November 2021 Entry:
November was a heck of a month.
MISC=========================
- Bought Chicken Range thanks to viewers hitting our third community challenge goal (11.02). I did wish it was $20 like it normally was for a couple years. Had to get it while I could find it.
- Follower emotes became active for more streamers (11.02). I had already asked my cousin to create them ever since they were a thing to just wait for them to be used outside of Discord. And I'm glad others are using them especially to rate demos during Demo Showcases along with me.
- Power outage occurred (11.03). It stuck for a long time because I ate my dinner by a battery powered lamp just like during the winter outage. If I waited for about another half hour, I wouldn't have had to eat cold chicken in the dark.
- My N64 controllers arrived (11.04). It feels great and weighty.
- I tweeted "one step forward" for some reason (11.06). I couldn't remember at first, but it was after talking to Agent Blue about something important.
- Got my Metroid Dread posters (11.10). I missed out on the initial batch, but made sure to get them the second time I saw them available.
- After being in IceTokki's stream where she made pretzels, I checked Amazon for pretzel type snacks to buy. Ended up finding Snyder's of Hanover Pretzel Pieces Hot Buffalo Wing flavor (11.16). First taste was surprising. Took a while to start to like them. I have two more bags left.
- Ended up going to Angela Song Art's stream after one of mine. It had been a while since I had stopped by and I mentioned I had bought some of her old art. Got to look for what else she had available and saw she had shirts. Found a few designs I liked and ordered 2 shirts that arrived about a week later (11.18). Great stuff. I'll keep my eye out if she puts any other designs up.
- I knew that Jamie and Xander were coming into town for their wedding. A week prior I was invited to the wedding, but it was still unknown when the day would be. I had to miss the wedding due to scheduling, but was able to join for the game gathering a few days later (11.20). Met some new people, saw a few friends I had not seen in a while, and we all had a good time playing a bunch of games (Strider 2, Jackbox, IceCool, Bomberman, etc) and had some good talks. Great night.
- Haven't had a haircut in two years (11.23).
- My Black Friday purchase was New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe (11.23). It was half off and I had my $5 coupon to take care of shipping. I was baffled when I received an odd set of notifications of when the game was being delivered, ha. Check the Twitter link.
- For Round 20 of free Prime Video content, I decided to rewatch the Flame of Recca series. It was fun to relive after decades, but I was more critical of it this time. Mainly because there were things I didn't notice when I was younger. But doing this has made me want to do more series in the future instead of just a batch of movies.
WRESTLING=====================
- AEW Full Gear 2021 was really fun (11.13). Great matches all around.
- Survivor Series 2021 was also great (11.21). I got the majority of my predictions wrong, but it was a solid PPV. PS: I'm okay getting predictions wrong as long as I enjoy the show.
H.E.R.========================
- Because it's the holiday season, here's a short story about the first holiday party at HER (and a little more). I was in charge of activities and had Agent PQ help me out. I basically recreated a gameshow format I used to do with friends at holiday parties. I took the best of the best games and had the HER team and guests play them. They didn't all go according to plan, but I'm sure it set the tone for what to expect from me for the next few years and to see how the team reacted to doing silly things like that in general. First year; games. Second year; award show. Third year; voting award show. Fourth year, The Scarlet Spy (my favorite). Sixth year; Family Feud.
I'm pretty sure I mentioned this in previous blog entries, but I always looked forward to these holiday events as it was fun and nerve-wracking for me to put together. However, seeing the staff and guests relax and laugh was very rewarding. I was actually very disappointed to have not been asked to set things up again in our 5th year, but was glad to be asked for our last one.
GAMES=========================
- I knew of Ravva and the Cyclops Curse for a while now thanks to Voxgizer (Debonair Vox). I always mentioned to him and the developers that I'll play it once it's on the Switch. It came out in September and I just needed to figure out when to play it. And I finally did (11.01). Played through it 3 times and even had a really good run on my last one.
Based on stats, I would have been 3rd overall in speedruns. But I was actually first place in consoles. Debonair and the other time was for PC. So I had the first place speedrun world record on consoles for Ravva...for 29 days. GToTheNextLevel was interested in the game as well after hearing both Debonair and I talk about it. Eventually he played it. He beat a total of 5 times I think. He actually could have beaten my run with his fourth run, but got caught up a few times. But watching him on his last run I was nervous, but also excited. And then it happened. Congratulations to him. Will I try to get it back? Not anytime soon, but I'll make that attempt at least once.
- Demo Showcase 75 (11.03)
- Played our first Genesis game off Nintendo Switch Online with Gunstar Heroes (11.04). Never played it before, but I knew what it looked like and knew that lots of people liked it. It's good. Definitely enjoyed it. But the 100 minute challenge, not worth it, ha. I did it though.
- Vigor is not a bad free-to-play shooter (11.05). I enjoyed it, but I'm not the best at shooters in general. Plus it didn't hook me to want to keep playing more than I did.
- Replayed Streets of Rage 4 with the Mr. X Nightmare DLC (11.07-11.08). I liked the new characters added to use, especially Estelle and Shiva. Survival Mode was really fun too. Thanks to Rannchan and GToTheNextLevel for playing a few rounds with me. Part of me wants to go back to keep playing Survival to build everyone's stats, but it's very rare that I play games off stream anymore. Plus if I return to a game, I think of a reason to stream it, but this wouldn't be the case for this.
- Slayin 2 was fun (11.10-11.11). A favorite from a previous Demo Showcase. We beat it the first stream and made some goals for the second stream to "complete" it. Not 100% of everything as we still had to buy all the weapons (would have needed a third stream to do), but at least to collect everything else and complete all the challenges. Shout out to the viewers for our second hype train ever. Unexpected, but appreciated.
- The 3rd community challenge was Chicken Range (11.13). Worst game I've played this year, hands down. The motion controls were horrible especially with the rifle peripheral. Even outside the rifle, the motion controls are bad. We beat it and I'll never have to play it again, ha. Save your money and time and never play this.
- Played The Silver Case 2425 | The Silver Case for the first time (11.15-11.17). I said more curse words in 3 days than I have in 3+ years, ha. I still find it interesting for others to react when I do say bad words on the stream. But they were hooked and confused as much as I was with the story. Boo for my camera freezing in the last stream. Definitely looking forward to playing the prequel next month.
- Demo Showcase 76 was a unique one (11.19). I knew why as the set of demos were laid out. I had played Graceful Explosion Machine previously. It was actually my first eShop game I bought on the Switch. And Metroid Dread was already purchased and scheduled to be played in December. The demo did get me excited to play it though.
- Much like Streets of Rage 4, we returned to Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity with the Expansion Pass DLC (11.21-11.25). Had an issue at the beginning where the DLC wasn't activated even though I bought it. But I had it downloaded prior to changing to the OLED model so I had to redownload it again. We ended up getting all the characters and beat the additional story and collected all the memory quests. I wanted to also try and collect all the treasures and Koroks I missed last time, but time wouldn't be on our side. Had I maybe not gone for treasures, I might have been able to collect the last 2 Koroks that were in the base game's last stage, which is a long chapter obviously. That is something else I would like to go back and finish (treasures and Koroks, all quests...probably not). I'm definitely okay having another reason to return to Age of Calamity.
- Our second free-to-play game of the month was Rogue Company (11.28). Another shooter, but different to Vigor. I liked this one more.
- Sin & Punishment was our first N64 game off of Nintendo Switch Online (11.29). Much like Gunstar Heroes, I knew of this game. Unlike Gunstar Heroes, I actually played this on the Wii U Virtual Console. For about an hour...didn't get far. I got farther this time, but hit a wall with one boss sequence and was there for more than an hour. And we still had another chapter or two left...and I had no motivation to go further. I said it in the stream; I see why people like it, but I don't like it.
Cheers for the 3rd hype train on stream. Thank you to those that contributed.
ETC=========================
- HOT - Age of Violence (MV)
- SES - Dreams Come True (MV)
- HOT - The Promise of HOT (MV)
- TWICE - Scientist (MV)
Very fun song. I liked their outfits and performances for this one.
- Ryujin - Therefore I Am (Studio Choom)
Ryujin, you are so damn cool.
- Jang WooHyuk - Tonight (MV)
- Happy Birthday, BoA (11.05)
- Happy Birthday, Momo (11.09)
- The latter end of November...was not great. I don't really recall when things started happening, but I had started to lose more sleep than I had mentioned in previous entries. But I noticed my heart stuff slowly creeping back. I didn't know what set that off, but at one point I thought the 6 months of exercising were reset. Previous arm pain has gone away mostly, but there was one day it was pretty bad.
Not only that, but my best friend was coming to town for Thanksgiving weekend and was having her daughter baptized. I definitely was going to that and even warmed up to the invite of going to the renaissance fair the day before. She wasn't responding to texts for a while, but eventually let me know that she unfortunately got COVID. So she didn't even get to spend Thanksgiving out of town. That added to my stress. She's doing better now as of typing this (12.14).
It really has been rough. And as of typing this, I've been better. Unfortunately other things have happened. Everything fluctuates. Sometimes it's more obvious and sometimes I don't even remember anything is wrong. Pretty much take it day by day.
That's a wrap on November 2021. Thanks for reading. Thank you for your support. Be cool and be kind.
"Reprise the theme song and roll the credits."
