Good afternoon, dear friend, reader of this post! We have reached Saturday once more, which is wonderful!! How are you? I hope you did have a good productive week! One step at a time for us all. As for me, this past week was a rough one. Monday and Tuesday I could barely sleep, and Wednesday, I finally snapped. I had a huge panic attack, and low blood pressure. I had to go to the hospital, and as such, I stayed there for the afternoon, got some exams done, took some necessary medicine, but overall I could return home on the same day. My mother snapped at me on Tuesday, and on Wednesday, even after the hospital. So, as you can see, it was far from a good week. Good news is that it is coming to a close. Very few moments of relief and joy, perhaps it could be different by the weekend. Not only that, but soon it will be my birthday, August 12! Birthdays are nice!
What are my overall plans for today? I am not sure... I already managed to play Pharaoh, and Victoria 3 as well. I decided to put the Victorian Century mod aside for this current playthrough, because it is too streamlined and scripted on its events, which is frustrating specially when you are playing as Austria. I do not want to burn out, specially after all I have been through across the week, but it is harder to control some aspects of it, anyway. I think this is the secret for a good strategy game, the mix of enough creative freedom with enough scripted events and objectives. Perhaps why Europa Universalis 4, at its best, works quite fine. The better mods for Victoria 3, and their Expanded content, are the ones that while adding new mechanics and journal events to this game, allow you freedom of movement, that Victorian Century does not allow, unfortunately... I hope I can visit Anno at some point, there is always something nice to do on the game, even if I feel tired and detached from it. Anno 1800 is a sandbox game, which can be a weakness, specially in comparison to Anno 1404, which is a touchstone of the franchise and that of the gaming world as a whole. The scenarios i Anno 1404 were great, while in Anno 1800, they arrived too late in it, when most people were already used to the dynamic of the sandbox. It is not entirely bad though, in fact, for a sandbox game, Anno 1800 works even. It does that by having a tangible progression, where you unlock buildings and monuments and new specialists, and to see your incredible cities grow! The mods make it even better, specially the ones that add variation to the residences of your population, the city becomes so appealing, architecturally alive! The game with no mods is perfectly great still, but as with most ones that allow for the dedicated gamers to add their flair to it, and with how seamless is the integration of most of them in Anno 1800, you would be missing out not taking it a chance on them. I wonder how the next entry, Anno 117, will do concerning the mods. I do hope such integration may reach the Anno 1800 standard of quality pretty soon, but the game will likely take some months to take full traction and start to properly gain cultural footprint, if any, should it be good in the first place. I also worry about the state of Ubisoft, given the company is in a terrible shape, and most of their branches collecting blunder after blunder. If anything, I hope Anno 117 may be released at all. None should take anything for granted.
I did mention my birthday is arriving, and I am very relieved and just happy to be almost completing another cycle of 365 days in my life. I will turn 27, which is a bit insane, hard to believe, what a blessing, and given, it has not been a tranquil one. I did improve my health quite significantly because of the weight loss, but one should not expect to be entirely free of problems entirely in one's life. It is not realistic. People have the equivocated notion of life as a novel, which in one hand I can absolutely appreciate and even emulate some of that, but it does not work entirely, given novels end, and life keeps going. Many fairy tales end with happily ever after, which is definitely desirable, but it is a poetic license, given as I mention, life does not end when you get some closure in something. I can only hope the days leading to my birthday to be carefree and joyful. I hope I can chat with my best friend, Johannes, but given it is so hard to do so, as he is always busy with his trips across Western and Central Europe, I am not holding my breath...
Glad I could write a bit today! It has been, around me, one hellscape, but that is nothing new, Brazil being a hellscape is a Tuesday Afternoon. If I did not write on the philosophical and other points on this, it is just because I had other things in mind, and really, it is frustrating to see the decline in many western places in the world, knowing what is going wrong and even have a vague notion on how to move towards a lesser bad place, and seeing populations going, at times gleefully, towards a worse off place. A place with less free market, more suffocating technocratic frame, less reasons to smile because you are the owner of your own nose, plenty to feel exhausted and demoralized, because the state still grows and ever so much does its best, day and night, to reduce you to cattle, either to take your workings, either to butcher you altogether. There is plenty to write about on those themes, but at least today, I don't want to add even more disconnected bits to this piece. We'll leave it here, because it is getting too big, maybe next time I am here, I may mention something calling my eye, but truth be told, I'd rather have a week with no major bad incidents or developments, than one where I write filled with anguish.
I hope to return here on my beloved publication real soon, hopefully by some point next week. We are reaching the end of July, which is a milestone. I will write a post wrapping up this present month, and kickstarting my birthday season, if any! We'll see. I wish you the best! Keep up being pretty amazing, my friend!
Comments
Post a Comment