White Whale: Whale pile

My first idea for what would be my white whale was Morrowind. Unfortunately past me, being the asshole he is, decided to cover pretty in-depth my journey from the games breakage on Xbox to its eventual completion on PC in good detail. So that’s out.

Then I considered Lone Survivor, a game that I had never brought myself to beat on PC even though I wanted to…but once again, past me beat current me to the punch. Dick.

So instead, lets instead of dealing with one big white whale deal with a spurt of  lots of little white wha-OH GOD!!

Persona 3 Portable

On a whim, I bought all 3 Persona games for my Vita when they went on deep discount 3 to 4 years ago. I was hesitant and considered buying only one or two to taste the franchise first and see if I liked it. Fortunately I bought all of them-well, not so fortunately in the case of one of them-and proceeded to dive in.

Persona 1 was an enjoyable game, if someone graphically dated but still mechanically solid enough to get through. I liked the interesting story concepts and the aesthetics and managed to get all the way through it at a decent pace.

Persona 2 was also an enjoyable game and again it had some interesting story concepts. It was more graphically pleasing, and had some interesting subversions of normal archetypes-creating deconstructions of them that fleshed them out as people and made them more than the typical archetype being used over and over again. Unfortunately, I then got to a point near the end of the game where I had to make a decision whether to sneak through a forest or fight some Nazis.

I chose poorly. And because the game doesn’t let you save super often, I couldn’t reload without losing tons of progress. It was a shitty forest puzzle, full of enemies that would poison you and it was so irritating that I didn’t beat it and deleted it. Forcing me to miss out on the wonder that was totally not Hitler you guyz, wearing stylish shades.

Persona 3 is a game that I am enjoying immensely…and have been for a year or two at this point. I play it on and off, getting into moods where I binge a decent amount of it only to fall away and not play it for weeks or months. I really like it, but it just kind of happens on a whim. It’s a game I’ve been playing for a while now, and hopefully I can actually manage to beat it this year and move on to P4G already.

Patapon 3.

Whew boy. This one has been long in the making, and only recently did this game get back onto my radar. For those of you unfamiliar with the series, here’s a quick look into it.

It’s basically a rhythm game where you control little cyclops guys called Patapon, and march across the screen fighting monsters and evolving your units to different classes with different abilities. Patapon 3 made some big departures, limiting your squad to 4 tough patapon-one being a hero-and making it more RPG-ish than before. It’s got issues, but I love it and I played the shit out of it years ago. I had the save game on my PS3, but due to Sony being Sony the PSP game wouldn’t transfer from my PS3 to my Vita, even now. 

Even though the sequel did. As it turns out, it is now downloadable on PS Vita from the store, and so I grabbed it and got back into it. I stopped playing so many years ago, because the final dungeon was super difficult and I got frustrated grinding. But now I’m back in it, refreshed and ready to grind up my classes and hopefully put this game to rest. Before it drives anyone who happens to be nearby insane, for the game only inoculates the player from its rhythm and just pisses off other people nearby. Hopefully, victory is at hand, and another white whale eats the spear.

Planescape torment

Ah, Planescape torment. This game is widely regarded as a classic, and that’s for good reason. The visual design is weird and interesting, the world feels deep and full of rich lore, and the story has my attention. And yet……

I haven’t beaten it yet, for some reason. The combat is pretty weak sauce, but everything else is so good that I really want to get around to finishing it. I can see why it’s so beloved, and I really want to beat it but I just haven’t mustered the motivation to beat it quite yet. It’s clunky and it doesn’t run super well, but there’s a lot to love under its rough exterior and I hope that eventually beat it this year and find out whatever weird crap is lying further into  this engrossing tale.

Microbe Magazine

Bam, wild card!

I enjoy reading a magazine from the American Society of Microbiology called Microbe Magazine, but for some reason, I can never muster the time to read them all in a timely manner and I always build a backlog of them. It’s heavy and intensive reading, and hopefully this year I can finally clear my backlog of the 4-6 magazines I have yet to read, and stay on task with it. It offers great perspectives on a field and science I (obviously love) and hopefully this year I can motivate myself to stick with it.

And there are some white whales I hope to conquer this year, with leg of ivory and spear of determination, as well as a dash of maddening fury and consuming vengeance. Thanks for reading!

- “If you don't like bacteria, you're on the wrong planet.” ― Stewart Brand

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