I spend more time covering games than playing them, or: there's just too much freaking media to consume

I hope the cat gets better

Also, can totally relate - there simply aren't enough hours in the day for all the cool stuff in the world

That's why I'm glad you condense it all for us

Play to enjoy, if it's no longer a enjoyment why bother

Have you watched Scott Pilgrim?

Btw cat took his medicine like a boss. He is doing very good.

I grew up playing games from the perspective that it was like a task- and I had to do it, and complete all games.

Then at some point I learned how to play games for fun- and since then, gaming has been incredibly better. It’s important to find time to play what you wanna play and be able to just mess around- not having to play knowing that you gotta review it every time

When you find those special games you can't stop playing over and over... That's gaming entertainment

Too relatable! I think we've overconsoomed and it gets bland. I feel like I need a completely new, away from home hobby to balance myself.

Hug kitty for me pls

I love cats and medicine!

Serious note, glad the cats doing better.

Only gets bland when you get bored lol,

Maybe try some coding experiments, long term hobby

But also makes you realise what effort went into those best games

Hope cat better soon

and yes, I feel that mood

My condolences. That has happened to me - well, pretty much all of my life. With everything. So, yeah, I'm there with you, Chary.

That reminds me... did I ever finish watching Sonic X?

Too much media to consume, I got 20 untouched switch games in box waiting to be played

I've gotten 3 Switch games for Christmas, and haven't even touched them yet. (Hyrule Warriors Calamity, Paper Mario, and Minecraft Dungeons) I also have a steam library of over 300+ games, 83% of which I haven't even played. Just got them in good bundle deals and the like. I guess I have all the time in the world to play them during my retirement. I even have DS games I haven't played, like Children of mana, Radiant Historia, Tales of Innocence, Tales of Hearts, MOON, etc... Too many games in my back catalog that I just haven't played yet. And I'm about 90% through Rise of the Tomb Raider, just stuck on the last water section. (Fucking Piranhas...)

Maybe by the time I get to my DS backlog, a translation for Tales of Innocence R will exist

Glad to hear the kitty kat is doing great! Here's to hoping to a fast and healthy recovery!

As for the post being all over the place, I guess that makes two of us when it comes to the blogs we can post at times!


But for real, this is a struggle I've honestly been having ever since I was trying to actively dig myself out of the debt hole and I am now struggling with on a daily basis now that my time is essentially gobbled up by my job (which has scheduled OT about every other week, especially towards the end of the quarter) and the travel time to and from work every day. So many games to play, especially single player games, and especially RPGs that I used to be scared of dumping hours upon hours into based on the playtimes that I saw my older brothers accumulate when playing other RPGs back in the day.

For example, my one older brother played Xenogears, realized he was under-leveled in the end of the game and, thanks to the fact that the last dungeon is one of those "point of no return" type final dungeons (there actually is a way to return to the world map, but you have to make it to the end, and the last dungeon is kind of a maze with a bridge puzzle on the second floor iirc), replayed the whole game to the end, and upon playing through the Legend of Dragoon later, when he made it to the end, he made sure to overlevel before, presumably, going onto the final boss who's dungeon is an actual point of no return, and ended up curbstomping the boss like it was any other boss.

While I don't struggle with being the Chief Editor of this site like you do, I do have to admit my time here on GBATemp these days is more spent having fun, as opposed to doing a whole lot of conversing regarding console hacking as honestly, a lot of what I'm interested in as far as console hacking is concerned has already been fulfilled, barring a port of IKEMEN to the Switch, and even then, I have a mini PC I ordered recently that, if I set things up correctly, will be an admittedly kind of impractical solution to the want that a hacked Switch could fulfill for some, but not for me at this point in my life. I like the Switch concept, but unfortunately in a pandemic like this, its unique gimmick is rendered null, unless if you are going to use the restroom or something, which I have a 3DS (that I barely played, partially because its a dual IPS New 3DS XL that goes for a lot more on eBay than a TN panel 3DS would) and a PSP Go for.

Part of that having fun is that my breaks at work are, at best, 30 minutes, and at worst, 10 minutes long, and thus, I don't have a lot of time to do much of anything like my co-workers at Walmart did when Fire Emblem Three Houses came out.


I personally think single-player games are trying to do too much these days. They try to fulfill aspects of every genre out there. You have games that try to be open world, have sidequests, leveling systems for days, collectibles, secrets, alternate endings, dating and sometimes, the ideal results of said dating, multiple gameplay styles, and just everything in general that, when every game feels like its trying to tick these boxes, it feels like its all the same. Every game wants the benefits of GTA without any of the tradeoffs, investments, or risks. I mean, GTA 5 is apparently so good, its become Rockstar's Skyrim, seeing native ports up to the current gen PS5 and XSEX systems.

And when you get down to it, the software that is developed for these systems is rarely exclusive to them anymore, be it officially or unofficially. It used to be that PS3/360 emulation was considered to be an impossibility, yet RPCS3 and Xenia exists, and with that, the few games that haven't got a port to PC these days can now be played just fine. And now, even PS4/Xbox One exclusives are coming to PC, and on Steam! And yeah, you have the EGS kind of screwing things over in some regards for the former, but you can't tell me people who really want to play Kingdom Hearts who don't want another app to load up on their PC and an account to manage wouldn't resort to the high seas. And when every game can be played in some way on a device that is practically a necessity in the modern first world, it makes the hardware one games on not as important or as valuable as it once was. I mean, I went and traded my PS4 in for the Switch with the better battery life because I figured, and was proven right, that the rest of the Yakuza games were gonna come to PC at some point! Sure, I'm still waiting on Judgement, and would love to see a simultaneous release of Ishin! on all platforms in all regions fully translated, but thankfully there's a team working on translating the PS3 version of the game even if I would rather have the version that supports 60FPS translated into English.


Gaming is all about the games, and I'm glad to see that, thanks to distribution platforms like Steam and others, along with the standardization of controller support on PC, games that used to be console-only can now be bought and played legitimately on PCs these days, including games that normally would require proprietary hardware like the Wii.

For me, its also the fact that I honestly don't have much fun playing video games by myself. I want to play video games with other people, be it me commentating on their gameplay or playing in an MMO (which I might be doing soon, except I guess PSO isn't an MMO?), watching an anime/movie/TV show, or whatever. The only thing stopping me atm is my parents being worried about me interacting with what they would view as "online strangers" or something and I having to fear them possibly combing through some of the stuff I've posted on here and possibly learning how I truly feel about them and some of the things they hold dear.

But by the time its come to this, I've turned 26, I have more controllers than I care for as the pandemic has made gathering together a big no-no and the thought of gathering anyone in my room to play video games (especially other members of my family that aren't the older brother that I mentioned earlier) kind of a difficult one to justify owning more controllers just to accommodate at least four different people.

I always wanted to party with others, be it playing four player Mario Kart, 8 player Smash, travelling through time with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, putting an end to the Umbrella Corporation's BOWs, and every other adventure that one could travel alone, but would end up with nothing but emptiness in a world that's shut out because one fears ostracization from their family. I understand that this couldn't happen every day and night, but I'm sick of travelling through this cruel lot in life that I've been dealt just because I happened to be born into a family where one's identity, ultimately, is given to someone as opposed to being allowed to develop in a way that doesn't have to revolve around a network of churches that's slowly withering away and dying out thanks to the world moving on from its ways.

(Man, this turned out to be a longer post than what I initially set out for. I just have had a lot of complicated thoughts going through my head lately that I hope, but probably didn't express too clearly in the tower of text above!)

I have English patched Tales of Innocence and Tales of Hearts on my DS R4i 3DS Gold (RTS) cart. Haven't played them yet though.

I wish your cat a fast recovery.

About the games and the lack of time, I totally relate to that too. I have such a nice collection of games for the Switch and a few of them are still sealed as I haven't got the time to even try them.

It's a shame!

ok but you are gonna finish Always Sunny right

I think I can more or less relate, I have barely played Switch this year, but I've barely played anything else without influence from someone else either. Often I'll only pick up my DS to demonstrate something, to try something in a homebrew, or to help someone with Wiimmfi.m, but not to just play something. Yesterday, I didn't care at all to play Animal Crossing: Wild World, but when I realized that I could analyze the status and online activities for ACWW so that I could understand what the nonsense on the Wiimmfi page is (I've done this for Mario Kart DS and Metroid Prime Hunters), I got excited about the prospect, thinking about how neat and fun it would be to... Look at some numbers while I do random stuff in ACWW.

I'm just here