It was my own fault, really; I shouldn't have been vaguely psyched up to start a new week, because today has been an absolutely horrible day, and I sincerely hope yours has been better.

To be fair, it was only really one specific bad thing that happened, but said bad thing is something I'm going to have to deal with for a bit — and that's messed up some of the plans I'd made to be better to myself.

Here's what happened. I was planning to go see some local friends this evening, where we were going to play some games and generally have an enjoyable, social time. With that in mind, I figured I'd go to the gym at lunchtime rather than simply skipping it for the day — good intentions, getting into solid habits and all that.

So at lunchtime, I got ready, stepped out the door, headed from my front door to my car — and as I was rounding the back of my car to reach the driver's side, my ankle gave way and I fell to the ground, skinning both my knees in the process. Thankfully I wasn't seriously hurt — at this point I'm not sure if I've sprained or just twisted my ankle, and the knee wounds looked worse than they were — but it was embarrassing, extremely painful and not at all how I intended any part of today to go.

As such, I've been spending the rest of today limping around and occasionally howling in pain, cancelling my appointment for the evening and resigning myself to the fact that I'm probably not going to be able to go to the gym for at least a couple of days. Which is frustrating, because I actually wanted to go, and I don't want to fall back into bad habits so soon after having what feels like, at the very least, a slight breakthrough in that regard.

But oh well. Shit happens and all that. Just gotta roll with the punches and deal with whatever bullshit life throws you as it happens, I guess. At least nothing worse happened.

A nice quiet weekend — although I did get some stuff actually done, too. I prepped a couple of articles for Retrounite, which will save me some time in the week, and I did some testing on the thing I'm not allowed to talk about at the moment which was fun. I also played a lot of Quake and beat Flea! on the Indie Heroes collection for Evercade in a single sitting without using save states like a pussy.

I call that a successful weekend, really. Actually looking forward to getting some work done in the week, and getting back to the gym and swimming routine. May actually have an opportunity to see some local friends tomorrow evening for once if they don't come up with some last-minute excuse like they normally do. It's usually family-related. I have to say, even if both Andie and I weren't already so vehemently against having kids, I think my local friends' seemingly constant misery at being parents would be enough to put us both off.

Yes, yes, yes, I'm sure all the "ups" make all the "downs" eminently worth it, but I feel kind of bad for them, given that there seem to be a lot more "downs" than "ups". Or perhaps they just don't talk about the "ups". I don't know. Either way, they've only made my resolve not to procreate even stronger. Not that I needed much convincing, anyway; I would be a dreadful parent, and our house would be awful for a child. So there's that.

Well that, sure wandered off the point, didn't it? Anyway, I'm off to bed now. Tempted to watch some HoloEN Council debuts this evening, but will probably save it for tomorrow so I can write about them while watching. Maybe an ice-cream before bed. Ah, the childless life at 40… aside from the aches and pains, it's all right sometimes.

Been playing a bunch of Quake since Bethesda put out that new version and I'm really impressed. Going to write more about it over on Retrounite in the week, but suffice to say for now that if you've been considering picking it up but have been on the fence, don't hesitate; it really is absolutely excellent.

They've learned a lot from the Doom ports from a while back, clearly. Modern Vintage Gamer was involved with the port of this one, and much like his work on Shantae with WayForward and Limited Run Games, he's managed to create a version that is magnificently authentic to the original while providing plenty of "modern" options for those who desire them.

I'm particularly enamoured with the fact that this new version allows you to keep all the textures unfiltered, so you have lovely pixelated walls and enemies and whatnot — but this can be combined with modern effects like motion blur and interpolated animation and suchlike. It really does allow Quake to get the "modern retro" treatment, where it's recognisable as a classic game, but also plays like how you want to remember it, rather than how it actually was.

And then there's the game itself. I have a lot to say on this subject, but I'll save that for in the week…

Evening all. Sorry I didn't write yesterday, but I completely zonked out after work last night — I don't think I was too well, as I fell asleep almost immediately and felt like absolute crap. I feel a bit better today, though, thankfully, so I made it to the gym for a light session, and now I've got the weekend to enjoy ahead of me.

I think I'm starting to notice a slight improvement in my performance at the gym already. 20 minutes on the bike didn't feel like a big deal at all this evening, though granted I was well-distracted by Amelia Watson playing The Convenience Store. This is encouraging, though; I just need to not get complacent, and be willing to push myself a little bit when things start to feel like they're "easy". Going on past experience, it's easy to get into self-inflicted plateaus by not wanting to get out of your comfort zone.

No real plans for the weekend. I do have something super-secret from the day job to play with that I'm not allowed to talk about, so some of the time will be spent fiddling with that, and I've got a review copy of Tormented Souls to squeeze in, too. This unfortunately isn't leaving me with a ton of time to play Atelier, but I think I've got some stuff I can write about this weekend at least!

Anyway. Just wanted to catch up before I sat down for an enjoyable evening of video gaming. Hope you all have a lovely weekend — make sure you spend at least some of it enjoying yourselves!

I'm absolutely knackered; think I may have pushed myself harder than I thought at the gym last night as I've spent all day being pretty tired and this evening's swimming session was a bit of a struggle. I'm off to bed immediately after this — though looking at the clock that's not actually a particularly unreasonable time to hit the sack.

Played a bit of GG Aleste on the Aleste Collection for Switch a while back — that's a real good shoot 'em up that I like a lot, plus I have a lot of time for any shmup kind enough to let me 1CC it on the first runthrough. It may be pretty easy, but it was a ton of fun — very much looking forward to exploring the others, and this collection will provide plenty of fodder for the Blissful Death column over on Rice Digital!

Still working through the Chilla's Art games, too. Big fan of those, now. I think I have a couple of the short-form ones left to go, then there's a few more "survival horror-y" ones to look at as well, including a couple that go with a PS1 aesthetic rather than the PS2 look all the ones I've played so far went with. On the whole, I think they're doing great work — and they sure are churning 'em out, too! I guess that's the advantage of working on small-scale games with a small team — you can get stuff done a lot more efficiently than big, bloated development houses!

My brain is gradually shutting down and my cat is telling me it's time to go to bed, so I think it's time to hit the hay. Hope you've all had a good evening!

A fairly "nothing day" today — one of those ones that just sort of passes by without being particularly eventful, and where there's not a ton of interesting things to talk about. Sometimes those are the best days, though; if every day is super-eventful it can be exhausting, so sometimes it's nice when things just happen without any real sort of resistance.

Went to the gym this evening and did 20 minutes on the bike and 10 minutes on the weird… hand bike thing that I don't know the name of. The 20 minutes in particular didn't feel like too much of an ordeal; the fact I was watching Elira Pendora's entertaining playthrough of Night Delivery helped matters, for sure. Having some good distraction material is a godsend for boring cardio; I must make sure I remember to take my headphones when I go along each time. (And the stupid USB to headphone jack thing, because of course my phone doesn't have a proper headphone jack because who would possibly want one of those any more apart from LITERALLY EVERYONE)

Enjoying working through the Chilla's Art games over at Rice. Lots of interesting things to talk about, and each game has its own enjoyable little twists to discover. Really glad I've picked up the whole pack.

Probably going to attempt to write something about the SNK Fighting Legends games now that they're playable with the new pad. I feel like it might be interesting to provide a complete scrub's viewpoint on how accessible these games are — because one of the biggest things that's put me off exploring fighting games in general is simply not knowing where to start or how.

For now, though, I need a poo and some sleep. So I'm going to get both. Hopefully one after the other rather than at the same time.

First up, my fight pad arrived today and I like it a lot. The clicky D-pad is very lovely — I'm still not all that good at the common fighting game movements but I feel like I got better today with just a little bit of practice.

The buttons, meanwhile, are absolutely glorious; obviously with this being a pad rather than a full-size stick they don't have the heft of full arcade-style buttons, but they're still better than standard joypad buttons. They're a little larger than the standard DualShock buttons and have a touch more travel to them, which means that they're satisfying and enjoyable to press. The layout is taking a little getting used to — there's the standard four face buttons, then an additional two that are an alternative means of pressing R1 and R2 — but again, that's something that will come with practice.

I'm not sure I was appreciably better at Art of Fighting when I tried it earlier — the second stage in Story mode against Jack was still a near-insurmountable obstacle, though I did actually manage to beat him once — but it was certainly a much more comfortable experience with an appropriate controller. I will continue to put the game through its paces and perhaps write about my experiences!

Secondly, in completely unrelated news, I went swimming today and managed 24 lengths in a little less than an hour (I didn't time it exactly, but somewhere around 45 minutes, I guess?). This is better than my previous of 20 in the same space of time, and can be partly attributed to my excellent new goggles that made me feel a lot more confident sticking my head in the water, but I felt a little more confident in general. I'm still painfully slow compared to literally everyone else in the pool, but I don't mind too much so long as I meet and occasionally exceed my own personal goals.

So that's good. I am absolutely knackered now though, so hopefully I will sleep well this evening; I emphatically did not sleep well last night, which was not a great start to the week, but oh well.

After lengthy consideration (all right, a little bit of Googling) I decided to invest in a fight pad for the PS4. I was tempted to get an adapter for my arcade stick, but looking into it there's the possibility that some of the things might not quite map properly if going that route, and I want to ensure compatibility.

So I've picked up a… what is it called (checks) Razer Raion, which is supposedly very nice. Zavvi had it for half its normal price (it's normally a hundred quid, which is a lot more than I'm willing to spend on a joypad) as well as providing options to pay it off over several months with no interest, so that was a bit of a no-brainer really. It should arrive in the next couple of days; I'm looking forward to trying it.

And I'm genuinely looking forward to giving these Neo Geo fighters a proper go. It's been a very long time since I played a fighting game with any degree of seriousness — the last was probably Dead or Alive 4 — so it's going to be interesting to explore these, particularly as I've never tried SNK fighters other than SNK Heroines (which I love) before. I am definitely 100% all about the pixel art in these games — and I'm pleased to see that despite these PS4 games actually being ports/emulations of PS2 titles, they're a lot less blurry than the otherwise excellent ADK Damashi collection, so that will really allow them to shine.

On that note, having a decent fight pad will actually allow me to play some of the games in ADK Damashi that I haven't really tried before, too.

Anyway, the Razer thingy looks nice because it has an 8-way D-pad, which I'm hoping will help with my general incompetence at performing fireball and Dragon Punch motions. It also has big chunky buttons, which is exactly what you want from a controller like this, and I believe it has programmable elements, too. As I say, looking forward to trying it.

I'm also looking forward to these fighters for another reason — as Guilty Gear Strive announces yet more DLC not long after it's launched, I'm really keen to play a fighting game that is complete right from the moment you actually pick it up and start playing. Art of Fighting has, I think, 8 fighters in it, only two of whom are playable in Story Mode. That is 1) much less overwhelming than the three billion characters modern fighters have and 2) never going to try and charge me more money for more characters while I'm playing.

The explosion of DLC for fighting games is really offputting these days. It makes me not want to jump into any new ones, because you know that purchasing the game isn't the end of your expenditure — not if you want the "complete" experience, anyway. I genuinely actually preferred it when Capcom did several versions of the same game — at least that way, people could specialise in a particular version of the game rather than this piecemeal nonsense we have these days.

But that's a rant about something that's not particularly relevant to me, because modern fighting games feel completely out of reach for my skill levels right now. I suspect at least some of these SNK titles may also be out of reach for me — but I'm willing to give them a go now I've got them, and I suspect trying them out may make for some interesting article fodder, too.

Work sent me a copy of a lovely SNK collection of fighting games to do an unboxing of the other day, so I decided to give one a go this evening. I picked Art of Fighting to try first.

I was immediately blown away by the gorgeous pixel art and animations… and almost immediately afterwards was struck by what an absolutely terrible controller the DualShock 4 is for fighting games.

I don't think I'd actually ever tried a fighting game on PS4 before, so this had never come up before, but it really is absolutely dreadful. Whether I was attempting to use the D-pad or the analogue stick, it was near-impossible to perform basic fighting game moves with any accuracy. If anything, the analogue stick was actually more accurate, which is a situation I've never encountered before!

I have an arcade stick but unfortunately it's for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Supposedly there are USB converter things you can get, but they're a little bit pricey so I'm not sure I can justify it right now… but I'll definitely consider it, because I do want to give these SNK games a fair shot.

The alternative, of course, is buying a fight pad or a new stick. Again, that's a bit pricy — though I guess there are other games that will work for like shoot em ups. But then I can say the same for the arcade stick, so… I don't know!

Anyway, this is late night ramblings with no real point. If any of you have a good recommendation for a PS4 fighting game device that isn't too expensive, do please sound off below!

I'm off to bed for now. Tata!

Made it to the end of the week — and didn't miss a day of either gymming or swimming along the way. Tired out now, though!

I got thinking while I was swimming today — swimming is a brilliant activity for getting lost in thought. One might think it's an inherently dangerous activity to mostly switch off your consciousness, but I've always found it a wonderful place to be alone with one's thoughts.

And it's an interesting contrast to being alone with your thoughts when you don't want to be alone with your thoughts — such as when you're trying to get to sleep. When I'm swimming and my mind wanders, it goes to pleasant and imaginative places; when I can't sleep, I'm ruminating on everything that has ever gone wrong and everything that might go wrong in the future.

Evidently the solution to this is to just stop sleeping and perpetually swim instead. That's it. That's the solution to mental health that we all need.

Okay, maybe not, but the time for reflection (no vaguely water-related pun intended) is definitely welcome, and I can see this being an eminently worthwhile part of my weekly routine as things continue. Assuming, of course, that I can keep up these commitments.

After this week, I'm feeling positive in that regard — but I guess the real test is next week, and the week after, and the week after, and… you know.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm going to have a nice rest and then on Sunday I'm going to record a bunch of videos. I'll also put up a new part of the Atelier MegaFeature on either Saturday or Sunday depending on how lazy I'm feeling tomorrow. Watch that space!

For now, it's time for bed. Have a great weekend!