It's been kind of tough to get back into the swing of things for the new year so far. I don't mean work-wise — that's all going fine, since I didn't really take a ton of time off from doing that. Rather, I mean things like getting back on track with the diet, going to the gym and that sort of thing.

We're about a week into the new year, and despite Andie and I saying that we were going to get straight back on the Weight Watchers regime, we've spectacularly failed to do so thus far. Likewise, my aching body is practically hungering for some exercise, so I know that going back to the gym would probably make me feel a whole lot better after not really moving a whole lot for months, but I'm finding it hard to take that "step".

I think part of it is the fact that the changeover of years kind of didn't really feel like much of an "event" this year, whereas in years prior to COVID there was an obvious "transition" from the holiday season to the "back to work/school" moment. We haven't really had that for the last couple of years, and thus I suspect it's hard to put your foot down and say to yourself "right, I am going to start doing this right now, and that's that".

We're nearly at the weekend and I want an ice-cream, though, so perhaps an indulgence for now to soothe my troubled mind, and a proper proper reboot on Monday. Hopefully. Wish me luck.

Started reading Full Metal Daemon Muramasa this evening after a request from a Rice reader, and I'm enjoying it so far. It's quite… dense and heavy going at times, but it's also thoroughly intriguing in that inimitable Nitroplus sort of way, so I'm anticipating great things. It's also one of the highest-rated visual novels I've ever seen on VNDB — and those folks are usually pretty stingy with their ratings — so it was something I wanted to check out at some point anyway.

For the unfamiliar — from what I can make out, anyway — Muramasa is set in an alternate history Japan (or Yamato as it's known here) circa 1940. Since time immemorial, battlefields have been dominated by supernatural suits of armour known as tsurugi, piloted by musha. A tsurugi gets its power from a smith literally infusing his soul and humanity into it — though by the time our story begins, scientific advancements in cloning have allowed tsurugi to be mass-produced without loss of life.

I'll write more about all this on Rice in the near future — likely across several articles — but Muramasa has done a nice job of depicting the situation from a variety of alternative perspectives so far. The initial intro depicts the true horror of these tsurugi on the battlefield — and the massacres that result when they are irresponsibly wielded by the power-hungry — while the first main chapter focuses on a more "human" story: a group of kids who want to track down their missing friend, whose disappearance appears to have something to do with a musha.

I'm not far enough into the game to know much about any other details as yet, but supposedly the narrative explores the ideas of good and evil and sometimes circumstances meaning that you're not able to pick either of them; a lot of it ties in with the real-life legend of the Muramasa sword, samurai culture and the like. It's thoroughly compelling so far, but also clear that it's going to be a challenging, uncompromising read going forward.

The translation is top-notch so far. I follow a bunch of the people who were responsible for it on Twitter, and they're quite rightly proud of their work; it really is excellent. It reads well, it features evocative prose and while there are, of course, moments where the English text elaborates somewhat on what was originally said in Japanese, the tone is consistent. In many respects, it reminds me somewhat of Deus Machina Demonbane, another Nitroplus title that featured florid prose, vivid descriptions, absolutely horrifying scenes and giant robots.

It's a long one — VNDB places it at around 68 hours or so — but I'm definitely interested to see where it goes from here, and particularly to see what other narrative perspectives we're going to witness this all unfold from. The character who is ostensibly positioned as the "protagonist" in the promotional material has only appeared as a side character so far, so I'm wondering what's up with that.

Only one way to find out!

I picked up Forza Horizon 4 in the Steam sale. I actually signed up for a trial of Game Pass to give it a go initially, but Game Pass makes me feel so vile and dirty I ended up cancelling it in favour of just buying the damn thing. The Steam version was available for a good price with all the expansions and DLC, anyway, while the version on Game Pass was just the base game.

Forza Horizon 4 is great! I'm not sure why I've never tried this series before. I think, honestly, it's the Forza name that had put me off; prior to getting my Logitech G29, racing sims had always annoyed me with their difficulty, so I'd kind of sworn off anything Forza — well, that, and I never jumped on board with anything Xbox post-360, so.

For the unfamiliar, though, Forza Horizon 4 — and the series as a whole, I guess — is emphatically not a petrolhead sim. Rather, it's more along the lines of something like Test Drive Unlimited: big open-world map with lots of things to do that aren't just races, lots of cars to piss around in, a real sense of "just enjoy yourself". It is probably what the Project Gotham Racing series would have evolved into if Bizarre Creations were still with us — the "skill points" system that rewards you for everything from smashing fences to big airtime is very much like the old school Kudos system.

And, for those who have heard me talk about racing games and sims before, Forza Horizon 4 scratches my "I want to drive a crap car" itch perfectly. My current ride is a dark green Morris Minor (albeit one with some upgrades that make it outperform any Morris Minor you've ever seen) and I also have a stock Citroen 2CV in my garage for when I feel like it. There's even a Ford Transit available, though I haven't acquired that for myself yet.

One of the best things about the game is that it appears the various events tailor themselves to your vehicle of choice. So if you want to run rally races in a Morris Minor, you can do; your opponents will have cars from the same "class". In this way, if you find the more terrifying sports cars hard to handle — and some of them really are tricky! — you can stick to something you're more comfortable with for most of the game. I like this a lot; it means you can use the cars much more as a means of "expression" than in some other games.

And, of course, there's Forza's famous livery editor. I haven't delved into this at all as yet, but I used to enjoy tinkering with it on the old Forza games. Perhaps I'll do some Final Fantasy pixel art like I normally do — that's relatively straightforward to accomplish and looks cool.

Anyway, it was a good investment, and it plays great with the wheel. So I'm pretty sure that's going to be my "comfy game" of choice — a game I play "just for me", because with its soundtrack there's no way in hell I'd be able to make videos about it — for the indefinite future. Because pratting around in cars is always fun!

Back to work for realsies tomorrow. The new year is officially here!

After writing yesterday's post, I put a few things into practice. I didn't go so far as unfollowing everyone on Twitter, but I may have completely revolutionised the way I use the platform in a positive way.

Basically I sorted everyone I followed into a few lists: gaming, retro gaming, VTubers, friends, artists and anime bloggers. Those are the things I particularly care about, so anyone who didn't fit neatly into one of those areas from my following list is just in no-list limbo now. Then I started training myself to go straight to the "Lists" function on Twitter instead of "Home".

That looked like it might be all right — but I noticed a few flaws. Most notably, the fact that all the retweets from people I'd turned off retweets for were back with a vengeance, since Twitter's Lists function doesn't respect your settings in this regard. (It doesn't respect your muted user settings, either.) Retweets are a big part of the anxiety-inducing "noise" on Twitter, so I really wanted them gone.

I looked into it a bit further and discovered that you can use Lists in TweetDeck and turn off Retweets in them. Ideal. Not only that, but given the way TweetDeck works with customisable columns, you can completely eliminate your "home" timeline altogether and look exclusively at lists if you so desire. Even more ideal.

So I'm going to be making use of that for a while and see if that improves my general outlook on things. Signs are good so far; it was a good 20 minutes before several of those columns moved at all earlier, which is much easier to deal with than the constant "rolling" they have when retweets are active and there are lots of people all yelling at each other!

Like I say, the easy option would just be to delete Twitter, but as I mentioned yesterday, I've had enough opportunities for stories, leads and other such things come up via Twitter to make it worthwhile maintaining at least a token presence on there. So I'll stick with that for the moment — unless things happen to take a serious turn for the worse.

Thank you for bearing with me while I think through all this out loud — and perhaps it might help some of you to make better, healthier use of the platform, too!

Happy new year! I have a bunch of stuff I want to talk about today, but no real… structure in mind for talking about them, so forgive me if today's post is a little disjointed. I feel like there's a bunch of things I want to get off my chest, and the start of a new year feels like as good a time as any to ponder them, so let's do that.

The main thread running through all this is that in 2022, I think I want — probably even need — to rethink my relationship with the Internet in general. Longtime followers will know that I've often commented on how my feelings towards social media in particular have soured in recent years, and in the last few weeks I think I've really pinned down exactly why I feel so negatively towards the idea of social media in general.

When I first joined Twitter, which must have been probably 2009 or so, I reckon, I did so because the place where my online friends and I used to hang out — the 1up.com Radio forums, which were ostensibly the place to discuss the site's podcasts, but also became "the mature end" of the community — were obliterated from the Internet in favour of a stupid, simple "Games" and "Not Games" divide.

What was once a nice community where different types of people could interact with one another in their own distinct areas became a complete clusterfuck, and an unpleasant place to hang out. So we jumped ship to Twitter, which was just starting to get big at the time. And it worked well; this was long before Twitter had added even Retweets to its core offering, so the site's original mission of allowing for "microblogging" was very much intact.

On top of that, it was a great place to hang out and actually talk to people in an asychronous manner; if you were online at the same time as a friend, you could chat in quasi real-time, whereas if you were in different time zones — as I always have been with the majority of my online friends — you could leave a message for them to read later.

When I look at Twitter today, it's unrecognisable from that. Scrolling down my timeline, the vast majority of posts are very obviously people trying hard to do one of several things: have a "viral" post; provide "shareable content"; post the "funniest" reaction to something that has happened; or establish themselves as an "influencer" or "content creator".

None of those things are conducive to conversation. Someone posting "retro gaming memories" with nothing more than images pulled from Google Image Search every day isn't really engaging with the hobby; they're trying to get followers, shares and likes. Someone living their entire life by their stream schedule doesn't strike me as someone who is enjoying life. And someone who is always first in line to respond to [insert vaguely Internet-famous person here] doesn't feel like someone who wants to chat; they feel like someone who wants to promote themselves, and feels like piggybacking off someone more popular than them is a good way to do that.

Now, I know I've been guilty of most of these things at one point or another for a variety of reasons, but every time I've done them it's felt… frustrating. Unfulfilling. Particularly since over the last… probably two or three years now, getting anyone to actually respond to anything on Twitter feels like getting blood out of a stone. And Lord knows I've tried different ways of doing things. Starting conversations. Sharing articles. Responding to other people. Being deliberately provocative. It's just all so much effort, and the potential rewards on offer have been feeling of less and less value as time has gone on.

Now, realistically speaking I probably need to maintain a Twitter presence, because I've had enough contact from game developers and publishers via the platform to convince me that it's a helpful means of communication for some people and companies. But all semblance of "pleasure" from the platform has gone. When I scroll through Twitter it's not fun. It's not interesting. And it sure as heck isn't social.

So I basically want to find a way to remove it from my life without giving up the occasionally useful things that it offers — and ideally without offending anyone. And I think I'm probably overthinking it. When I've taken a break from Twitter in the past, I've been very clear about providing alternative contact details for people to say hi to me elsewhere… and it's been exceedingly rare that anyone has actually made use of those. So I'm inclined to think that if people aren't going to make that effort for me, I probably shouldn't be fretting so much about what they might think if I were to disappear or at least change the way I use the platform.

By extension, this also means that I'm not in any great hurry to join any other social media platforms. I detest the vapid nature of Instagram and TikTok, Facebook is a cluttered mess and full of idiots, Pinterest is pointless and any other social media platforms that have attempted to establish themselves have quickly become havens for some of the absolute worst people on the Internet.

This also kind of extends to the idea of streaming, too. On the one hand, I quite like the idea of doing streaming as a way of meeting some new friends, chatting with them while I play some games and whatever. It seems, at first consideration, to be a nice possible solution to the frustration I feel over not having anyone living nearby that I can really share my love of gaming with.

On the other, I've seen what "pursuing streaming" has done to some people that I know and like very much (no-one reading this, I hasten to add) and… I don't like it at all. I don't like how "false" those people have become; I don't like how the things they post on social media have become transparent attempts to court engagement rather than genuine attempts to talk to others; I don't like how their life has come to revolve around their numbers, their revenue or whether or not they're close to reaching Affiliate, Partner or whatever it is you do on Twitch; and frankly I can't be arsed with all the stupid needless Bits, Points, emotes, subscriptions and whatever other crap you have to fuck around with in order to "do Twitch" properly.

A lot of this is, I'm sure, "old man is out of touch", and I'm perfectly happy with that. To be honest, the possibility of keeping up with all this stuff and still being able to enjoy my own hobbies is exhausting. I like doing what I do now with videos and writing, and I feel like I should focus on those things that I do specifically enjoy doing, and simply cast all the other stuff aside. But then, of course, those doubts enter my mind: should I care more about these things? Should I get over my dissatisfaction with social media? Am I missing something?

I honestly don't know. But I do feel like I need to make some significant changes, because worrying about all this bollocks has been causing me significant anxiety for quite some time. I haven't decided exactly what form those changes will take as yet, but they need to be made.

Here's what I'm thinking:

• Rebrand my Twitter account to be something along the lines of "RiceEditorPete" so people know at a glance that they can get in touch with me about Rice Digital stuff.

• Completely restructure how I use Twitter. Unfollow everyone for a clean "home" screen. Use lists for various things — one for friends, one for professional contacts, one for retro gaming, one for artists, one for gaming news, one for VTubers, etc. That way I can concentrate on a topic at a time as required, and ignore the other junk.

• Schedule my Twitter use rather than use it as an idle distraction. Perhaps check it once at the start of the working day, once at lunchtime and once at the end of the day. Break the habit of it being a "default" thing to fiddle with if my mind is wandering.

Just those things will probably help — though they'll be an effort, too. But I think they're probably worth trying.

If you've had any success in managing the frustration of being online in 2021 and beyond, I'd love to hear it.

There was an attempted murder pretty much outside our house last night. I overheard some extremely aggressive shouting in the street in the middle of the evening, but thought nothing of it at the time — we don't live in what I'd describe as "the best" area, so it's not altogether unusual to hear rows between residents of the nearby flats overflowing into the street for one reason or another.

Part of me was aware that this sounded a little more serious than the usual situation, though, but I chose not to go and nosey through the curtains to see what was going on — it's not as if there was anything I could have done, anyway, and I always feel a bit weird spying on situations like that to see what is happening, even if it is at least partially out of concern for my own safety.

We got some idea that something was obviously wrong a little later in the evening when both Andie and I had retired upstairs to read, play retro games and just relax before going to sleep. Andie had stepped outside for a moment before coming up, and had seen a lot of police cars around — not only that, but a group she recognised as our neighbours were standing out in the street, seemingly in their night clothes.

By the time she came back in, the police had cordoned off an area on the main road near the road we live on, which is evidently where the incident had actually taken place, and a chopper was hovering overhead. The tape is still up today, so presumably there's still some investigation happening. Andie ran into our neighbours earlier today; apparently they had been evacuated from their house for unspecified reasons — presumably one or more of the perpetrators hiding out in their garden.

Naturally any event like this is surrounded by hearsay and gossip, but according to local press the incident involved someone being "seriously assaulted" and suffering injuries to their back and thigh. Two people — a middle-aged man and a younger woman — have apparently already been arrested on suspicion of "conspiracy to murder" and, so far as I'm aware, the victim is still alive. I overheard some people from the local area in our nearby Tesco Express saying that they'd seen the arrested man brandishing a machete around, so I guess that answers at least part of the equation.

Not a super-nice way to end the year, but at least it sounds as if the situation has been brought under as much control as it could have been under the circumstances. I hope the victim recovers and that the perpetrators are brought to appropriate justice. It's deeply unsettling to think of something so vicious occurring right on our doorstep — though thankfully in the several years we've been here, this is the only really "serious" incident I'd say has happened aside from aforementioned arguing in the street.

Anyway! Happy new year?!

Sorry for the silence again. Mental health has been  putting me through the wringer for the past few days and I haven't been feeling my best; that tends to make certain things fall by the wayside!

Really having a blast with Project CARS 2. I think the thing that appeals to me about it is that it places no expectations or demands on me, but simply allows me a variety of ways to have fun pissing about in cars.

As much as I like a good career mode — and Project CARS 2 does have a substantial career mode — this sort of "sandbox" play is something I really enjoy, particularly when there are ways you can add a bit of structure to the experience.

For example, I've developed a real love for the 1971 Escort and the Azure Coast point-to-point track, and the game caters perfectly to me by providing a leaderboard specifically for time trials in the 1971 Escort on the Azure Coast point-to-point track. So I can drive my favourite shitty car on my favourite impractical course and feel like I'm actually "competing" at something rather than simply driving aimlessly.

The weekly community challenges, which basically seem to be a couple of specific time trial events, are a nice means of encouraging you to try some different setups too. Earlier today I did some fun "ice racing" along with taking a powerful Ferrari out for a spin, and both provided a very different experience — but both of which were a real pleasure with the G29 wheel.

It's kind of interesting, really. While there do seem to be a lot of po-faced, super serious racing sim types in the Project CARS community — I saw one person get mauled in the forums for asking if there was a way for getting some music to play during races — I'm having quite a lot of almost "arcadey" fun with the game.

I don't mean in a handling sense, mind; Project CARS 2 handles very convincingly, and I bet it would be an absolute nightmare on controller. But more in the sense that I can boot it up, have a bit of quick, immediate fun and then go do something else.

It — and the G29 — were a good investment, then!

Spent a bit of time this afternoon playing with the new Logitech G29 racing wheel with Project Cars 2 on PC, a game which seemed to be quite highly recommended by a fair few people — and widely regarded as immensely superior to its sequel for one reason or another. Given that it was a fiver in the Steam sale, I was more than happy to take it for a spin.

I'm very much taken with it. Firstly because it simply handles wonderfully with the G29 — the force feedback feels uncannily realistic, and the simple response of the wheel feels very much like "real" driving — but also because it is pretty much what I want out of a driving sim.

I like games where there's a lot of things to do, but I tend to find with stuff like racing games in particular, if there's too much in the way of long-term progression, I never end up "finishing" the game in question. This is why I've never really gotten all that far in games like Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport despite liking the "CaRPG" angle in principle; it's satisfying to build up a collection of cars and outfit them with all manner of upgrades and stuff, but it takes a while to get yourself into a position where you are 1) in possession of a vehicle that is suitably competitive and 2) skilled enough to actually handle it on the track.

Project Cars 2 certainly demands a certain amount of driving skill, but it mostly eliminates the need to "grind" for stuff. There's a structured single-player career mode which I've made a start on, which gradually takes you up through various "tiers" of motorsport starting with kart racing and the like and moving up to exotic supercars and Formula 1 — but I sense that a lot of the game's long-term fun will come from the simple custom race setup, which allows you to pick a car, track, conditions and opponents, and then just race. Everything available from the outset — just pick what you're in the mood for and go.

And there's plenty of stuff to choose from, too. As those who have heard me talk about sims before will know, I take a curious joy in taking crap cars in driving games and enjoying the ride, and Project Cars 2 is no exception; there's a horrible brown 1971 Ford Escort in the game that is an absolute pleasure to drive, and it's already my favourite car to drive along French and Californian freeways in the game's point-to-point races — my favourite type of race.

It's probably not a game I will take super-seriously — sim racers can get very serious! — but it is a game that I feel like I will get great value from with the wheel setup. For the longest time, I thought I didn't really like sim racers all that much. Turns out that if you play them with the proper control scheme, they're a whole lot of fun! Only trouble is, the price tag attached to that proper control scheme is more than a little prohibitive for some — indeed, without some generous Christmas money from both sides of parents this holiday season, I probably wouldn't have jumped into this.

But now I have, I'm very glad I did!

This evening I've had my first experience with Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, a Gainax show specifically designed to either pay homage to or take the piss out of (I can't quite work it out) chaotic Western shows such as Powerpuff Girls and its ilk. With that in mind, it's a show I'd actually specifically recommend watching it with the dub, since its foul-mouthed, gleefully offensive nature works fantastically with English voices — though apparently the Engrish swearing in the Japanese version is also quite something to behold.

For the unfamiliar, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is a show about a pair of fallen angels (the Panty and Stocking in question) in Daten City, which occupies a place somewhere between heaven and hell, and consequently is somewhat prone to being invaded by ghosts born from intensely negative feelings.

Panty and Stocking wield divine weaponry which, when they're not using it, doubles as the item of underwear they are each named after. And in each episode, they're tasked with defeating evil while simultaneously overcoming their own obnoxious selfishness and obsession with their favourite vices — Panty likes nothing more than to sleep around, while Stocking is obsessed with sweet things to a frankly frightening degree.

The word "chaotic" is attached to a lot of shows these days, but Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt really earns that title. Often shifting art style dramatically from shot to shot — and featuring amazing "live action" ghost explosion scenes where a model of the previously animated ghost is literally blown to pieces — it's a show that absolutely never sits still. And it's wonderfully, wonderfully entertaining.

Foul-mouthed, disgusting and gross, yes — and thus probably not for everyone — but somehow the whole thing feels like it pulls things off better than your typical grossout American "adult animation" that you get today.

I think it's precisely because it doesn't hold back on anything, whereas even with western shows like Family Guy and the like, they still sort of step back and nudge-nudge-wink-wink-teehee when it comes to anything slightly provocative, particularly from a sexual angle. Panty & Stocking, meanwhile, features an episode specifically about the frustrations felt by the ghosts of sperm continually spunked into tissues rather than allowed to fulfil their own natural function. And it's hilarious.

I'll likely write more about this show on Rice when I've watched a few more episodes, but suffice to say for now that it's become a firm favourite already, and I'm looking forward to seeing more!

Been very lax on this for the past few days, so apologies for that, but I'm sure you understand how the festive season is!

Before anything else then: a very Merry Christmas to every single one of you, and thank you for your continued support on here! I know MoeGamer has been pretty quiet for a little while due to other commitments, but the Atelier MegaFeature will be continuing in the new year once I'm back into the swing of things, and of course everything that I'm doing on YouTube has been happily continuing along, too. (On that note, one more reminder that this coming week there will be no videos!)

I may be tweaking this Patreon a little bit in the new year. Nothing major to worry about, I just think I might make a few little changes to my "rewards", such as they are. I know very few of you are here just to get your hands on what I laughably call my perks, but in the interests of variety and also something for me to throw myself into, I'm likely going to change the S-Rank tier perks from wallpapers to something else.

I haven't decided exactly what as yet, but one thing that I think would be good for my own personal… development, I guess you'd call it… yeah, that'll do — one thing that would be good for my own personal development would be making a monthly commitment to something that I might otherwise put off in favour of other things. So here's my thinking.

Those of you who know me well and a bit more personally will likely be aware that I'm a musician — specifically, a pianist. (I also play clarinet and saxophone, but I haven't done much with either of those for some time, and with the whole COVID thing making ensemble stuff impractical I don't see that happening any time soon) I enjoy playing the piano, but don't make enough time to do so right now.

So what I'm thinking — and I'm not committing to this yet, but definitely veering towards it — is changing up the S-rank perk to being a monthly patrons-only video/recording/somethingorother of me playing something from my increasingly vast collection of video game music piano arrangements. I have quite a few such books now — I got the Final Fantasy XV and Nier: Automata ones for Christmas — so plenty of material to work on, and if I have a "performance" scheduled for, say, the end of each month, then it's a good incentive to actually knuckle down and work on something specific.

If that's something you think you might be interested in, do say. It'll keep my mum happy if nothing else.

Anyway. Enough business. Time to go enjoy the rest of the day with some video games and cats and whatever else. Hope you've all had a thoroughly lovely day, and that you get a suitable opportunity to sleep in tomorrow morning. Merry Christmas!