2022 media!

Signed-off-by: Xe Iaso <me@christine.website>

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+---
+title: Media I experienced in 2022
+date: 2022-12-27
+tags:
+ - fhqwhgads
+---
+
+Over the year I took some notes on the games, hardware, and TV shows I
+experienced. Here's the best and worst of what I experienced and some thoughts
+on all of it. I hope you enjoy all these mini-reviews.
+
+## Games I played
+
+I know that I'm getting dangerously close to becoming a game reviewer here, but
+here's some thoughts about my experiences playing through a bunch of good games
+this year. These are in no particular order.
+
+Originally I wanted to try and come up with some summary to what I think my
+"game of the year" is. I can't do that. There have been too many fantastic games
+that have either come out or come into my greasy mitts that I don't think I can
+summarize the entire year into a single game like I have previously.
+
+<xeblog-toot url="https://pony.social/@cadey/109586858299858972"></xeblog-toot>
+
+### Pokémon Legends Arceus
+
+I wrote [a lot about this game in
+March](https://xeiaso.net/blog/pokemon-legends-arceus-review-2022-03-07), but
+honestly it's one of the best Pokémon games I've played in years. Pokémon as a
+series has been a very stagnant affair. It really hasn't evolved very much over
+the years and the mainline Pokémon games are just further attempts at refining
+the vision they set out to meet in Red and Blue.
+
+<xeblog-toot url="https://pony.social/@withinscreenshots/109583600146489858"></xeblog-toot>
+
+Arceus is different. Arceus took a huge risk and actually _innovated_ on the
+core formula. You aren't some kid that was selected by the professor or
+whatever, you're some random teen that gets sucked into a temporal vortex by God
+and ends up being the most proficient Pokémon trainer Hisui has ever known.
+Arceus is closer to the vision of something like Pocket Monster Hunter. There
+are big fields to explore in and completing your Pokédex takes more than just
+catching them all. You have to interact with the Pokémon, feed them, and more to
+really study them. I love it. It's easily a 9/10 game and if you're off put by
+how Pokémon games have evolved over the years you should give it a try.
+
+### Elden Ring
+
+I've always loved the aesthetics and gameplay design of Dark Souls, but I've
+never been quite good enough at the game in order to finish it. Dark Souls is a
+very confusing game, and I'm pretty sure this is done intentionally to make the
+player feel insignificant. You are an anonymous undead hero that wanders the
+world with the hope of killing off the rulers of the world to reshape things in
+your image. This game is actually a fairly decent metaphor for what it's like to
+be openly trans in a workplace that claims to support diversity and inclusion
+but doesn't actually take steps to actually be inclusive.
+
+<xeblog-conv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">I was going to make a talk about this
+whole Dark Souls as a metaphor for what really happens when diversity and
+inclusion are either only given lip service or are not taken seriously, but I
+may just produce it as a video for the blog site. The talk wasn't accepted at
+any of the conferences I applied to with it. If the video ends up doing well I
+may turn it back into a talk next year.</xeblog-conv>
+
+Elden Ring hits the same way that Dark Souls does, except the player is given a
+lot more freedom. You're still some nobody that gets dumped into the world with
+a sword and a dream of becoming the Elden Lord. It's a fully open world game
+complete with deep mechanical depth, dungeons to explore, and an absolutely
+absurd number of bosses to fight. I love it so much, but I haven't taken the
+time to finish it yet. I'm probably 90 hours in and I got past the fire giant
+(oh god the fire giant was hard) and I hit a wall due to my build being a
+squishy glass cannon mage build. They nerfed one of the strategies I was using
+to take out bosses quickly (mixing magic attack up and temporary infinite FP),
+and that completely destroyed the momentum of my run.
+
+<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-media/1245620_20221226230636_1"></xeblog-picture>
+
+Either way, I love this game. It's a perfect take on the Dark Souls formula and
+I'm sure I'll come back to it to slowly chip away at things and claim the title
+of Elden Lord. Just not any time soon, but that's okay. If it wins game of the
+year, I wouldn't be surprised. It's highly acclaimed for a reason and I give it
+a 10/10.
+
+<xeblog-conv name="Cadey" mood="enby">It did actually win Game of the Year!
+Congrats to the team, they did a good.</xeblog-conv>
+
+I played this game on my gaming PC and my Steam Deck. It ran amazingly on PC,
+but the Deck required some fiddling with settings. I ended up at 600p40 with FSR
+enabled at sharpness 3. That gets you a nice smooth 40 frames per second which
+isn't perfect, but more than enough for accurate gameplay.
+
+### Kirby and the Forgotten Land
+
+Kirby has always been near and dear to my heart. The Kirby series of games has
+you play as a lackadaisical pink puffball that just wants to vibe with his
+friends and eat sweets. You fight off universe-threatening bosses by _consuming
+your enemies and stealing their powers for your own_ in an innovative power up
+system. This series has been in a constant state of stagnation for many years. A
+lot of the newer games were minor incremental changes to the core formula of
+going to find the bad guy and shooting it until it dies. I'm not saying that
+they were bad, Kirby games are always highly polished and _fun to play_; it just
+gets a bit samey to do the same thing over and over with different universal
+threats.
+
+<xeblog-toot url="https://pony.social/@withinscreenshots/109587225045508785"></xeblog-toot>
+
+Kirby and the Forgotten Land innovates on the Kirby formula by properly throwing
+Kirby into the third dimension. Instead of being 3d models on a 2d plane,
+Forgotten Land lets Kirby move in massive 3d stages in any direction you want.
+It combines tight platforming, light puzzle elements, and the typical
+collectathon gameplay in a new way that is lovely to play through.
+
+<xeblog-conv name="Numa" mood="delet">So you're going to just skip over the fact
+that Kirby is the reincarnation of the God of Death?</xeblog-conv>
+
+<xeblog-conv name="Cadey" mood="angy">No, stop that, that will scare people away
+from playing the game. Yes the Kirby series has traditionally focused on cosmic
+horror being wrapped up in smiles as a mainly child-targeted series, but
+Forgotten Land is a game that is much more targeted at core gamers. Though I'm
+fairly sure that if you gave this game to a kid they'd have an absolute
+blast.</xeblog-conv>
+
+It's a 10/10 game. I'd say it's one of the best games I've played this year. It
+looks gorgeous. Kirby has never controlled better.
+
+<xeblog-toot url="https://pony.social/@withinscreenshots/109587224845384370"></xeblog-toot>
+
+### Forza Horizon 5
+
+I'm not really a racing game person, but I like to play Forza Horizon 5 with my
+husband and some friends on Discord. We'll all hop into a voice chat and then
+fire up Forza and just have some fun racing around and goofing off with cars.
+It's good clean fun, and this time you get to do it in a beautiful
+photorealistic environment that looks and _feels_ like Mexico should.
+
+<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-media/1551360_20221227122142_1"></xeblog-picture>
+
+Many racing games want to focus on the simulation aspect of driving, the
+realistic impact of aerodynamics, or other things that I personally find kind of
+boring. Forza Horizon games are all about the joy of doing stupid stuff with
+cars. You can customize builds and tune things so that you can try to do things
+better. Each type of car has its own quirks and overall it just _feels_ fun to
+play.
+
+<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-media/1551360_20221227122326_1"></xeblog-picture>
+
+I don't really go out of my way to play it alone and I have to be in the right
+mood to play it, but Forza Horizon 5 is one of the best games I've played this
+year. It's nice and cozy. I'd give it a 8/10 rating with the caveat that I
+really don't like racing games all that much. My husband loves it, so there's
+that.
+
+I played this game on my gaming PC and my Steam Deck. It ran great on both. No
+settings changes were needed on the Deck.
+
+### Xenoblade Chronicles 3
+
+I've tried to write something longer about this game for the blog a few times
+and I haven't really been able to end up with anything coherent. I'm going to
+try to write something smaller this time: it's good. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is
+not only a technical showcase on the Switch, it's a _masterpiece_ in narrative
+design, worldbuilding, music, and overall character design. It's one of the best
+games Monolith Soft has ever put out. I'm going to be mostly focusing on the
+gameplay aspects and avoid talking about the story to avoid spoilers. All story
+content I talk about was in one of the first trailers for the games.
+
+<xeblog-toot url="https://pony.social/@withinscreenshots/109583569501728880"></xeblog-toot>
+
+You play as a bunch of weirdos that follow the former enemies now friends trope
+and set off across the world after they get labeled as targets to everyone for
+plot reasons. Every character has their own specialty class (swordfighter, twin
+rings tank, DPS healer, ranged tactical healer, meathead tank, and giant hammer
+user) and they all complement eachother perfectly. I could easily see that team
+balance lasting the entire game without the game being horrible.
+
+<xeblog-toot url="https://pony.social/@withinscreenshots/109583599804802439"></xeblog-toot>
+
+However Monolith didn't stop there. They kept going. Every character can get
+proficiency in every other character's class. When you meet hero characters in
+the world, you can assume their classes as your own and mix them in to give the
+combat system a lot of depth. Chain attacks are completely reworked and
+hilariously tactical. The combat system is both more simple and more deep than
+the one in Xenoblade 2, and I can easily see people finding ways to make it even
+more elaborate as more DLC is released and discoveries are made.
+
+<xeblog-toot url="https://pony.social/@withinscreenshots/109583569759228928"></xeblog-toot>
+
+Other than that it's your standard jRPG. Fetch bread, slay archons. It's a 10/10
+game, but I still think that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is my favorite game in the
+series. It's well worth playing if you are a fan of jRPGs polished to
+perfection. There's not many game developers that will go to the level of
+creating real-world functional replicas of in-game items to help them with the
+worldbuilding and music writing process, and that level of attention to detail
+_shows_.
+
+<xeblog-conv name="Numa" mood="delet">bias much.</xeblog-conv>
+
+It's a shame they got robbed of best music in the game awards. Not many music
+teams will design their own instruments so they can use the unique microtonal
+features of the instruments to their own advantage. This game is a must-play.
+
+### Splatoon 3
+
+Every major console has a Quake. Splatoon is Nintendo's quake. It is a
+fast-paced multiplayer 3rd person shooter where you play as squid creatures and
+your goal is to cover the ground with as much ink for your team as you can.
+There's a huge varity of weapons to choose from and I'm pretty sure there's a
+near infinite skill ceiling. I love Splatoon and Splatoon 3 does more of what
+works with the the squid kids.
+
+<xeblog-toot url="https://pony.social/@withinscreenshots/109583557980648763"></xeblog-toot>
+
+One of the side modes in Splatoon is Salmon Run, a PvE mode where a team of 4
+fights off hordes of Salmonids similar to CoD Zombies. One of the big things
+they added was the ability to yeet eggs across long distances at the cost of
+most of your ink tank. This _completely flipped Salmon Run on its head_ and has
+made it my go-to game mode.
+
+This game is really good. I love how it plays, how it feels and I want to see
+more. I give it a 10/10.
+
+### Stray
+
+Oh to be a cat wandering around Kowloon walled city full of robots. Stray is one
+of the more unique games that I played this year, and I really liked the time I
+spent with it. Stray is all about immersing you into the life of a stray cat
+wandering around an abandoned city full of robots. It is _gorgeous_, it looks
+painterly and takes full advantage of Unreal Engine 4's lighting systems to
+really _sell_ the idea of you being a cat in a cyberpunk city.
+
+<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-media/1332010_20220719210057_1"></xeblog-picture>
+
+I love how this game looks. I love how it controls. I just didn't love how it
+felt like it wasn't really evolving the walking simulator genre beyond you
+playing as a cat. Some of the "failure" scenes are kind of cruel looking.
+Overall, this is a solid 8/10 game for me. It's a lovely experience but it's not
+something you should really go back to more than once in a few years. It's a lot
+like The Stanley Parable in that regard.
+
+<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-media/1332010_20220719203754_1"></xeblog-picture>
+
+Either way, the game knows what it is and does that really well. It's worth
+playing if the cutscene about monsters attacking a kitty aren't too much for
+you.
+
+I played this game on my gaming PC. I am told it runs okay on Steam Deck, but I
+didn't test it there.
+
+### Super Metroid
+
+I forget who said this, but one of the speed runners that my husband and I watch
+said that Super Metroid is an acquired taste. Somehow I've managed to avoid
+sitting down and playing through the whole game and after playing it to the end,
+I can understand why people think that this is one of the best games ever made.
+Super Metroid is one of my favorite games. It's very simple yet fair and
+mechanically deep. It's earned its place on the high end of top 10 games lists
+easily.
+
+Super Metroid is Samus' third big adventure, this time she heads back to Planet
+Zebes to finish off the Space Pirates for good. Through events that aren't
+explained, she loses access to all of her power ups from Metroid II and delivers
+the baby Metroid to Ceres station in the hope that its energy can help humanity
+for peace. The Space Pirates want Metroids so they can take over the galaxy. The
+space cops are not keen about this and they send in Samus to go wreck shit up
+until the Space Pirates are no longer a threat. You explore Planet Zebes, fight
+all the bosses, save or kill the animals, and overall have complete freedom in
+the 2d sandbox to do whatever you want.
+
+<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-media/Super_Metroid_Japan_USA_EnJa-220718-214018"></xeblog-picture>
+
+There are sequence breaking tools like wall jumping, shinesparking, and infinite
+bomb jumps that were intentionally programmed into the game. When I say that
+it's a sandbox, I mean that you can literally defeat the bosses in any order you
+want. Speedruns will usually do the bosses in _reverse order_. This gives
+players an overwhelming sense of freedom and it easily allows for an infinite
+skill ceiling and infinite replayability. 10/10 game, it's a must-play for a
+reason.
+
+<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-media/Super_Metroid_Redux-220721-175515"></xeblog-picture>
+
+### Hyper Metroid
+
+Super Metroid may be one of the best games ever made, but future releases in the
+series have highlighted that there are severe ergonomics problems that can
+easily be polished out of Super Metroid with only minor improvements on the game
+itself. There's an entire rom hacking community for Super Metroid that works on
+trying to see what they can do with the game and they push both it and the
+hardware to their absolute limits.
+
+<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-media/1118310_20221227134046_1"></xeblog-picture>
+
+One of the most commonly used "project base" roms is called "Project Base" and
+includes a bunch of ergonomic improvements from future games (such as the
+ability to start spinning in the air if you hit the button again). Hyper Metroid
+takes Project Base and built a whole new game on top of it. It just feels _so
+good_ to play. Samus is responsive and shooting has never felt better.
+
+There's the same Dramatic Personae in Samus, Ridley, Kraid, Drayghon, and
+Phantoon; but the world and goals are completely remixed and flipped on their
+heads. In vanilla Super Metroid your goal is to kill the bosses and then fight
+Mother Brain, but Hyper Metroid places 15 Tourian gates around Zebes and you
+must unlock them all in order to fight Mother Brain. Like Super Metroid you are
+dumped into the world with absolute freedom and the game is _designed to allow
+for sequence breaking_. I'm pretty sure that my casual playthrough had a few
+accidental sequence breaks because I just wanted to see if I could get places.
+
+One of the other big changes it makes to the Metroid formula is the ammo system.
+Super Metroid normally has a few kinds of ammo for missiles, super missiles
+(affectionately known as supers), and power bombs. You have to track the ammo
+for each independently and this can lead to situations where you run out of
+supers at the worst time. Hyper Metroid introduces a universal ammo system. When
+you pick up a missile tank, you get 5 more ammo. Each missile uses 1 ammo to
+fire, each super missile uses 10 ammo to fire, and each power bomb uses 15 ammo
+to fire. This turns the resource management of Super Metroid on its head and
+gives players a lot more freedom in how they handle encounters.
+
+<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-media/1118310_20221227134823_1"></xeblog-picture>
+
+I think this is a 10/10 game. It feels like it could have been made by the same
+development team behind Super Metroid and overall it's well worth your time.
+Metroid games have always been made as puzzles and Hyper Metroid delivers in the
+world design department.
+
+I played both this and Super Metroid with RetroArch using bsnes as the SNES
+emulator. It ran like butter.
+
+### Metroid Prime
+
+I've somehow avoided playing Prime in the same way I avoided playing Super. This
+was a mistake. Metroid Prime is a _seamless_ adaptation of the Super Metroid
+formula to a 3D game. One of the big things that Metroid games in 2D do is give
+you _complete freedom_ and set up a bunch of keys and locks. You need missiles
+to open some doors, so you need to go find them and then you can get around to
+many more doors left inaccessible before. The game has aged like fine wine and
+I'm fairly certain that it could appease the appetite of modern gamers with only
+minor touchups.
+
+<xeblog-conv name="Cadey" mood="coffee">I tried to get screenshots of more than
+the opening area, but the Steam Deck seems to have put those screenshots in
+god-knows-where as jpg files. Please bear with me!</xeblog-conv>
+
+<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-media/14808306_20221227150446_1"></xeblog-picture>
+
+I did play through Prime with Primehack, a fork of the Wii/GameCube emulator
+Dolphin that adds the ability for Metroid Prime to be controlled like other
+modern FPS games using a standard twin-stick setup. Playing it on my Steam Deck
+has been _a blast_ and I easily get 4+ hours of batttery life on a single
+charge.
+
+<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-media/14808306_20221227150511_1"></xeblog-picture>
+
+I understand why this is on peoples lists of all time best games. It is worthy
+of all the praise it has gotten, it's a shame that Prime couldn't save the
+GameCube from relative obscurity in the console market. It is a 10/10 killer app
+that can only be relatively improved by minor tweaks such as having a normal FPS
+control scheme (granted, this didn't exist at the time of Prime's release). I
+can't believe that I didn't play it before this year. Don't make the same
+mistake I did.
+
+### No Man's Sky
+
+I've tried to get into No Man's Sky a few times and it's just never stuck. When
+I was bedridden with COVID in June, I fired it up on my Deck and vibed out with
+it. It's a fantastic game and the team at Hello Games should be applauded for
+how they're treating the game over the years. It launched as a barely functional
+prototype and has been slowly refined into the game that the hype promised. It's
+easily the best turnaround story in gaming history.
+
+<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-media/275850_20221226225058_1"></xeblog-picture>
+
+No Man's Sky is a universe-scale procedurally generated sandbox/exploration game
+where you fly from system to system in search of the center of the universe. You
+play as an anonymous traveler and are given a starship, a multi-tool, and a
+dream. Every aspect of gameplay extends out from those basic three parts. You
+can build your own base, manage a fleet of merchant ships, smuggle counterfeit
+goods from pirate systems into freer parts of the universe, build the starship
+armada of your dreams, and more.
+
+<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-media/275850_20221226225302_1"></xeblog-picture>
+
+It is quite possibly one of the biggest scale games I've ever played. The size
+of the playable game world is so large that it's impossible for humans to
+comprehend. We're talking on the order of 317,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 square
+kilometers of playable space. The Milky Way galaxy has a radius of about 50,000
+light years. If the entire world in No Man's Sky was mapped onto a single square
+plane, one edge of that plane would be 0.06 light years long.
+
+<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-media/275850_20221226225427_1"></xeblog-picture>
+
+One of the only downsides to this game is that everything is procedurally
+generated. This leaves things feeling a bit _samey_ across planets and systems.
+If you've seen one volcano planet, you've largely seen them all. The game tries
+to compensate for this with alien ruins being scattered across the universe with
+tales of fallen civilizations and universal decay, and I think they do a good
+job with this.
+
+I'd give No Man's Sky a 9/10. It's multiplayer leaves a lot of room for
+replayability. Community expeditions give you a lot of freedom to explore with
+more explicit goals. It runs perfectly on the Steam Deck and gets you hours of
+battery life. I'd be willing to recommend it if you want to vibe out and have a
+good time.
+
+### Pokémon Sword
+
+I have been a Pokémon fan for a very long time. The first game I played was
+Pokémon Diamond on the Nintendo DS in middle school. I easily put 200 hours into
+that game. It not only introduced me to the world of Pokémon, but it also gave
+me the freedom to explore and handcraft a team to my exact demands.
+
+When Sword was annoucned, one of the things they mentioned was that the game
+would not have all 800+ Pokémon at release. This scandal was later called
+"Dexit" (in reference to Brexit because Sword was set in a Pokémon world version
+of England), and that scandal's social media outrage cycle made me avoid the
+game entirely.
+
+This was a mistake.
+
+<xeblog-toot url="https://pony.social/@withinscreenshots/109371225744806341"></xeblog-toot>
+
+Pokémon Sword reminded me of all the thigns I love about the more "classic"
+Pokémon formula. You are some kid who gets battle monsters and is told to go
+save the world. The art is crisp and has this lovely anime shader to it.
+Everything feels internally coherent and it runs _so well_ on the Switch. It
+makes me forget that the Tegra X1 chip is almost a decade old as I immerse
+myself into the world of Pokémon.
+
+<xeblog-toot url="https://pony.social/@withinscreenshots/109388278313080789"></xeblog-toot>
+
+One of the major weaknesses of the game was that it didn't bring much new to the
+table. It mostly was an incremental evolution of the core Pokémon games on the
+3DS. I suspect that this game was originally intended as a 3DS game but hastily
+ported to the Switch after hearing that the 3DS was getting axed. However, by
+being so derivative, it allows you to just focus on the game and bring your past
+experiences to the table so you can explore the world of Galar to your heart's
+content. Dynamaxing was super dumb though.
+
+Sword also introduced Wild Areas, which I believe are the future of the series.
+In Wild Areas you can run around and see Pokémon in the world around you. You
+have full camera control and fighting a wild Pokémon starts with you walking up
+to it and harassing it. This allows you to _avoid battles you don't want to
+fight_ and avoid having to game the RNG to avoid it rolling an encounter for
+you.
+
+Overall, this game is _fantastic_ and it's exactly what I want out of a Pokémon
+game. It's the kind of game that is best enjoyed with a warm coffee and while
+under a blanket on the couch. It's very cozy and I love it so much for that.
+It's a 9/10 game, could be a 10/10 game if the entire game world was a Wild
+Area.
+
+### Pokémon Violet
+
+Pokémon Violet was the _big ticket release_ for Pokémon in 2022. It is the next
+generation of Pokémon and they took a lot of the ideas of Legends Arceus
+combined with the Wild Areas from Sword and Shield and then delivered a truly
+open world experience. When you fight wild Pokémon, you do it _in the open
+world_. You fight traines _in the open world_. You can run around, fly on your
+bicycle, and more. You can even play with your friends co-op with the Union
+Circle, allowing my husband and I to truly play this game _together_, not just
+adjacently in the same room.
+
+When you are playing together with the Union Circle and exploring together,
+version-exclusive Pokémon will show up around you. My husband has Pokémon
+Scarlet and one of the Pokémon you can't catch there is Bagon (a dragon
+Pokémon). When we adventure together, he can catch Bagon and all the other
+version-exclusives. This eliminates the need for a lot of random trading and we
+love the results.
+
+I didn't mention it above, but Pokémon Sword and Shield introduced Raid Battles,
+which let you fight against a more powerful than usual creature in a
+many-against-one fashion. Violet takes this further with Tera Raid battles,
+which not only have music by Toby Fox (yes, the Undertale Toby Fox), but also
+let you get a _guaranteed catch_ for the Pokémon you are fighting. This can help
+you clean out the remainders of your Pokédex that you just can't find in the
+open world.
+
+<xeblog-toot url="https://pony.social/@withinscreenshots/109390898064213862"></xeblog-toot>
+
+Every Pokémon game has a gimmick, and this one lets you _change the type of your
+Pokémon mid-battle_. This adds an entirely new layer to the Pokémon metagame and
+I can't wait to see how people abuse that for fun and profit. I'm already
+starting to plan out a competitive team.
+
+<xeblog-toot url="https://pony.social/@withinscreenshots/109365757807939518"></xeblog-toot>
+
+Violet is also a lot more refined than past Pokémon games. Items that you need
+to train your Pokémon to competitive status are all in one store for fairly
+cheap instead of spread out over the entire world. Every Pokémon center has a TM
+machine and a Poké Mart, and they are littered around the world such that one's
+always nearby. All of the dead time in other Pokémon games has been
+_eliminated_, even moreso than with Arceus.
+
+I would love to say that this is the game of the year and probably the best
+experience you can have with Pokémon, but I can't. There are huge performance
+and graphical issues that intrude into the core game flow. There's some kind of
+memory leak that means you need to restart the game every few hours to avoid the
+game chugging down to 15 FPS or worse. Some of the late game cutscenes can run
+at slideshow paces.
+
+<xeblog-toot url="https://pony.social/@withinscreenshots/109368310013234498"></xeblog-toot>
+
+It really makes me wonder what Pokémon games could look like if they targeted
+the PS5, PC, or Xbox consoles instead. The Tegra X1 that powers the Nintendo
+Switch is a very capable and versatile chip, but you need a lot of care and
+optimization put into development to really make it shine. Pokémon Violet
+doesn't have that level of polish and it sadly shows.
+
+<xeblog-toot url="https://pony.social/@withinscreenshots/109371148337126374"></xeblog-toot>
+
+Personally I wish there were more outfit options than school uniforms, but that
+may have been a compromise made in development to make the deadline.
+
+I absolutely love what they are doing with Scarlet and Violet, they are taking
+the series in the right direction. However, the presentation leaves a lot to be
+desired. I can ignore grapical issues up until they interfere with the core game
+loop. Scarlet and Violet do a bad job of hiding the fact that they are running
+on an underpowered Tegra X1 chip. I have to give it a 7/10 as it is right now,
+but with significant performance improvements it could easily be a 9/10 or 10/10
+game.
+
+## Hardware I picked up
+
+I managed to pick up some fun hardware this year. I was gonna write more about
+each of these, but I guess this has become a bit of an omnibus post with a whole
+bunch of details about a bunch of things I did in 2022. Soooo I'm gonna just
+roll with it and talk about some of the hardware I picked up!
+
+### PS5 (disc drive)
+
+When I moved to Canada, I brought my PS4 Pro with me. This ended up becoming the
+tool that my husband and I used to watch YouTube with while eating dinner at
+home. After finally getting my hands on a PS5 after trying for a year, it's
+now...the tool that my husband and I use to watch YouTube with while eating
+dinner at home.
+
+<xeblog-toot url="https://pony.social/@withinscreenshots/109564109317450120"></xeblog-toot>
+
+One of the Youtubers I follow named Pyrocynical has gotten a lot of flak since
+the PS5's release by saying that the PS5 has no games. Honestly, I have to agree
+with him. There are not really that many compelling PS5 games that aren't going
+to make their way to PC anyways (probably as a defense against people writing
+emulators).
+
+Overall it's a great bit of kit, but as a hardcore gamer I really have my gaming
+hardware needs met by my Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck and gaming PC. It's a good
+console, it just needs good exclusives that I can't get a better experience with
+on PC.
+
+<xeblog-conv name="Cadey" mood="enby">Until then it's a great YouTube and Plex
+client for the living room!</xeblog-conv>
+
+### Steam Deck
+
+The Steam Deck is a handheld PC that runs Arch Linux and Steam games. It is a
+phenomenal device and I do not regret my purchase in the slightest. I bought the
+512 GB model and popped a 512 GB microSD card in it. I currently have 60 games
+on it and about 100 GB of space free.
+
+Soem newer games will need a bit of configuration tweaking to get the best
+experience, but you can usually search the name of the game on
+[/r/SteamDeck](https://reddit.com/r/steamdeck) or
+[ProtonDB](https://protondb.org) and get help making games work.
+
+<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-media/Screenshot_20221226_225624"></xeblog-picture>
+
+It's a hackable Linux system that plays games _really well_. If you want a
+device that you can use to play Dwarf Fortress, Sonic Adventure 2, or any of
+your other Steam games on the go, you can't go wrong with a Steam Deck. If you
+travel a lot for work, this is going to become a _vital_ travel companion. I've
+been seeing if I can get away with making a high-tier Steam Deck issued to new
+people on the DevRel team at work. I haven't succeeded at doing this yet, but I
+may just be able to get away with it!
+
+<xeblog-picture path="blog/2022-media/homescreen"></xeblog-picture>
+
+It's one of the best purchases I've ever made. Half of the PC game screenshots
+were made with my deck.
+
+### Nintendo Switch OLED
+
+I've had a launch model Nintendo Switch since the switch launched. That thing
+has easily gotten a few thousand hours of playtime under its belt and I've worn
+out 3 pairs of Joycons with it. I love the hell out of the Nintendo Switch and
+absolutely love what the development teams Nintendo hires can do with it.
+
+From what I am told, the Switch OLED was supposed to be a spec bump to the
+platform. Then COVID and the chip shortage happened, so the spec bump didn't
+happen. The OLED screen is absolutely gorgeous though. Colors pop and dance
+across the screen. Black and white have _lovely_ contrast that I don't really
+expect to see on anything but my iPad Pro or my work MacBook Pro. It is a
+premium device and I love the hell out of it.
+
+It's very iterative of the basic Nintendo Switch formula, but the battery life
+increase is really nice. My old switch has seen enough charge cycles that the
+battery is starting to not be as fresh as it once was, so a new device where I
+can get 4 hours of battery playing Breath of the Wild or Xenoblade Chronicles 2
+is very welcome.
+
+The Switch OLED is a worthy upgrade. I just hope we get an actual spec bump
+soon. It would be cool to see if a higher clock speed at a better process could
+make games like Pokemon Violet play a lot smoother.
+
+## Visual Media I watched
+
+Fair warning: I watch a _lot_ of anime. There will be a lot of anime in this
+list. You have been warned.
+
+### Leadle no Dachi Nite
+
+This started out as a generic fantasy Isekai in the vein of Sword Art Online
+except the bedridden protagonist dies while in the VRMMO and ends up trapped
+inside it. The event made the VRMMO get scrapped. The protagonist ends up
+adventuring through the fallen remains of the MMO world and they never really do
+anything useful with it. Overall it was a waste of my time to watch it. There
+were parts that were cute, but it is obviously either wish fulfillment on the
+part of the mangaka or trying to tell a story that the show runners couldn't
+make work. 4/10, the animation was fluid, but the story was just so terrible. If
+you are trying to tell a story, it helps to have something to tell in the
+process instead of trying to ride the coattails of a more successful story.
+
+### Reincarnated as a Sword
+
+The isekai genre has been _really crowded_ as of late. All of the "normal"
+scenarios have been done to death. People have been reincarnated into VR games
+so many times. People have been reincarnated into so many weird places (there's
+even one where someone reincarnates into the body of a succubus with an
+addiction to drinking cow's milk) and the genre is saturated to the point that
+it gets boring.
+
+Reincarnated as a Sword is an anime about someone who...reincarnates as a sword.
+I really liked reading the manga over the last few years and I'm happy to see it
+get the treatment it deserves on the anime stage. I like it, but I could see how
+people would hate how wish fulfillment/mary sue/toneless and bland it can be at
+times.
+
+It's a 7/10 anime. Very good technical production, the story falls a bit flat;
+but it's an isekai about a dude reincarnating as a sword. Fran is even more of a
+bean in anime form. It's a conflicted anime but it manages to avoid being an
+outright mess.
+
+### Management of a Novice Alchemist
+
+There are some animes that I don't really know how to categorize other than
+calling them _cozy_. Management of a Novice Alchemist is a cozy anime. It's
+about a novice alchemist named Sarasa that tries to establish her alchemy
+practice in a small town and protect the town from various problems.
+
+Sarasa is a heccin bean and even though there is a pretty predictable episodic
+story arc, the Japanese is very clearly enunciated and doesn't contain too many
+difficult words. I've been taking notes while watching it to build up more
+vocabularity in my eternal mission to not need subtitles.
+
+Overall, this is the kind of cozy level that you get drinking a warm mug of
+coffee under a blanket while listening to lo-fi hip hop beats to relax/study to.
+I give it a 7/10.
+
+### My Dressup Darling (Sono Bisque Doll)
+
+I must be getting old because romantic comedy anime is starting to become one of
+my favorite subgenres. My Dressup Darling is about the romance between Marin
+Kitagawa, a budding cosplayer gyaru that has absolutely no ability to sew or
+cook at all and Wakana Gojo, an apprentice seamstress for [hina
+dolls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinamatsuri).
+
+It's an absolutely adorable show and I think it's well worth watching. Hijinks
+ensue as the two spend time together and each really is well written to balance
+their unique talents. It feels like this was written by someone who
+_experienced_ this kind of relationship with someone and wanted to retell that
+story in a modern setting.
+
+This is a must-watch 10/10 anime. It's adorable, cheezy, and overall a solid
+romantic comedy that I can't wait to see more of. I'm going to attempt to buy it
+on bluray just to keep on my shelf. Cloverworks does waifu anime properly.
+
+### Spy x Family
+
+This is another adorable anime about a family consisting of a spy, an assassin,
+and a telepathic child. It's set in an analogue to the cold war and none of the
+main characters knows that the others are what they are. It's absolutely
+adorable and Anya is a bean that is precious beyond words.
+
+I could try and describe it some more, but I feel that is a waste of time. It's
+good. Watch it. 10/10.
+
+### Sabikui Bisco
+
+I thought that Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was going to be one of the few animes
+that I ever see that made me have _feels_. Sabikui Bisco has an absolutely
+batshit premise and manages to build it into one of the best animes of the year.
+
+In this world there was some nonspecific war that resulted in rust becoming able
+to affect humans and spread virally. Humanity is succumbing to the scurge of the
+rust virus and it slowly pecks away at their numbers. The existing medical
+systems make _absolute bank_ on treating the rust virus' effects on people
+though, so you can see the completely understandable systemic problems that
+would emerge unfold in front of you.
+
+Then the main character buys mushrooms off the black market and gets entangled
+with a mycologist archer and they sent out to save Japan from the rust virus.
+Bisco and Dr. Panda set out on the back of a giant friendly crab named Actagawa
+and uncover the truth of the rust virus, investigate rumors of a mushroom that
+cures the virus, and overall save the populace from themselves.
+
+I love it so much. My descriptions here are not doing it anywhere near justice.
+It's a 10/10 anime and I can't suggest watching it more.
+
+### The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
+
+This show was okay. I really didn't like how the elves spoke the wrong language
+(it's like going around Rome and having casual conversations in liturgical
+Latin), they should be speaking Sinadrin, not Quenya. They adapted things from a
+few paragraphs at the end of the Simarillion, and oh god it shows.
+
+They really made a mistake not starting out as _strong_ as possible, but they
+were trying to literary style of Toliken's subtle worldbuilding feeding into the
+plot feeding into the worldbuilding. This works _great_ in printed media but not
+really in a TV series where they only have 15 hours to get across the vision.
+
+There were at least 6 threads of plot that started to weave together in new and
+confusing ways. Eventually they did settle down to 3 plot threads, but a lot of
+the plot threads felt rushed. I don't know how they managed to make a 15 hour
+series feel rushed, but they did. It's kind of an impressive achievement.
+
+The thing that saved it for me is the _art style_. They took the instructions
+"make it look like The Lord of the Rings movies" and NAILED it. It looks
+_immaculate_. I love how it just _feels_ like the classic movies. There is style
+and charm oozing from every crevice of the visual presentation. The people
+working on this care about and love The Lord of the Rings and it _really shows_.
+It's worth study from a filmography standpoint. I can't figure out how they did
+some of the practical effects and I think they're doing them mostly practical.
+It has that feel that you get with practical effects.
+
+Overall I'd say this is a 8/10 show. I was expecting a lot worse. It's worth
+watching, but if you are a super LOTR nerd you may not like it very much. Just
+be warned that the first two episodes are kinda rough.
+
+### Morbius
+
+I saw Morbius this