Usually I fight a boss a few times and if I'm nowhere close to winning I'll look up strategies for beating them. Because yeah slowly fighting a boss to learn all their various tells can be time consuming, especially if you need to walk back each time to challenge them. The most time I spent on bosses was probably sekiro though, with lady butterfly and owl's hard fight, taking the longest. (Both in the same arena, maybe I just suck fighting in a weird dungeon with pillars?)

Whatever works to get you enjoying the game. I love summoning and getting NPCs to help me too. I love finding ranged weapon or magic cheese as well. I've heard of Elden rings' sleep and stealth exploits that make bosses not even fight back which seems super hilarious.

The next episode he says the judo line as well.

I think 5 or 6, I've been at my current job for 17 years because I learned I don't really find any form of work any better than another so something simple and tedious is better than difficult but fulfilling and I cannot handle responsibility I run in terror when it is given to me.

Grocery store - cashier then got promoted to front end supervisor and they wanted to fast track me into management when I was twenty, but I quit because I abhor responsibilities.

Different grocery store, I quit after a day because there was no real guidance on what to do that first day.

Future shop (Canadian best buy before best buy bought and killed it) - I was in computer department, and selling shit to people because I would get a better commission felt really scummy. My boss was a dick who kept trying to get me to flirt with girls despite seeing me being uncomfortable, and a manager scolded me thoroughly my first shift being left without supervision because I went for lunch without checking in something I was not told I had to do. So I quit after like 3 weeks.

A different grocery store that had an electronics department, where I've been for the past 17 years - my department has shifted from having a sizeable portion of the store with tvs, video games, and cameras, movies, music. To eventually being just games, to eventually the department was closed and I got transferred into seasonal, which eventually got folded into housewares and seasonal and toys and whatever electronics we still happen to carry (mostly batteries and whatever games Nintendo ships us). It's okay mostly, but harder on the body as I approach 40. I feel like I'm going to break at some point and just be unable to work anymore. It is unionized though so hopefully I could get an accommodation. I have served as a union shop steward and sit on the health and safety committee. But I basically got volunteered for both and was too afraid to say I don't want to do this. After ten years of steward thing I resigned from it, incredibly stressful role often having to see employees get fired for things they didn't realize was technically theft. No warnings ever given once they caught you and often times I would need to spend 4 or 5 hours writing paperwork and statements to union about meetings and it basically wiped me out for a week or two if I had one. I still sit of health and safety though.

Worked on a startup games website and podcast through some online mutuals; that revealed I don't want to do that, but I was also working at the grocery store so it probably impacted it, if it was paid and I could have only worked on the games stuff it might have been better, but turning a leisure outlet into work production is brutal and it felt like I could never turn off and enjoy life anymore. Also the mutuals who were running the site slowly revealed to be more chud like than I thought so I have slowly melted away from them.

Teaching English as a Second language for high school immigrants (mostly from mexico and japan and Korea). I got my certificate to this right before covid started so had to wait until 2023 before they started practicums. They hired me once I finished that for summer school classes and immediately found myself overwhelmed and shockingly underpaid despite making over 40 bucks an hour. Mostly because I had like 3 - 4 hours of prep time for a class, which I didn't get paid so I was making about the same as my grocery store job, with a significantly longer commute, more stress. So after subbing for the winter semester I declined to take a larger role with that job.

Nothing I do has ever felt good, or let me feel comfortable, but I continue to need to work. And during 2014 until 2021 I had a mortgage that I was often paying off by myself because my ex would get tired of their job and quit or work so badly until they fired them (so they wouldn't have to bother quitting which is funny but kind of rude to me), so during those 7 years I think I had maybe 3 weeks of vacation.

I played the Lakehouse for Alan Wake 2, which was quite short (3 hours) but it was high quality, with some excellent gameplay modifications to basically let you turn off combat (one shot kill, invulnerable, infinite ammo, infinite flashlight power) so I was able to ignore an apparently terrible boss fight.

It's a pretty obvious stab from remedy at the notion of using AI to mimic art, but I love when the subtext becomes the text itself so I enjoyed it.

Continuing through master rank monster hunter rise. Beta for wilds begins tomorrow though so I'll sample the various weapons and try to figure out what weapon I'll focus on this game (I've played hammer, sword and shield, dual blade, light bowgun, switch axe and charge blade) I'm leaning towards hunting horn I think, but might want to try heavy bowgun, and great sword is always tempting.

UFO 50. I have cherried the first game, barbuta.(basically beat it with a special condition that is revealed after beating it the first time).

I've tried about 9 games so far. Taking each game fairly slowly, there's a good mix of light games and thinking games already so I'm going to focus on beating them before I try the other 40 games. I have seen the demo reel of other games in the collection and am very excited to try them all out.

Oh and I'm replaying monster hunter rise currently. Learning charge blade. Just hit high rank and its going good, I have a backup dual blade if I hit a wall of a monster. But I only used it once already to farm some parts since I struggle with hitting specific location with charge blade currently. I have played entirely through sunbreak already and reached like anomaly rank 200 something. Not sure how far I'll get on this playthrough but I certainly want to farm some anomaly hunts.

I've really been enjoying ranged touch network of podcasts lately. They have: Baldur's Gate replay podcasts (mages and murder dad's), Stephen King book podcasts (just King things), fallout games podcast (too much future), video game academia discussion (game studies study buddies), sci fi/fantasy book club (shelved by genre), A homestar runner retrospective podcast (homestuck made this world)

I think they're leftists, they're certainly anti-liberals at least, and they are funny and knowledgeable about things and I always learn more about anything when I listen to their content.

I loved pretty much all of it. Exploring and finding fragments was very fun, the bosses were a nice challenge mostly. Heading south and finding the cerulean coast was amazing. Almost missed the southeast frenzy forest because I missed a single ladder in shadow fortress. Overall it was just superb.

The only boss I struggled with was of course radahn who I spent about 2 hours figuring out how to beat. Thankfully I love summoning for fights so I don't struggle like people who try to solo bosses like insane people. But finding a summon who wouldn't die instantly basically left me with the mimic tear, so mimic it was. Still took an hour of learning the dodge timings and hoping to get a good block on the instant death move. And learning to force him to fight me in phase 1 while letting mimic hold aggro in phase 2 while I blast him with a ranged weapon special. Endurance management ultimately is what wins the fight though. Especially since I use just a medium shield and was only at about 35 endurance. Probably won't fight him ever again.

But what a journey it was.

It would be so weird to see it become a papers please, where you need to decide which people can work on the farm, and if you get the spies you can have your produce poisoning the troops, or diverting excess to the Gotoron troops..and it culminates in air strikes on the farm and a tank battle across the village.

Terrible games for windows live interface that basically killed multiplayer potential of the game.

I thought it was a mid RTS, but I was super Warcraft 3 and custom game addicted back then.

Playing stardew, balatro, dragons dogma 2, and hell divers.

Stardew I think about the most, hell divers and balatro scratch itches. Lately I've been craving playing factorio or satisfactory but I want to get more through stardew first.

I'm really looking forward to Hades 2 currently, and will likely drop everything to play the early access to completion when I can. Otherwise monster hunter wilds is due next year and it's the big thing I'm waiting for. Hopefully we get some news this summer.

More details, since I'm getting paid to shit now.

Nearing the end of Lie of P. It has been a very solid souls like game, that is sort of like bloodborne meets sekiro. I'd say I enjoy it more than bloodborne (the worst of the souls games for me) but far less than sekiro. It's trying to do too much I think, with the only thing that really matter the ability to perfect block a series of boss combos. Which is very meh to me, because the timing always feels not quite there. Sekiro it was forgiving enough on perfect blocks, with your side equipment being solid to assist you in a variety of ways. Lies of P arm parts are seemingly only useful between boss fights. Simply just too slow to be viable against any boss.

Wo Long, is like a weird half nioh, half sekiro but it leans towards being easier compared to Lies, with plenty of options to offset a skill deficiency and perfect parry being less needed but easier to time as well. It's a romance of three kingdoms game, which is a setting I adore so after I finish Lies I'm going to dig into some more.

Golden Idol and it's DLC have been excellent, a lovely mystery game where you figure what's happened by clues on the people in a scene and some logic, and some gaming of the systems. I'll be sad when I finish the final case, but the sequel was announced so hoping it's good.

Ravenswatch, is like a single session diablo thingy. You pick a fairy tale hero and try to stop the nightmares. You level up, and are given a choice of two traits to modify your skills, they can increase your power quite radically. It's in early access with the final act still being made. It's great to kill slightly less than an hour of time. Quite a bit of grinding to unlock all the traits for each hero though. My favorites being ice queen, beowulf, Aladdin, and the mermaid.

I've always been playing stardew with my partner maybe 3 hours a week when we have time. Been meaning to play more on my own time too but xmas gave me many games to play.

I also have Mario wonder to start.

For a nice simple train game that isn't really technical or complex I enjoy "Sid Meier's Railroads!"

It's like an arcade tycoon game. Pick an area and you can randomize the geography or use somewhat real life. You can grow cities by supplying products to them. And you'll have rival companies trying the same, you can buy them out if you're doing very well. It's a nice lite game I used to play while listening to podcasts.