This week has been really, really long for some reason.

It's weird how that happens sometimes. I mean, logically speaking, one day cannot be longer or shorter than another (and I'm talking about the day as a 24-hour period, not in terms of "hours of sunlight") — but it's strange how sometimes time absolutely flies past, while others it drags on and on and on and on.

Sometimes it's just a particular part of the day that drags on and on and on and on. Back at secondary school, my friends and I were absolutely convinced that German lessons lasted at least twice as long as any other lesson, despite being exactly the same length. I didn't even particularly hate German or anything — it just always seemed to drag on.

In fact, so frequently did we feel that German lessons distorted time that I successfully managed to pull off what I thought was quite an entertaining piece of comedy at the time, by setting the countdown timer on my Casio digital watch to the same time that it was right then, making it look like the clock was actually running backwards. I successfully bamboozled my friends with this piece of comedy genius for, ooh, about five minutes or so. (Ten minutes in German Lesson Time, obviously.)

This week it has been dragging on and on and on. As you may have surmised from some other posts, I've been having a bit of a bad week in terms of mental health, and it really sucks. It saps the motivation to do anything, it saps the energy to interact with others like a normal human being and it makes frustrating things infinitely more frustrating than they would otherwise be. And when you feel like this at work rather than at school, you're supposed to act like an adult and just suck it up rather than drawing Edlock Holmes cartoons in your "rough book" and leaving offensive post-it notes stuck to the wall.

Still, it's the weekend now, and I can enjoy it. I'm going to record some videos, and hopefully Andie and I will be going to look at cats to see if we can find a new friend for Meg. Other than that, I will be doing as little as possible, and I intend to make the most of a bit of freedom to do absolutely nothing.

When you're having a bit of a low ebb, as I am at present, it's good to have something you can hold on to and enjoy, even in your darkest moments. Something that reminds you that things are okay, and that not everything is bleak and terrible.

What I'd consider to be my three main hobbies — video games, writing and music — have always been that to me. The latter two have always provided me with a good "outlet" to express myself in various ways, even during times where I can't quite vocalise exactly what it is that I want to say or get across to other people… and the former, well, it's simply always entertained me, always provided me with an "escape", always given me something to focus on when the alternative is dwelling on negative thoughts that have no real rhyme, reason or even cause to them.

This evening, despite having had one of of my worst weeks for depression and anxiety for a long time, I find myself sitting here in absolute wonder at the breadth of experiences it's possible to have in gaming — and that I've been quite happily enjoying week after week for quite some time now.

This evening I played some Ace Combat 7 in VR — more on that on MoeGamer tomorrow, because I have a lot to say about it — and earlier, I played some Atari Flashback Classics, wrote about Atelier Meruru and published a video on Rick Dangerous. Every one a completely different experience; every one something that I value greatly, especially during times like this. (Yes, even Rick Dangerous, with its dickish level design.)

I have a ton of great games on my shelves. I've written about a wide variety of fantastic games on MoeGamer and made videos about them on YouTube. There are a number of new releases coming up that I'm extremely excited about, as well as stuff I've owned for ages that I'm finally going to get around to writing about this year.

A while back, when I wrote about how video games probably saved my life on more than one occasion, I wasn't joking. Even when my brain is utterly convinced that times are rubbish, as it has been for the last week or so, there's always a new world I can escape into, where I can achieve great things, where I can be the hero, where I can be someone I'm not, where I'm far away from things that I worry about that I don't need to worry about.

Well, that's how my evening has been. Now I'm going to bed. Good night!

Inspired by how good Ace Combat 7 is, I've decided to take a closer look at the entire series (well, the mainline series at the very least) over the long term.

I already own physical copies of 3, 4, 5, Zero, 6 and 7 and a digital copy of Assault Horizon (which isn't technically a "mainline" one, I know, but still) and today I ordered copies of the first and second games for PS1.

During a bit of casual research into the series, I was extremely surprised to discover the sad tale of what happened to Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere here in the West. If you've ever complained about the localisation process in current games… man, you know nothing, I have to say!

Electrosphere originally shipped in Japan on two CDs and unfolded over the course of 52 missions. There were branching paths that resulted in one of six different endings, anime cutscenes and dialogue between missions as well as extensive in-mission dialogue.

By contrast, the localised version for the West shipped on one CD and only had 36 missions. The vast majority of the plot had been cut or changed considerably, all the cutscenes were gone and most of the dialogue was missing. Namco apparently never gave an official reason for this, but it's likely down to a combination of lower-than-expected sales for Ace Combat 2 and the then-imminent arrival of the PlayStation 2. In other words, Namco didn't see spending the money on a full localisation of what was then a very ambitious, large-scale game as worthwhile.

Namco has apparently officially refused to do a "re-localisation" project of Ace Combat 3 due to the time and expense it would require — some of the development team were reportedly quoted as saying porting the entire Japanese content of the game would be more work than remaking Ace Combat 4, 5 and Zero combined. However, certain members of Project Aces have also indicated that if there is sufficient organised interest, it may be something they will take into consideration. With how well Ace Combat 7 has done, perhaps it's time to start making some noise about it — particularly now Tales of Vesperia Definitive Edition is on shelves after some never thought it would happen!

Anyway, in the meantime, there is a fan translation out there called Project Nemo, which apparently released a full patch for the game in 2016 and has been continuing to tweak and refine it since. If (or more likely when) I get to Electrosphere in the overall exploration of the series, I'll definitely be giving it a look for sure.

50 already! And I've only slipped up in terms of daily posts a few times. Not bad going. Still a long way off my previous record of 2,549, but every journey, single step and all that.

I find it helpful to have somewhere to post more random, unstructured thoughts. MoeGamer has become such a great hobby for me, but the way I've set it up means that it never feels quite "right" to post anything too personal on there. I mean, obviously I write about my experiences with games from my own perspective — I'm talking more about stuff happening outside of gaming.

Having a focus is good, and it's helped bring me greater joy from this hobby that I've had fun with since a very young age. As I grow older, I feel more and more pleased that I have something that I can really immerse myself in and appreciate — particularly as the world outside seems to be falling to bits piece by piece every day. Don't worry, I'm not going to get "political" or anything — I generally want to stay as far as possible away from all that crap — but it's exhausting to see all the stuff happening out there sometimes. And thus I find it immensely valuable to have some sort of "haven" to escape to.

With your support, I've been able to expand all my projects far beyond what I originally imagined when I set up MoeGamer. And I have no intention of slowing down! A sincere thank you for all your support and kind words, and I hope you continue to enjoy what I do.

I passed 300 subscribers on YouTube! This is a teeny tiny milestone, I know, but it's still a milestone, so I'm going to celebrate it — particularly as I feel like it's the first real milestone I've reached since starting to do YouTube stuff on a more regular basis.

Thank you to those of you who are subscribed and who have been kind enough to watch, like and/or comment on my videos. It is very much appreciated. Much like MoeGamer, I do the stuff I do on YouTube because I enjoy it, and because it's an enjoyable way for me to keep a record of the experiences I've had with a variety of games, but it's heartwarming to know that other people are watching and enjoying them.

With that in mind, I wanted to share a few personal favourites from the channel that you may or may not have previously seen. Patreon's silly blog editor won't let me embed the videos directly, so you'll have to click the links to see them.

Going from oldest to newest…

The Squadron of Shame – Trailer 1: This was the first thing I ever posted on YouTube back in 2007, and an experiment with video editing software. I was working for Apple at the time, so I was fiddling around with iMovie to see what I could do with it, and this was the result. Dated and low-res now, yes, but it summed up what the Squad was about — and makes me a bit sad that none of those guys save maybe one or two have spoken to me for several years now. But that's something to rant about another day, I feel.

Bearded Backlog – 1000 Amps: This was one of my first experiments with doing "Let's Play"-style content. I still quite like the concept — pick something I haven't played before, give myself 20-30 minutes to determine whether it's worth continuing with, profit. It was a good excuse to check out some Humble Bundle acquisitions from over the years.

Unprovoked: I may have come to loathe Rockstar games for various reasons, but one can't argue with the fun that can be had in Grand Theft Auto V's movie-making mode. This was one of a few videos I made that I very much enjoyed the end result of.

MoeGamerTV – Kana Little Sister: An early experiment with doing a "reading" of an article from MoeGamer. I'd like to get back to doing more of these; the tentative aim is to try and get some out on at least a few Mondays every so often!

MoeGamerTV: Sword Art Online – Re:Hollow Fragment: An early scripted video, not a reading of an article this time. I was quite pleased with how this came out.

MoeGamerTV: Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood, and the MMO as Musical Theatre: I really liked the concept for this article that later became a video. Making this video was pretty much what spurred me on to get a better microphone, and you'll see a noticeable increase in audio quality from this point on.

The MoeGamer Podcast: Pilot Episode – Sega, Sega, Sega: The beginning of a new era! I used to really enjoy podcasting, so I was very much Up for It when my good friend Chris suggested we should try and do one together. I enjoyed our first episode — and indeed enjoy revisiting it — and feel we've really found our groove since.

MoeGamerTV: Shantae and the Pirate's Curse: To date the only MoeGamer Cover Game feature I've successfully managed to make a complete set of companion videos for. I was pleased with how most of these came out, and Pirate's Curse is my favourite Shantae game, so here we are.

The First Auto-Runner?: I'd been trying to think of a way to celebrate my love of all things Atari for the longest time… and then it occurred to me. Video would be a great means of showing off some old favourites to people who perhaps hadn't seen them before — and also a great excuse for me to check out some games I'd never tried before. It all started here, with Aztec Challenge.

A Fighting Game for Scrubs Like Me: Slightly different from a regular Let's Play but still ad-libbed, in this video I went in with an argument I wanted to make, and attempted to put it across to the audience. Something I might try again at some point in the future when there's something I feel strongly enough about.

My Brother's Girlfriend's Father: I like this one just for the fact I feel I got a nice balance of nostalgia and commentary. I absolutely suck at the game, but I enjoyed telling the story of how I first encountered it.

The MoeGamer Podcast: Episode 11 – Shadow of Silent Probotectravania in Time. Also Asterix: One of my favourite episodes of the podcast, in which we talk all about Konami without descending into the usual "fuck Konami" stuff you see around the Internet. This was a really enjoyable discussion.

The Definition of Insanity: I think this is my favourite video on the channel. There was so much pain and suffering that went into this play session, and I was pleased with the editing. I don't normally heavily edit or adorn my playthrough footage, but in this instance I feel like it deserved some special treatment to reflect my rapidly declining mental state throughout.

Hope you enjoyed these and/or any others you've been kind enough to watch! There's plenty more where that came from… I've settled into a good schedule to get them done now, so I intend to keep on going as I am for the minute, since I'm enjoying myself so much.

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!