I started the Shadows of Rose DLC for Resident Evil Village but I found it a bit frustrating so I gave up on it. It was a lot more of a “run from enemies” instead of a “shoot enemies” vibe, which I find annoying. And there wasn’t much story along the way to keep me interested.

I had purchased The Quarry, one of the dime-a-dozen Supermassive horror pseudo-games that are more in the vein of visual novels, some years ago, and I randomly decided to play it because I wanted a game to play where I didn’t have to talk much. You can always count on Supermassive games to fill any silence with dialog or ambient industrial noises. It was just like every other Supermassive horror game: Good graphics, questionable writing, fun to watch, not the slightest bit scary (fun-campy-horror not scary-horror… to this day I still don’t understand why people associate “horror” with “fun” and not “existential terror,” but they definitely do), all choices are random and you can’t ever steer the narrative the way you want.

However, The Quarry has one of the best credit sequences ever in a video game. Not since the song at the end of Portal has there been a better credit sequence. I’m talking about the Bizzare Yet Bonafide podcast that played over the credits, performed by Emily Axford and Brian Murphy of NADDPOD and Dimension 20 fame, an inspired casting choice for a paranormal podcast duo performance. Truly magnificent.

This is the fifth Supermassive game I’ve played, following on the heels of Until Dawn, Man of Medan, Little Hope, and House of Ashes. (I haven’t yet played The Devil in Me, and I think I heard there was a new Dark Pictures Anthology game coming?) They are all pretty much exactly the same formula, same cheesy scares that are infinitely predictable and aren’t scary, they churn them out like a low budget horror movie studio. But they’re kind of fun to watch.

The Quarry reminded me that I played three of the Dark Pictures Anthology, but hadn’t played the fourth one, The Devil in Me. So I started on that one, using a dice roller to randomly choose character decisions (which I also did for House of Ashes). I haven’t quite finished it, but so far I think it’s the worst one. I would probably rank them: 1) House of Ashes, 2) Little Hope, 3) Man of Medan, 4) The Devil in Me. (Man of Medan is a close contender for worst one, though.)

In case anyone’s wondering, I did record them all but I won’t be uploading them because scary game videos don’t work unless the player is scared, and I have exactly zero scared reactions over the entire course of all of these scary games, because they aren’t the slightest bit scary to me.

There was a surprise drop of a Remastered Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on Steam. Surprise to me, at least. Where everybody else played Skyrim to death, I played Oblivion to death, which is why I found Skyrim fairly meh and, to this day, have only played the main story exactly one time with little or no side questing. Whereas in Oblivion I played every quest and went to every square inch of the map. Anyway, it’s tempting to buy it, though I already recorded most of Oblivion already. My only question is whether they updated the voice acting or does the whole game still consist of only three voice actors talking to each other without even bothering to put on different voices. [ChatGPT Search assures me they added more voice acting, so I may be unable to stop myself from buying it.]

I was going to use the Shadows of Rose DLC as a test case for recording HDR game content, but it turned out to be a disaster. I have to record the game video locally on the gaming PC, and I’m just not setup well to do that.

I worked out a method if I had to do it, but it involves combining audio commentary recorded on the recording PC with game video recorded on the gaming PC and that’s just a nightmare post-processing scenario. Nobody’s got time for that, unless they’re getting paid a full-time salary for it.

I watched a few movies while I was taking a four-day Easter weekend break:

The great ENT doctor appointment has been completed, and the verdict on my throat is in: Kind of. At least, step one is complete. The ENT doctor stuck a fiber optic scope up my nose to look at my throat and did not see anything but what he called “benign” issues, mainly redness and irritation at the top of the esophagus, which is probably caused by stomach acid. He’s going to put me on two meds, one for stomach acid, and one for mild allergies because I’ve also been experiencing some shortness of breath and wheezing lately. (I’ve wondered if I somehow picked up a cold or covid a while back and didn’t realize it.) Hopefully that will allow my throat to heal and then I’ll go back and see him in a month. After that, probably the dreaded “lifestyle changes” (mostly less acidic/spicy food, and/or elevating my torso when sleeping).

Unless the meds don’t do anything and it’s something else.

Not the instant gratification I was hoping for, but I shouldn’t be surprised because I’m constantly disappointed by how the human body is not as easy to debug and fix as a computer program. At least he ruled out infections or growths, which was what I was worried about.

I was pleasantly surprised by how little I had to “fight” to convince the doctor I was actually experiencing issues. My baseline assumption about all doctors is that they never believe their patients, as if they are a typical tech support person who refuses to listen to a customer. It probably worked in my favor that I was struggling not to cough while talking to him.

I’ve started an extensive diary in the hopes of tracking how these new meds are helping (or not). I’ve worked out some “tests” I can do to track my progress, or lack thereof, which mainly involves reading passages from The Hobbit and recording how much I cough while I’m doing it. Weirdly, despite this technological age we live in, keeping a “diary” is harder than you might think. I decided to use an Obsidian document on my MacBook.

So after about a week, sadly I haven’t noticed much change from the new meds. But I have to remember that I’m old and don’t bounce back from injuries very quickly anymore, so maybe it will take a long, long time to heal an acid-burned esophagus. Also my extensive diary stopped after a couple of days because keeping up with a new habit every day is basically impossible.

Bye!