The (late) Holiday Edition. Looking back, it feels like I didn’t really do much during the Christmas/New Year holidays. Sydney was in a mini-lockdown after a spike in covid-19 cases and so I spent most of it sitting indoors on my computers, so not a big change from usual. It was also quite rainy. But now that I’ve thought about it a bit more, I realise all my time was sucked in by Hades, which is a very very good game. Anyway, onto the list:
Hades
You fight, you die, you live again. It’s a core tenant for most video games and especially rogue-likes, but Hades makes it THE experience of the game. Playing as Zagreus, the son of the Greek god of the Underworld, Hades, the game has you fighting through level after level of the realm of the dead in an attempt to escape to the world of the living. But each time you die, you’re whisked away along the River Styx and end up back in the Underworld where you started. In doing so, Hades marries the narrative to it’s game mechanics in a way that very few games do. The story unfolds slowly as each escape attempt reveals more and more about Zagreus, his father and the state of the Underworld.
Cloudy with a max of 20. Humid. It’s the kind of weather that’s just in between. The kind of weather where you look out the window every so often wondering if it’s going to rain, but it hasn’t yet. The kind of weather where you’re not sure if you want to go out because it might rain, but at the same time, it might not. So you sit waiting for something to happen. Anything. And it doesn’t.
I’m on holidays from now until the New Year. Usually this kind of extended break would be full of plans and meetups but with the recent COVID outbreak, like the weather, plans are all but uncertain. I’m meant to go out for lunch tomorrow, but I’m not certain that will go ahead. I probably won’t know until tomorrow. So instead, here I am, making a new blog again.
This post was written for an old version of the blog. It may look a bit odd.
Sunny. About 30 degrees in Western Sydney. Zero rain all day and a slight chance of a light shower in the evening. A barely there westerly wind is meant to give way to a cooler southerly later in the afternoon. Some whispy cirrus clouds make the sky seem just that much more higher than usual.
The weather is a bit of a dream today. It’s that kind of ideal weather that makes you want to be outside doing stuff. The kind of weather that you mow the lawn in. The kind that makes that run actually seem fun. The kind that you have barbecues in, that couples take lazy walks through the park in together, that kids bike around the neighborhood or run amok in playgrounds in. It’s the kind of weather that distracts you from the Monday to come. It’s the kind of weather that almost makes you forget that the world is ending.