Mobile Games and Me – How Theme and Large Numbers Carry an Experience

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It’s been some years since I first saw my brother first playing a little Star Wars related mobile game called Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes. I peeked curiously every now and then as he dug out his phone to do his daily grind for a game in which you compose a team of either light or dark side (and in some cases a combination of both) to fight waves of enemies or other players. Sometimes I asked about the game, how it was balanced, how pay-to-win it was, how often do you actually get to play the game, etc. The fact that my brother would go on to explain things in detail, quite excitedly, helped further my interest in the game.

Man Sitting on the Sofa Holding a Mobile Phone

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko

I had seen one of my friends play similar games (with more of a East Asian style to them, however), but I didn’t really want to get involved due to how pay-to-win these sorts of games tend to be. In addition to that, the fact that these games are designed to manipulate you into using the product daily, to make it part of your daily rhythm, is something I quite dislike, but this is how pretty much everything is designed these days: Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc. As much as I (and many others) dislike it, the conditioning works because that’s just how our brains work. As we say in Finnish: apinaa koijataan (or “monkey is being bamboozled”). Those who this doesn’t work on are quite lucky in my opinion – you’re the smarter primates. Whatever the case, I had been looking for something little to add to my daily routine, so why not an addictive Skinner box? 

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Recap Attempt Three – 2024 Edition

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Hi. Hello. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’ve quite thoroughly neglected my own site for the last two three years (oh god) FOUR years. (I’m now finally getting back to writing again, so the third time’s the charm, right?) Is it because I kept growing weaker by the day and was unable to go out and about to take pictures? Yeah, kind of. Is it because I’ve been anxious about writing in general because I get the feeling that I should be working on my BA thesis instead? That too, definitely. It has been a rough couple of years.

The Physical

Peter Griffin in pain, holding his knee

A bit more on growing weaker. Aside from the usual vulnerability to infections due to my medication, GVHD has been kicking my ass by giving me sclerodermatous skin. An autoimmune disease to match an immunosuppressed individual. It, thankfully, is not the regular kind and it just applies to my skin. Some parts of my skin where it applies can’t grow hair and have abnormal skin pigmentation. Oh, and the main thing is the hardening and tightening of the skin. It started in my neck and kept creeping elsewhere for a good while before it was noticed. My neck kept tiring increasingly fast and I started having trouble walking longer distances. The movement of my arms and legs is rather inflexible nowadays. I stayed at a rehabilitation ward for a couple of weeks to regain some walking ability, but I still could not walk more than a hundred metres or so. Still can’t – I have to use a mobility aid to move any real distance when I’m not home. Still better than how things were until two years ago. At least now I don’t need to have a wheelchair to commit to a longer distance. All this has been treated via various methods with some success. Recovery is a very slow process, but there is improvement nonetheless. And whenever there’s been improvement, it’s been followed by setbacks undoing the progress gained in walking ability. Repeatedly. For years. I’m doing very well this year though, as I’ve been given asthma medication to help with the pitiful state of my lungs (which then makes exercise easier). Will have to see what the rest of the summer brings.

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The Fellow of Joensuu: Two Octobers

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Well now. It’s been ages since I last made a post that focused on pictures. I think it’s time to bring this “brief” pause to an end today!

It really has bothered me over the years that I’ve had some of these pictures from 2015 just sitting around, so I decided to put them together with the recent pictures I took in Joensuu. There are still more Autumn and Summer pictures that I’ve got lying around (some from Sweden as well), but they will get to have their moment at some point. Today we focus on pictures from Joensuu from the Octobers of 2015 and 2018.

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Icewind Dale – That’s a lot of Snow

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So I’ve gone through both Baldur’s Gate games and enjoyed them despite their flaws. I thought I would have taken a break from CRPGs, but I ended up just continuing on into Icewind Dale right after finishing Baldur’s Gate 2. This time the first game that I had was the Enhanced Edition (by Beamdog), and the second one was the regular edition Icewind Dale 2 as no Enhanced Edition for it exists (nor apparently can exist).

Now, I was expecting something similar to Baldur’s Gate, but some things ended up being a bit different from what I had gotten used to, most likely because I wanted to get out of my comfort zone of playing Good and Neutral characters. Let’s get into it then, shall we?

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The Woman in Black – My Unstructured Rant about Unnecessary Change (spoilers)

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The Woman In Black cover by Jamie Clark

I was in the middle of reading The Woman in Black when my girlfriend suggested that we could watch the film adaptation with Daniel Radcliffe playing the leading role of Arthur Kipps as long as I didn’t mind getting spoiled. I didn’t mind the idea and so we watched it. I was bothered when I saw that the adaptation was a very different story right from the start. What the film ended up being was a Hollywoodised jumpscare fest.

Needless to say, there will be significant spoilers from here on out.

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Baldur’s Gate II – Some Thoughts

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Intro

So I never got into some of the praised classics from the late Nineties and Two-thousands until fairly recently. I finished, for example, Deus Ex back in 2011 and Final Fantasy VII in 2016. I only finished Baldur’s Gate in 2017, and now, in 2018, I’ve managed to complete Baldur’s Gate 2.

The logo for Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn

All of these games have held up quite well despite the passage of time in my opinion, despite some of their janky mechanics from a modern standpoint. It can easily be seen why they are considered classics. But today I wanted to focus my post on Baldur’s Gate 2 because I felt rather strongly about it. The feelings were both positive and negative. I will begin with the positive and go on through to the obnoxious things.

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