, directly or indirectly, helped me get where I am now.

This evening has only been slightly blighted by a mild case of the shits that appears to have passed now, so I can't complain too much. Hopefully it wasn't anything to do with the Nandos we treated ourselves to this evening. I blame my new work colleagues; no-one would shut up about bloody Nandos on the end-of-week social chat, so I came away wanting a Nandos.

Nothing much planned for this weekend. Going to get a few videos recorded so I don't have to worry about any the following weekend (which Chris and I have pencilled in for a new podcast recording session) but other than that? Not a lot. I suspect Atelier and Final Fantasy will be involved at the very least.

Anyway. I hope all of you reading this have had a pleasant week, or at the very least a tolerable one — that's all we can really ask for right now, I feel. I know there's no real end in sight to the weirdness the world has been stuck in, but we'll all get through this, I'm sure. There's always video games to distract yourself with in the meantime!

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A friend (who is among the readers of this 'ere blog!) noted earlier that he was concerned that he had lost his sense of humour… but realised that he was simply allergic to shitposts. I kind of feel the same way.

While sometimes it can be amusing to just post something silly, there are so many people on the Internet these days who make it a defining part of their identity that it loses their impact. And the real problem is that there are a lot of people out there who think they are hilarious comedians, when in fact they're just recycling tired old jokes for the umpteenth time.

You just have to look at any Twitter trend when it comes up. Browse through the latest tweets and you'll find hundreds, possibly thousands, of people making the same "jokes". This is particularly true when it comes to a universally hated person — someone like Piers Morgan or Donald Trump — but it also happens around events, too. You see the same GIFs, the same tired old "this you?" responses, the same old clown pictures. It's tiresome.

Some might argue that this side of the Internet has developed as a new twist on the way we communicate, and perhaps it has. But I can't help but feel like it loses a lot of the nuance and expressiveness of language if everyone is posting the same Shrek "this is going in my cringe compilation" image macro.

Perhaps I'm just too old for this shit. Or perhaps it really isn't funny. I don't know. But if you've ever found yourself feeling like you might be allergic to shitposts… rest assured that you most certainly aren't alone!

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I decided to have a quiet day on MoeGamer today as I had a very busy day at the day job, and worked a little later than normal to get something out of the way that I'd been meaning to do for a couple of days. It was already getting a bit late by the time I finished, so I just wanted to sit and relax. Hope you don't mind! You got a video at least!

Two super-fun pieces up on Rice today, though — firstly, a bit about the upcoming Root Film, which is a game I'm very excited for, and secondly, a big interview with the ever-lovely Matt Papa from Inti Creates on the subject of Gal*Gun's tenth anniversary. If you have a sec to go enjoy those and perhaps share them that would be very much appreciated! Good viewing figures help me look good — and confirm to my new employers that hiring me was indeed the correct decision.

I dove back in to Final Fantasy XIV this evening, since I have a good idea for an ongoing column about it. Ongoing columns are good! Regular content so I don't have to rack my brains every week for inspiration. I'll write more about this in the first installment of the new column (which I'm planning for Friday or Monday, haven't decided yet) but I've been giving the game's "New Game Plus" mode a try; this is a really nice idea, which allows you to replay the entire main scenario quest at your current level, letting you re-experience the story as it was first time around, but without any need for grinding, gearing up and all that sort of thing.

You can even run the dungeons single-player unsynced if you want to, and I won't lie, it's exceedingly satisfying to use the Samurai job's super-powerful hit to flatten bosses in a single blow. You don't get any meaningful rewards for running New Game Plus — not that the quest rewards for the main scenario would likely be any use to you by the time you'd be making use of New Game Plus — so it's purely a means of revisiting the story. After several years away, it's exactly what I both needed and wanted; I wasn't relishing the idea of starting a brand new character.

Anyway, I'm going to be limiting my Final Fantasy XIV time to probably twice a week so I still have time to do other stuff. I'll definitely play on Wednesday evenings, as that's when the wife and our guildmates do stuff together online, and perhaps one day of each weekend, too. We'll see. I have little to no intention of taking the game "seriously" again, but I do want to see the Shadowbringers story and enjoy some of the new stuff. So I'm looking forward to that.

Now, though, it's time for bed — as tempting as it is to see quite how far through A Realm Reborn's main quest I can get in a single evening! For reference, after an evening's play, I'd cleared up to the point where you run Sastasha, Tam-Tara and Copperbell, so that's the equivalent of playing up to about level 18 or so. Without the need to grind, I should be able to plough through the various storylines and enjoy them at a good pace, which will be nice.

But yeah. Bed now. Perhaps with a touch of Final Fantasy V before sleep…

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I've been playing Food Girls recently because I want to write something about it for Rice, MoeGamer or both. It's been an interesting experience so far — and surprisingly compelling despite the extremely simplistic gameplay. It's very much a stat-building visual novel/dating sim type thing rather than an actual management sim, but there are enough interesting decisions to make so that it doesn't feel entirely like you're just going through the motions.

Back up a sec. If you're not sure what Food Girls is, it's a Taiwanese game where you play the role of a business consultant who agrees to help out a struggling street market. You work with three particular business owners — who all happen to be cute girls — in an attempt to make their shops more profitable and popular, and are tasked with ensuring they make rent each week, pass the business evaluations and, as the story progresses, successfully fend off some more sinister influences that are attempting to mess things up.

I haven't finished my first playthrough as yet — the game unfolds over three months of game time, and I'm two months in — but I'm already quite attached to the characters. The three main girls are a lot of fun, but the supporting cast are all rather lovely, too. Their personalities are helped along a great deal by some excellent use of Live2D to animate their sprites, and while the whole thing is only partially voice acted (in Japanese) the performers do a good job of reflecting these girls' personalities.

The whole thing is a bit rough round the edges and was obviously developed on the cheap, but it's one of those games where you can feel like there's real passion involved. The people behind this might not have had the budget or resources to be able to fully realise what they wanted to do, but they had a damn good go at it and put out something they could be proud of. Interestingly enough, this is something of a recurring theme in Food Girls' narrative. Write what you know and all that.

Anyway, as I say, there'll be something about this somewhere very soon, so keep an eye out for it! It's definitely worth talking about, but I want to at least finish a playthrough before I pen something properly. Likely in the next day or two!

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I may have re-subbed to Final Fantasy XIV. I've actually been considering doing it for a while — more as a social thing than anything, given the current situation — but I also had the bright idea of using it as a source for a regular column over on Rice Digital. Said column can combine the latest news about the game along with my experiences as a "Returner" (FFVI reference fully intended) who has been away from the game for a few years at this point.

I'm particularly interested to check out a few of the things geared towards people like me, such as the "New Game Plus" mode that was added a while back. I haven't seen a lot of discussion about this, but from what I understand it provides a means of replaying main scenario quests from Heavensward onwards — they're apparently revamping A Realm Reborn considerably before adding it, since there was a noticeable jump in production values and overall quality of pacing once Heavensward arrived.

There's also a fair few things I'd be up for trying again; I always enjoyed attempting to solo Palace of the Dead, for example, so I'll likely try that again, plus that's a good source of experience for levelling. I also quit before Heaven-on-High, the second Deep Dungeon, was added, so that will be all new to me.

And while I'm not in a hurry to come into contact with MMO elitists again, I think I just have to accept that they're part and parcel of the territory with this sort of game, and deal with it. I can at least be a decent person and hopefully set a better example — plus, hey, it makes for some fun "war stories" sometimes, anyway.

I'm going to limit my time on the game to maybe one or two "scheduled" sessions per week, though. I don't want it taking away from other things I want to do, so I'm going to treat it as if it were, say, a regular gaming session with friends on a weekly basis rather than something to consume my life with. We'll just have to see how that goes!

I don't know how many other "content creators" (ugh) do this, but I'm quite fond of watching my own videos back, and in particular I find them quite good to fall asleep to.

I realise this may sound like I'm boring myself to sleep, but actually it's more about the… familiarity, I guess? I remember the experience of playing the game and of recording the video, but not necessarily the details, so playing one of them back gives me the feeling that I don't need to actually watch it, but I can just listen to what I was talking about, accompanied by the sounds of the game. I've been told by others I have a fairly soothing voice, so I guess I'm just experiencing that for myself!

It's kind of strange to think about, though. I used to despise my own voice. When I was a kid, my parents used to get me to record my piano exam pieces onto cassette for my grandparents, which I didn't have a problem with, but I always loathed having to record the introductions for them… and I hated listening back to them even more.

I think it was mostly my accent I didn't like… or perhaps what I felt was something of a lack of an accent. I thought I sounded weird when I was talking, and listening to myself now, that side of my voice which I disliked — which I'm struggling to truly define — has definitely softened a great deal. Or perhaps I'm simply more tolerant of myself. I'm not conscious of having deliberately changed anything about the way I talk since childhood, but I'm certainly a lot happier to listen to myself now than I once was!

Anyway, having uploaded ten new videos to YouTube today, now I have just the thing to fall asleep to this week, and I can do it in the name of checking them over, too! Watch out for them over the course of the next couple of weeks.

Getting really into Groove Coaster Wai Wai Party!!!! now, ever since I discovered the trick to playing rhythm games on the television and getting the same "I'm playing an instrument!" feeling as I do when playing them on handhelds.

It's weirdly simple, really: simply put the controller down on a flat surface and play it more like a keyboard instrument rather than relying on your thumbs. If you're anything like me, your fingers are more responsive and reactive than your thumbs are, so it's easier to hit things in time.

You will also want to learn how to play according to the sound of the music rather than the on-screen markers, and also learn how to tune out the sound of your own fingers banging on the controller. The latter in particular is weirdly distracting, so you absolutely must maintain some Zen-like focus in listening to the music and not the noises that are happening in the room.

I'm surprised I hadn't discovered this little trick sooner, as I've tended to eschew a lot of rhythm games on the big screen precisely because none of them quite recreated the same feeling Project Diva F on the Vita gave me. But now… now, with Groove Coaster I am well and truly feeling it. I have also discovered that Hard mode on Groove Coaster is absolutely "my level" — I can S-rank a couple of songs, but I have room for improvement on a lot of them.

In most cases, it's simply a case of learning the songs a bit better, since most of them are relatively new to me — though there are a couple that have very fast note patterns that I need to figure out a reliable means of hitting. At least with Groove Coaster's flexible control scheme, you have the scope to do them with both hands rather than expecting one hand or finger to move at a ridiculous velocity.

I can perform pretty reliably on the Kemono Friends theme and Kizuna Ai's performance of AiAiAi, though, so that's an important milestone already. I sense the tracks from Darius are going to give me a bit of grief for a while though!

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Another week over and done with! And I concluded it with a victory at the weekly team "social hour" on Teams, where we were playing the Pictionary-esque Drawasaurus, but with video game names. Here are a few highlights from the session. The first two are my excellent work.

I think we all nailed the essence of the things we were supposed to be referencing!

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Definitely "feeling it" now; I'm feeling pretty zonked out this evening, so I'm looking forward to the upcoming weekend. I think I might have to make it a nice quiet one with little to no commitments — I have a couple of Evercade vids I didn't manage to get recorded last weekend, but they won't take too long, so I'll get them out of the way and then spend the rest of the time chilling out, I think.

I don't want to describe it as "stress" because I've had stress and this doesn't feel that way. Although I guess it may just be a different sort of stress — a feeling of being kind of overwhelmed and not sure what to make of the situation in which you find yourself. I've spoken before about the worry that something might be "too good to be true" and that is, of course, hard to shake — but more than anything I think it's just a feeling that I need to adjust, get into the groove of things and realise that yes, what I've been hoping would happen really is genuinely happening!

I don't mean to be vague but that really is the best way of describing how I'm feeling right now! It's all a bit overwhelming and tiring, but it's not upsetting me because I know the reasons for it are all positive. It's quite an odd feeling in many ways, and I'm sure it will pass — but if I seem a bit "absent" at any point, there's your explanation!

I'm off to play some PlayStation in bed and drink hot chocolate. Pretty sure those things will help.

The overall company where I'm working now has been going through a bit of a hiring spree lately from the sound of things, and I had a chat with the latest person to join the team earlier. He was genuinely hyped up to be a part of everything, and it was just a delight to see; while I tend to be the sort of person who finds getting visibly excited to be rather difficult, his externally presented feelings are what I've been feeling on the inside for the last week or so.

Things have been going well so far, and there are a lot of interesting and exciting projects for me to work on in the pipeline besides just keeping the site ticking along. I'm especially looking forward to getting involved with some retro gaming-related work, and hopefully there will be something to talk about in that regard very soon; you folks will likely be among the first to know about it once we get things up and running!

It all still doesn't quite feel real just yet, and there's a little bit in the back of my mind that worries about all this being suddenly snatched away from me at the worst possible moment. It's happened to me before, after all — hello USgamer — so I can't help but worry a bit. But I should stay positive; I'm having a good time at the moment, I actually genuinely like the people I work with rather than simply tolerating their presence, and what I've been doing so far seems to be appreciated by the people who matter. So hopefully there's nothing I should be worrying about!

Fingers crossed, eh. It'd be nice to finally feel settled before I turn 40!