Entries tagged with blog

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Holly Valance - Hypnotic

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Return of the girl groups?

I remember after One Direction really hit it off around 2013 (I mean, What Makes You Beautiful was also quite successful, but I think Take Me Home really underlined how big they'd become) a lot of boybands emerged to the scene. Many, if not all, didn't stand the test of time -- to be honest, many say it was because they couldn't compete against 1D; however, in my opinion it was because these bands didn't really have their own "sound" if that makes sense. They all sounded the same pop rock.

I wasn't really around for the girl groups rule around early 2000s and 90s, but about three years ago I discovered Danity Kane; I only listen to some songs from the Welcome to the Dollhouse album, but their voices are just how I like them the most. Strip Tease has been a fixed song in my "Most Listened" lists ever since I first listened to it. I also got into Girls Aloud about the same time, and to this day I keep discovering new great songs by them (Untouchable is a great single, that I've been listening since last week), and in general, their live performances were grand -- although I must say, some of their early performances their live vocals haven't been upto par with DK in my opinion.

I don't really follow groups/bands personally (like, being active in the fandom if it exists) but only keep up with the music. But still, it's been really fun to see how there have been an emergence of girl groups in the "traditional" sense. I've been following FLO for some time now, and was quite happy when their LP was finally released -- it was so good! This week I've only been listening to Say Now, and I hope they get their big debut into the scene as well. They seem to be experimenting with different sounds so far: soft ballads, club electronic, R&B and whatnot. I wish for at least an LP for them as well.

While I'm not too into them, XG has been doing quite good, and I don't really enjoy Katseye but they're really making a name in the US I think.

And just today I saw that Sugababes released Jungle after their reunion (I'm late I know), and last year (?) Girls Aloud also had a reunion tour. Now all I need is a Danity Kane reunion, but it will probably never happen because of one particular man.

Current Mood: exhausted

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Fanfiction prose and whatnot

It's not news that to the mainstream eye, fanfiction is usually thought to be either just porn, or Mary Sue self-inserts -- which is of course "so cringe". And therefore, whatever is written there is automatically bad. The other day, someone retweeted a TikTok user's post, mocking fanfiction readers for thinking that there can be very good written sentences in fanfiction, and quotes were filled with people pointing to the "worst examples" in the replies of OP's TikTok.

This has been a long discourse that I think has gone through enough talking points, so it's tiring to see it resurface almost every few months. What I've seen, though, it's people who do not create hold this belief that published (non-indie) work is the only kind of work that has any sort of literary value; and this automatically makes fanfiction, in their eyes, lesser. I feel like this is part of a result where every piece of media they consume is curated by either following through classics only -- not particularly bad in itself -- or just picking whatever is trending; and instead of trying to understand why they're considered a classic or a good piece of work, they equate being put on a higher regard to it being popular. (I guess this is a problem that we can see in other fields as well?)

Majority of the people in the fandom spaces were supportive, of course. We have to remember that this is just a fan space and none of the authors of these transformative works are trying to write the next classic, so there's an expectancy of mediocrity. And when the writing is above such level, it piques interest.

I also think this kind of outlook, the looking down of "fanfiction prose" is a part of the way people view some sort of art space I feel as quite pretentious. It just never bodes well with me --- that kind of huge paragraphs with long descriptive sentences, filled with the thesaurus equals of usual adjectives just for the sake of sounding literary (don't know if that's the right word exactly in English); rather than trying to make a good story. (It was one of the reasons why I couldn't read Pandora by Anne Rice when I picked it up this year, but shh.) This is something that repulses me especially in Turkish literature where every writer who does that is immediately seen as the next big thing. (Don't even get me started on the book titles...)

I feel like the mocking was halfly done as a reaction to this pretentiousness, which I can see their POV too partially. But in contrast to published space, nearly every fanfiction is written for the sake of the author themselves anyway, so there has never been the need to please anyone with their high-spoken language. What irritates me (and most of the QRTs I've seen) is when these people think lines in the same wavelength are actually good when they're by traditionally done authors.

Maybe it's something that's been said a million times, but even a self-insert story can be a classic to their eyes when the critiques say so --- say for example, MC gets to isekai-d, along with their favorite man from Antiquity and travel together... It's only a literary masterpiece if the MC self-insert is Dante, because why?

There's a reason why this example has been given many times, because most people don't even view it as fanfiction... Then where exactly do we draw the line?

Current Mood: confused

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DmC. Finished.

I finally played this game after years of it waiting for me in my Steam library.

I want to start by complimenting the gameplay. Apparently, it's actually why a lot of people didn't like this game back then, for being "too beginner friendly" or something (my source is a Matt McMuscles video). I always play games on Easy difficulty so LOL. I still feel like it has the basis combo mechanics, nice movesets and different weapons that actually give you the feeling of difference (I usually never even bothered to change weapons in the previous games, yeah 😁).
The arm mechanics (pulling, pushing etc.) from DMC4 was one of the things that made me like that game a lot, so it was nice to see that it's made a comeback in this one as well (minus the arm though).

The story was never something I looked forward to in DMC. This game was supposed to be a reboot of the series, so they took a lot of liberty with it. It's nothing new though, and I think it somehow became even more cliche making them nephilim, and reminiscent of Bayonetta.

Speaking of Bayonetta, earlier in the game, it reminded me a lot of Bayonetta with its environment, and throughout the game -- the whole "Limbo"/"real world" thing really underlined it all. It's not bad or good -- I just got reminded of it. Overall, I liked the look of the places.

I can't say the same about the character models. In general, I find it uncanny valley material when games try to go more realistic; this wasn't that, but... the way they emote was SO WEIRD most of the time.

When you smell that zaza

Like...??

Also, the constant action movie shaky cam WAS ANNOYING af.

Vergil's dumbass hat.

He takes it off fortunately, and looks incredibly hot...?

I've never liked Vergil that much, it's so stupid that it's THIS game that made me go "he kinda handsome".

One of the biggest problems I had with this game is caused by its port on Steam I guess. I couldn't play this game when I had my controller connected. I tried many "solutions" online but nothing worked unfortunately. I could have let it go, but the gameplay made me enjoy the game a lot, so I actually finished the whole game with keyboard & mouse.
This brought a lot of problems with it.

The whole pull & push mechanics are incredibly more obstructive. With sausage-like fingers like mine, it's really a bother to get used to the controls. Though, you can change the whole map I think, so that's good.
When you're not in a rush, it's fine to try to time your jumping and flying-in-the-air-for-a-short-time-gimmick. But most of the time, I kept falling because I couldn't press the keys CORRECTLY and IN TIME. That was very annoying.

MORE ON CRINGY DIALOGUE. I always found the dialogue in DMC cringy, but it was endearing-cringe. This time, it's annoying-cringe. AND A LOT OF IT. There were also so many scenes for shock value, and "comedy" which made me roll my eyes a lot. Swearing too -- don't forget, this is a MATURE GAME!!!

I liked some of the boss fights, especially the Bob Barbas one I think was very creative. I remembered Kat's existence while looking at the photos to post them so I think it's very telling how the side characters were.

IN SHORT. Nice to play game if you turn off your brain.

Current Mood: angry

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"İsimle Ateş Arasında" kitabı eleştirisi

Uzun zamandır bir kitabı okurken bu kadar sinirlenmemiştim. Yapmayı en çok sevdiğim aktivitelerden biri olan kitap okumayı bana zehir eden bu kitabı bitirmeden bırakırdım ama maalesef aldığım bir ders için bitirmek zorundaydım.

Neresinden başlamalıyım, onu bile bilmiyorum. Çünkü kitabın kendisi de karmakarışık. Ama her şeyin başı bence yazardan başlıyor: Yazar ve onun bildiklerini gösterme çabası. Örneklemede hiçbir sorun yok, ne derler işte, anlatımı zenginleştiren öğeler vs. ama dakika başı, her cümlede bunu yapıp devam eden cümlelerde, paragraflarda HATTA BÖLÜMLERDE bile buna kalkışması bende kusma hissiyatı uyandırdı. Geçiyorum, geçiyorum; hala aynı konudayız. YETER YAHU, ANLADIK. Bir iki sayfa değil, bazen yirmi sayfa geçtiği halde bir adım ilerlemiyor hikaye. NEDEN YANİ ????? NEDEN? Mesela Nihade kokularla uğraşıyor diye İKİ BÖLÜM (hatta belki daha fazla) boyunca hangi koku neden çıkar, nereden gelmiştir vs. BUNLARI ANLATIYOR. YAHU BİRKAÇ PARAGRAF YETERDİ, ANLADIK ARAŞTIRMA YAPMIŞSIN YAZARKEN.

Üstelik de biçimi de farklı değil. Sürekli. Vurgu. İçin. Böyle. Yazmaya gerek yok!!!! (ALLAHIM DAHA DEMİN BİTİRDİM KİTABI SİNİRLERİM HALA ÜZERİMDE.) Virgül kullan çok istiyorsan yani, sana bir lütuf verilmiş virgül gibi, KULLAN İŞTE SANKİ PARA ÖDÜYORSUN VİRGÜLE.

KONUSUNUN NE OLDUĞUNA DA KARAR VEREBİLMİŞ DEĞİL. Önce istiyor bir karakter üzerinden ilerlemek, başlıyor isimsiz yeniçeriyi anlatmaya. (AMA ANLATAMIYOR, çünkü dediğim gibi tarihi olaylara benzetmekten, örnekler verip bilgisini göstermekten KARAKTERİ OLUŞTURMAYI UNUTMUŞ. İsmi geçen hiçbir “karakter”in, karakteri yok çünkü! HİÇBİRİNİN YOK. Hepsi sadece “isminden” ibaret. Yok Nihade’yi seviyormuş, aşıkmış – ki aşk da değil hissettiği, o ayrı konu.) Sonra gidiyor, kronolojik olarak Osmanlı’nın düşüşüne girip yeniçerilerin lağvedilmesine dönüyor işleyiş. Her bölüm aynı çizgiden devam edecek diye bir şey yok da, yaptığı şekil de aşırı düzensiz. Cilt olmasa birlikte durmayacak kitap.

Bu tutarsızlık biçimsel de gösteriyor kendini: Başlarda eski kelimeleri, eski tamlamaları kullanmaya çalışıyor yazar; sonra vazgeçiyor, modern kelimelere dönüyor. Bunu batılılaşmaya falan gönderme olarak yaptığını hiç zannetmiyorum, sadece DİĞER HER ŞEY GİBİ bunda da kararlılık sağlayamıyor.

AMAÇ NE?? AMAÇSIZ BİR KİTAP BU. Bize bir şey öğretmek ise, yeni öğrendiğim belki bir iki şey vardır ki bu da aşırı alakasız konulardandı, en fazla “trivia” olur yani. Yok, bu daha çok “character study” ise O DA YOK Kİ İŞTE DEDİM YA, KARAKTERİN KENDİSİ YOK ÇÜNKÜ!! HİÇBİR ŞEY YOK BU KİTAPTA!!! İnsanda oluşturduğu tek bir his var, o da kaybolan zamana duyduğum hüzün. Öyle ki bu hüzün, okurken sinirlenip bu yazıyı yazdığım zaman bahsederim, dediğim diğer düşünceleri bile unutturdu şu an.

SORMAK İSTEDİĞİM TEK ŞEY VAR, HOCAM NİYE BU KİTABI OKUTTUNUZ YANİ?

(crossposted from my goodreads)

Current Mood: giggly

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First 3 of 2024 Footy Funnies

Since I have some free time left from my studies today I decided it's a good time to reminisce the beginning of this year. I will once again probably forget to mention a lot of important things that happened, but here I go!

( Transfer memes )
While I'm at it... let's go for,
( BAY Special )
Now it's time for...

( Galatasaray memes )
The night that the news about Fatih Terim becoming the manager of Panathinaikos was INSANE LMFAO. There were so many memes.
( Panathinaikos )

Now onto the Süper Lig as a whole.

( Süper Lig )

And finally, we go international!
( World football )

This took me days to properly format and write AND TAKE PICS TOO DAMN I'm not sure if I'll do it every year like I said, but there's just so many things to remember 😂 Anyway, here's to hoping for a better rest of a year.

Current Mood: giggly

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Best of Late 2023 Footy Twitter

As we come closer each day to the last day of this year, I want to make a different post where I collect my fav posts, things etc. about football this year in one entry. Idk if I'll continue making this each year, maybe every three months or something. Why? Because my phone storage is in a bad situation all the time and I want to relieve it a little bit, but these things are funny to reminiscence from time to time. Later on, it'll be a nice memory (hopefully not many of them will get deleted, bc I couldn't embed the videos from Twitter, and I'm not going to try to download them -- I don't have time!)

( warning! too much content )

( galatasaray ucl run )

( türkiye national matches )

( other stuff )

Finally, I want to close it with this amazing VERY RELATABLE quote LOL

I seem to have lost some from my collection, but oh well. Here's to hoping we'll have better news next year in the UEL and the league :) Happy new year everybody.
PS. I might add some more stuff before the year ends here, since today was the draws for the UEL matches for Galatasaray.

Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Music: Softcult - Gaslight

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2006 was 5 years ago...

Wait... What do you mean it's been 17 years?

Yesterday, once again, I've found myself delving deep into old Blogger blogs. Both of them I've found while looking for Kaka in glasses pictures 😅 They both belonged to girls, written in 2006-2011s, and I remembered my own teenage years. I'm someone who gets nostalgic very easily, someone that just can't accept reality, and hates the passing of time, and change. Which is why I couldn't also stop myself from reading all their entries. There weren't many, but I could remember the simplicity of their issues, but also the depth of them. It's hard to describe. One of them resonated more with me, because this girl was anxious about leaving her home to start a new life, and how difficult it will be for her. No matter how things have turned out for her, I hope she's happy now.

After that, I wanted to read some old LJs instead.

Thanks to the search options I could find some, but my favorite was a very long post, a manifesto of Cristiano/Kaka ship LOL. I like fanlore.org for this same reason, because it brings me fandom history like barely anything else does. Anyway, it was very funny but I could really understand the reasons behind that ship forming. When I was younger, I was never aware of its existence tbh, and that's something that is really intriguing to me. While you're in one fandom, you deal with (or gleefully ignore) all these inside drama, the events, the lore that happens around you. But there are so many other fandoms that deal with so many things with you knowing 0 about it. Their starts, their issues, their own ends (or the sleepiness of it, I'd like to say. Because there will always be people who are still into that fandom). That's what I feel sad about. Because once upon a time, there were so many people passionate about it.

I searched for a few minutes to find this textpost I've published on Tumblr, dating Sep 1, 2020:

there is something sad about finding old inactive blogs on tumblr and looking at their archive, going through their earlier posts. i can see their enthusiasm back then, and how much they cared about their then-interests; it makes me wonder why they had stopped posting? did they lose their interest or had something else happened? maybe they just forgot their password. if they lost their interest, when will that happen to me i wonder.

It really does illustrate my point better, although this was more about fandom blogs. The way I got invested about that old blogs I mentioned at the beginning were more about feeling similar feelings as a teenager. The way our obsessions were the positives of our days, the one thing that makes us smile and look forward to the next day.

I usually get into fandoms way past their "prime days", so I get this feeling pretty often. Would you call it "sadness of missing out"? 😆 I feel like I've missed the active days of those things happening, the excitement people have felt for these things. It's always nice to be a part of that, and I always miss it.

There's a memory I never forget. I was reading a Superman comic when my aunt came to visit us one day. My cousin teased me about "still reading those at my age" (mind you, I was in high school) and I didn't really get it. I'll probably never will. Why would I stop doing something that I enjoy as long as it's not unhealthy?

It's been years since 2006, but no matter how much time passes, I always seem to find something else to be obsessed about, and the past ones just pile up on each other. That's something I hope that never changes, actually. 😉

Current Mood: disappointed
Current Music: 60 Cyclists - Tokiboo

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Finding a good SW game is kinda harder than you expect

The year is 2015, it's the height of my Star Wars obsession. I can't wait for the movie to come out, and since there's been 10 years of no mainstream movie that came out since ROTS, the fandom is at its least active era - the ones that still do care are there mostly for Clone Wars series. So what's a girl to do who loves the original most?

To satiate my thirst, I read every single book I could get my hands on, started TCW even if it wasn't my cup of tea, and tried to play any game my potato PC could play. I still remember my joy when I stumbled upon KotOR 2 in a store out of nowhere - that was the first time I ever bought myself a physical game.

I'm not sure if I played the Old Republic games later TFA came out, but I wanted to play even more Star Wars games. I mentioned it before in this blog too that I religiously played the LEGO games too. I've never been into FPS games that much, but the SW brainrot was so strong that I even tried them out (for like 20 minutes before I realized I couldn't get used to old school controls of the games of yore - the ones made for MS-DOS, man. I was DESPERATE desperate.)

So I see this game called "The Force Unleashed" and see that it's a hack-and-slash action game. I wanted to play it so bad, and that need only grew more as I realized that there was no way my potato PC could run it.

Many years have passed by and I'm now on my 3rd computer I've used. It's finally something I am satisfied with and I am so thankful that I've got to play so many amazing games I've passed on many years ago simply because I didn't have the means to try my luck with them. And finally, The Force Unleashed had its turn.

I'm still super big on Star Wars, but mostly the ones I enjoyed for years. Most of the new content wasn't my cup of tea - that's something I'm having trouble with any fandom I'm in. So my dislike about this game certainly isn't a part of this.

I don't even know what to say. From the start of the game, I was like... "Huh, so this was the game I hyped myself too much for, huh?"

Listen, back then I just saw those images where you are able to don a lightsaber and do cool force stuff and I was MESMERIZED LMFAO. I thought it would be amazing to freely control your character like that, when the closest thing I've got to do that was in KotOR, but since it's a turn-based game, it certainly wouldn't feel the same way for sure, I told myself.

Here I am thinking, what to say about this game? It was just very painfully average that I just finished it, to finish it. I'm not the one to hang too much on graphics, if there's nothing game breaking about it, I'm fine. Although the facial expressions really made me chuckle sometimes. Character designs for the new characters are fine for the most part, but Juno's friggin boob window as an Imperial pilot made me "ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh" so bad. We've really come a long way, guys. It made me realize that because if your game was to have a female character there was 99% chance that they would be sexualised, or in her case, designed for the male gaze. Worst part about it is, the Imperials are known for discipline and the strict rules! WERE YOU GUYS THAT DESPERATE FOR SOME BOOBS ISTG.

There was almost 0 original soundtrack made for this game. I've only heard two. That's right, only TWO. The rest were completely pulled from the movie soundtracks. Since I LOVE SW music, I was okay with it but like... why? Why wouldn't you just compose some new music for it?

That also brings me to another ~~issue~~ nitpick I have. I feel like the game had some moments of fanservice that just made me roll my eyes. It wasn't anywhere near the level of fanservice we are getting lately from Disney, mostly from the likes of Filoni and co., but it was still meeeeh.

That word describes this entire game, just MEH. I guess I still need to give credit for making me feel the most intense emotions during my playthrough. There is one section with a star destroyer that made me SO ANGRY that I really have no memory of another game that made me that mad, ever. (And I'm actually pretty bad at video games in general, so making mistakes, having to replay a part 365830 times is nothing new to me. The thing that gets me angry is the unability to skip non-cutscene dialogue parts and the animations that play, etc. Those things combined together is something to get mad for, okay?) That part was unbearable for the reason that the throw controls are DOGSH-T and made the game so much worse.

I'm happy that it's finally finished because I wouldn't touch this game again ever with a ten-foot pole tbh. I still have so many other games I wanna play anyway.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Demi Lovato - SKIN OF MY TEETH

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I actually liked something for once

As the title suggests, after a long time I actually found something that I enjoyed spending my time with.

I realized it's been a while since I've played a DMC game and as I am playing them one by one, it was either DmC the reboot one or the DMC4's turn. I went with DMC4 and I'll probably play the reboot after I'm also done with DMC5.

Surprisingly, playing as Nero was so much fun. I thought that the only change'd be with the protagonist apperance and maybe just a little gimmick but, his Devil arm is so much fun to play with...? (That sounds vaguely questionable) The way he can grab nearby enemies made it so much more easier to target enemies which was a bit of a hassle when playing as Dante in this game. The one thing I was really disappointed was that Dante's DT form still doesn't have wings 💔 and not being able to fly isn't fun :( but WE COPE

Nero has a lot of Dante's DMC1 personality, so that's a bit disappointing but I guess he's just a tad bit more responsible and virtous/righteous than Dante usually was. (or still is...) I read somewhere that the director of the game, aware of the backlash Konami got when MGS2 changed the protagonist to be Raiden (they're COWARDS tbh Raiden was a lot more refreshing character than Nero was), they kept their personalities similar. I'm guessing that he'll be more of a firm-serious type of guy in the next installment, a mix of Vergil and Dante.

I'm not too much of a fan of DMC music, but the song Kyrie sang was really beautiful. It's probably the first time that I'm interested in listening to a DMC song lmao!! (I feel like a lot of DMC fans would stone me for saying this)

The story was okay as is my takeaway from all the DMC games I've played, so it's not too much of a problem.

It feels good to be into something again :D

Current Mood: disappointed
Current Music: Mustafa Sandal - Aya Benzer

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An update after a while

Hello...?
I didn't forget updating here ever, don't worry my lil journal. I've just been sooo busy, as always. Time management is a big problem for me.
I've finished my zine. YAY! It's one of the biggest accomplishments of my life I guess >< I feel content with it. The only problem for me is the expensive price tag. I wish I could have charged less but with the ever changing dollar exchange rates and the shipping prices, I had no other choice :/ I'm surprised even that many people have bought it. I just hope they all receive their copies without any hassle.

Next up: What have I been upto?

Mostly, I'm having trouble with installing back my old programs. I tried using a more recent version of PS but I always experienced bugs so in the end I said I should just continue with CS6. But even it doesn't work properly anymore!! For some reason -__- I don't know what to do anymore.

And... I haven't been able to play any video games I enjoyed. :( I mean, I loved playing Splinter Cell: Double Agent, but I've always played this series with their PC ports. People recommended I go with the PS2 version for this but playing with a controller is making me insane!! I am very bad at targeting with a controller so I trapped myself in the last level... I will try finishing it sometime (at least that's what I've been telling myself for like two months lmao).

After taking break from that, I finished Metal Gear Rising. It was... okay. I feel like it's very overrated. I knew what I was getting into and I have no problem with hack and slash games, in fact I enjoy most of them. Devil May Cry has always been fun mostly. And I also loved the fact that they still integrated some parts where you can pass with full stealth, especially with the cardboard box - my love! ^^ I had problems with the story (as I always do with Metal Gear games, lmao) but since Raiden is one of my favorite characters, I guess it bothered me a lot more than it did during other games. (I mean like. The problems I have with the story in the previous installments barely concern my faves, like Solid Snake. Except for maybe MGS4?? lol) I really liked some of the fights, like the Monsoon fight and the MG Excelsus looked pretty rad. But some of the fights were weird - like I think I was doing something wrong during the second encounter with MG Ray at the very start. But whatever. I'm done thinking about that game! I will try to erase it from my memory in the future lol.

Now, I'm trying to finish Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. This is probably one of my biggest disappointments after Omori, because I've waited so long to be able to play them. I mean, Fallen Order isn't inherently bad, but I expected so much more I guess. That's on me completely. It just makes me want to play KotOR again. :D I will try to write a seperate post on it soon when (if...) I finish the game.

I also installed Cities: Skylines and that was another disappointment. I thought it looked very fun when I watched CallMeKevin play it but... maybe it's because I barely played it (around 3 hours or something). Hopefully I can get the fun I looked for in the future.

I guess that's about it. So now I'm trying to finish a Jack/Daniel moments compilation video lol! See ya!

Current Mood: content

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Finished TBATB!

I think I mentioned before how fun Batman: the Brave and the Bold is to me! Silver Age shenanigans of the Caped Crusader is so bonkers that I love it! But it also had many of my favorite characters from DC Universe guest star in it and that wouldn't have happened if not for this show~
I finished it a couple of days ago and the final episode made me a little emotional. I think this is the first ever Batman animated series that I have managed to finish! I used to watch Batman: The Animated Series when I was in high school but I haven't completely seen it iirc.
Anyway, now I've restarted Merlin for I think either the third or the second time. I am on my medieval roll lately so I am trying to consume anything historical rn hehe!!
I'll get back to you hopefully:3

Current Mood: indifferent
Current Music: DOOM Eternal Main Theme

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Yakuza 4 thoughts

I forgot to cross post my entries from my DW acc. Well, if it shows something, it’s that using three different blogs to post the same thing was a bad idea. I just don’t know which platform would be best for me. I think a lot about deleting DW and now I am contemplating it again lol (and I’ve already done that once!)

Anyway, the point isn’t my choosing problem. The point is that I finally finished Yakuza 4!

If it’s not apparent enough, Yakuza 3 was probably my favorite to play in the series. I had just finished off 2′s bonkers story and was more than enthusiastic to slip right into seeing Kiryu bonding with the kids in the orphanage. It was everything I dreamed of. The combat was so much fun. Revelations were an excellent addition and getting them was very fun also.

Not sure if it's because how much enamored I was with 3 that caused me not to fall back into the series with 4 soon, or the fact that I wanted to play the other games I wanted to inbetween, but it took me like 6 months to play this one. I had only started playing DMC3 then but that game was hard af, so I wanted to check if my potato PC could run Y4 - turns out, it struggles big time. First day, I played with the settings to get it to working and voila, hello, Akiyama-san.

I then (for no reason at all) went to play Splinter Cell and that was the biggest mistake of my life. Because I absolutely loved it. And couldn't think of any other game until I finished it around 10 days (hey, I suck). Anyway, that already has its own entry so I won't talk about it again. Then, I finished DMC3 and then finally went back into Y4 almost a month later again.

It didn't take me long to find out the problems with the excessive RAM usage this game is guilty for. The problem gets especially apparent once you get to the hostess clubs. It costs me two loading screen being stuck for me to finally understand that it wasn't because of my PC...

The different protagonists aspect of the gameplay is, well, interesting. But for my dumb brain, every time I got used to one fighting style, it changed and I was back to square one :D But that's on me, so not pointing fingers at the game here. BUT I WANTED TO PLAY WITH MY MANS so waiting to get to Kiryu was very challenging lmfao. I loved playing as Saejima since it reminded me of my favorite style to use while playing as Kiryu in Y0, the Beast style. I can see they got many of his heat actions and movement being slow, stuff like that, from Saejima's fighting style in this game.

Playing as Tanimura was my least favorite and while I didn't really have any problems with his arc or whatever, it wasn't fun to play at all. Same as Akiyama, but Akiyama at least has some more heat actions. Also... even though I completed all of Tanimura's substories (except for the hostess club one with the Mars Fighter) it didn't really affect his health bar, which made it really hard to beat his final boss. (For comparison: I barely used one health item during all of the final boss fights for Saejima or Akiyama, and probably used like two for Kiryu's, but for Tanimura's I emptied half of my whole item screen.) I'm thinking that I probably should have parried with that foreign detective in Little Asia but I just wanted to get on with this game as quickly as possible.

Now for the music...

I don't think many of them stuck with me, but that isn't to say I didn't like anything. Saejima's fight theme for one, stuck with me immediately. Same thing for this one, although it plays only once in the entire game! As always, the MEB theme was also in this game so I went in there just to listen to it as tradition of mine 😁 Another one is this one that plays in the table tennis minigame. It sounds like it could be from newer Persona games. I honestly think that vocalist is the same.

And the story... ummm??

It was certainly a very story. Don't know how else to describe it. As with the earlier games I played, at first, everything seems so random but then they all come together. But this one felt even cluttier than the rest. I didn't connect with any of the players in this game at all. But uh, that could be something to do with me. Because I rarely get emotional with these type of stuff. (But then again... I felt too connected to Rikiya in Y3 so...? Maybe it is with the story, idk.)

One last thing I'll add is that Saejima should have been able to sing smh! Neither Tanimura or him sings in the karaoke. Saejima doesn't even step inside the mf building!!

So in short... this game didn't really leave any impact on me and I'll probably forget about the story in like days. Actually I finished it last night and I don't even remember much. All I remember is that Kiryu smiled a lot in the later cutscenes during the final chapter so that was nice. I always love seeing him smile :)

Hey, he’s talking about me.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: I'm literally at the bathroom rn

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Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow da bitti.

Bu sefer nedense Türkçe yazasım geldi. En fazla 10 dakika olmuştur oyunu bitireli. O yüzden belki sonradan aklıma başka fikirlerim de gelecek olursa, onları sonradan eklerim.

Şimdi gelelim konumuza.

İlk Splinter Cell oyununu oynayalı sanırım bir ya da iki ay olmuştur. Atmosferiyle, yapabileceğiniz hareketleriyle ve en önemlisi de müziğiyle çok ama çok hoşuma giden bir oyun olmuş, serinin diğer oyunlarına da beni fazladan heyecanlandıran bir yapımdı.

Pandora Tomorrow'da, ilk oyunda sıkıntı yaşanan kısımları düzeltip üstüne birkaç güzel yenilik de eklemişler.

Öncelikle, şifreli kapılarda şifreyi önceden öğrendiyseniz, panele tıkladığınızda anında aşağıda görünmesi çok iyi olmuş. Beynim yetmediği için uzun kodları unutuyordum genelde - gerçi bunda ilk oyundaki gibi 6 haneli kodlar yoktu. Hatta sadece toplamda 5 şifreli kapı falan geçmiştir.

Yeni bir düşman eklentisi olarak keskin nişancılar beni aşırı zorladı. Özellikle kırmızı çizgisi (ışık da... terim olarak ne deniyor, hiçbir fikrim yok) görünmeyen, mayınlarla döşeli çanakların olduğu kısımda bayağı vakit kaybettim. Güzel bir eklentiydi yani, zorlanalım biraz ama çooook da sıkmasın. (Mesela ilk oyundaki mayınlı, iki tane gardiyanın baktığı o yer canımı tak ettirmişti sadece. Sonunda ikisini de vurup geçtim o kısmı :D)

Tırmanma, atlama, zıplama kısımlarında şaşırtıcı bir şekilde neredeyse hiç sorun yaşamadım. İlk oyunda bir yerden bir yere zıplamaya çalışırken on defa deniyordum. Duvarlar arası split yapma ilk oyunda ne kadar hoşuma gitse de 1 kere bile kullanmam gereken yer olmamıştı. Bunda half split gibi bir şey yapmışlar ve gayet iyiydi. Tabii bir yerde denedim, olmayınca kafayı yedim, tüm yeri dolaştım, geldim yine aynı yere. Üzücüydü. Sonunda yaptım ama.

Genel olarak çok daha kısa sürdüğünü hissettim hatta. Önceki oyunu birirmem 1 haftayı geçmişken, bunu 3-4 günde bitirdim sanırım - ben de kendime şaşkınım.

Hikaye önceki oyun gibi çok da ahım şahım bir şey değildi ancak bundan kaybettiğini kesinlikle sinematiklik olarak telafi ediyor. Özellikle en çok aklımda kalan seviye olan tren kısmında, trenin altından ilerlemek, üstünde helikoptere binip kaçmak vs. beni gerçekten bir ajan gibi hissettirdi heh. 🤭 Bir de borular gibi tutunduğun yerden ters dönerek nişan alma olayı aşırı hoşuma gitse de hiç kullanmam gereken yer olmadı sanırım.

Müzikleri her ne kadar yine atmosfere uygun olsa da, ilk oyundaki gibi oyun dışında da dinleyeceğim olduğunu zannetmiyorum. Sadece single player menu müziğini beğendim bayağı, aklımda o kaldı. Los Angeles Havalimanı - en son seviyede de bu çalıyordu. Gerçekten kendini yalnız ve gerilimli hissettiren bir parça...

Bakalım Sam Fisher, diğer oyunlarda nasıl hissettireceksin?

Current Mood: pessimistic
Current Music: Sasha - Born Again

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updates

Been some time since I properly had the time to update (and not for a game review).

Last time, I see I've mentioned preparing images to make collages. I finished all three of them: Raiden, Solid Snake and Iroquois Pliskin! ^^ My favorite is Pliskin's, I kinda messed up Raiden's - damn my shaky hands. Also, Snavid's pics were HUGE AF so I had to do his on a different notebook lmfao!

I think they look fairly pretty, right?
MGS characters are usually very pretty, especially in the older games. I don't like hyper realistic graphics myself but people seem to prefer it. Well, maybe I'll change my opinion when I'll have the chance to play V once I get a proper graphics card lol 😅

I've also managed to complete DMC3 in two days - at least the rest of it. I think I left it on mission 4 or something and went to play Splinter Cell instead. I think the only DMC review I've written is for the second one. That was because I had time to spend right after finishing it and I had some thoughts. First one was a very game. Second one was a choice. Third one was a bother.
HA. Think I'm going to get stoned for this, but I really didn't enjoy the later parts of the game. It started out really good, I'd missed seeing my mans Dante in his usual demeanor. However, the boss rush section made my skin crawl in agony. I don't even know how people can finish that game in normal difficulty, when I had trouble finding the will to finish it in easy difficulty lmfao! I applaud you people. 👏👏

The day after I finished it, I started to play Yakuza 4. Not sure about the exact date but could be on 16 or 17th of April, 2022. I have some thoughts but I am still on Akiyama's last chapter so I still will leave an open mind ^^ It's not bad, but I still miss 3.

Maybe playing these games right after each other was a bad idea because I've been feeling down lately. Not sure if it has any relation to them to be honest but idk man. I feel like I'm getting older each day without accomplishing anything but like... Playing video games like this was something I never had the chance to do as a kid so now that I have the opportunity, is it really too bad of me to want to play them?? When I think like that, I don't think it is. Why am I always nice at other people but I can never show the same hospitality to myself ever? Makes one think.........

Anyway, I think that's about it. Oruç da iyi geçiyor elhamdülillah. Tek sıkıntı, sağlık problemleri. Birkaç gündür hastaydım, sanırım nezleydim. Ya da alerji olabilir, annem öyle diyor. Neyse, gözümü açabiliyorum artık :D Burnum bir türlü durmuyordu, çok fenaydı. Diğer sağlık sıkıntısı hala devam ediyor maalesef. Bakalım gelecek günler ne gösterecek.

I'm feeling that same sadness once again as I am writing this now. Well, whatever. Best to ignore, like all my problems.

I still want to do that paper model of Metal Gear REX. I'm planning on printing them along with some Daniel pics, so I can make his collage as well. Should I make it only Spader, or Shanks as well?

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: Day6 - 때려쳐

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Head empty, only Splinter Cell

I finally had time to play Splinter Cell and OH BOY was I hooked the whole time I played it!!

If you know me, I love playing stealth games so I always wanted to start this series as well. I'm glad I did!

Graphics wise, I think the game looked good in its time - I'm not one to get too stuck on graphics anyway. If it controls well, I'm okay with it.

Well, let me talk about the controls a bit...

At the beginning, I was a little confused with the HUD, the buttons I needed to use. But it didn't take long 'till I got the hang of it (this is coming from a very slow person). The real problem is the game sometimes doesn't work correctly. Especially jumping gave me quite a hassle and I think I would have rage quitted it many times had it not been for the quicksaving. Honestly, such a life saver, a relief to be able to save at any point. (And I managed to f-ck it up even with that lmfao! I had to backtrack but I realized I saved it on the save I needed to use, so I had to replay the entire level lol 😭)

But when those moves work correctly, the gameplay becomes so much fun! My favorite thing to do was probably using rapple to walk down the walls; really makes me feel like I'm being a spy lol. Also I never had the chance to do it during the game (minus the training level) but seeing your character do a Jean Claude Van Damme between the walls WAS SO ENTERTAINING haha!!

Story was alright I guess. It's nothing spectacular since it's the usual American glorification anyway so I won't delve too much into it and just skip right into the MUSIC. IT WAS SO GOOD.

While writing this I thought to myself. Two of my other favorite stealth games would be Hitman and Metal Gear - yet neither of them hit me as hard as this game with its music. Now I listen to a few MGS tracks (I actually like the MSX music more than the MGS music 👀) but this game makes you get INTO it if that makes sense. Especially the alert themes (along with that piano sound that gave me a heart attack each time it happened) were SO GOOD. I think the thing I'll remember the most about this game will be the music.

I want to quickly adress the variety of gadgets as well but I didn't have many chances to use them early on, since I tried not to rely on equipment that much and wanted to be a sneaky boi as much as possible; however there are some very nice ones like the ring something something I forgot lol. I started using it later on since the levels got a lot harder and it helps a lot. I never used some of them: like the sticky shocker or the sticky camera. Because of my preference like that, I got stuck at some parts and had to check the walkthroughs lol. (I think there was a part where you had to use the diversion camera and I was like "IT DOES THAT???")

Overall I had so much fun and I missed feeling this excited about a video game 😂 I'll try to start the extra missions (that weren't in the Steam version for some reason...?) and finish it completely. It took me like 20 hours to finish the main story, so it was pretty funny to see people finish it in 4 hours with COMPLETE STEALTH.

Current Mood: confused
Current Music: Imogen Heap - Loose Ends

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Just finished Devil May Cry 2...

I started playing this game 27th Nov last year (2021) apparently, but I've only played until Mission 3 or something. Only a few days ago I had the time to pick it up again and oh boy. Now, I had my problems with the first one's story but this one... I didn't get a single thing lmfao. I think I might have forgotten some key elements if they were at the beginning but idk man.

Now, to what I liked:

I loved Dante's model in this. I loved his first outfit, but this one is... I think the right word would be, "sexier". Dark leather on front, showing off his chest a little... ;P (It had been years since I used this emoticon but it was fitting.)
Missile launcher. It comes off very late into the game though... It helped me defeat two heads of the last boss' first phase.
The city had some cool architecture (although some poor level design).

To what I struggled with:

Bolverk. This boss appears twice and it was easily one of the hardest bosses I've faced in this game. I think the others would be the one with the turning room (those kind of fights make me dizzy, just like in Bayonetta), Trimagia or something, I forgot their name. That took me a long time to finish. I probably needed to change the amulets to attack according to their magic but I didn't want to. That's on me.
Using the sword to attack has huge cons. I didn't know the hate towards this game when I started, until I had to look for a walkthrough at some missions when I got lost and read the comments about how much people hated it. I don't think it was sooooo bad. I mean, the first one also had problems in my opinion. But one thing I agree with them is that this game wants you to use your guns as much as possible.

To extend on that last point, I want to talk about the game difficulty. Usually when I start a new series, I tend to select the easiest difficulty to try to get used to it. I didn't particularly seek out the easy auto on the first game, but it was given as an option after I used a vitality star during the first level. I completed it with the easy difficulty but for this second game, I was baffled to learn that there wasn't even one. Nevertheless, I finished it with the normal difficulty however??? Like I mentioned, except for a few bosses the bosses weren't that difficult, and the weirdest thing of them all is that both of the Arius fights were too easy. I get that he isn't the main antagonist but he's still shown as a pretty big deal, right? Anyway, he pretty much dies with your guns in... let's say, 10 minutes at most.

People mention the music as a positive to this game but I don't remember anything. I only feel like I've become deaf after constantly hearing the gunshot SFX...

I didn't hate it but I didn't love it either. It was alright. Dante was so fucking beautiful though. That's all I'm going to say.

Edit: Wow, okay. So I was right. You DO need to play Lucia to understand it fully (?). I don't know why I took the words of random strangers' for truth. Apparently it only takes like 2 hours? Hopefully I'll find time to play it. I need to study for the book contest so I can probably spare an hour at max at other stuff...

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: Mor ve Ötesi - Re

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Thought on "X-Men: Evolution"

On January this year, I've rewatched "Logan" with my mom* when it aired on Kanal D. I've always rewatched the first X-Men movies from time to time whenever I needed my mutant refill, but this year it reached back to its prime levels when I first got into X-Men during high school. So there I was again, rewatching all the movies (the bad ones as well) and my favorite cartoon appearances of Wolverine. Then I said to myself, "Hey, why not watch this 'Evolution' series? I've been meaning to do so for a while anyway!"

I've not expected to like it this much to be honest. I've always liked DC's cartoons a lot more and the only Marvel cartoon I never missed on TV was "The Ultimate Spider-Man" series that aired on Disney Channel. Also, I don't really like stories take place in a high school setting but I loved this one and finished it in a month (or a month and a half... Not sure, but it was pretty quick)! I realized how much I missed these characters I love. The best thing about this series is that Logan was made to be a tired dad of the team which fits him a lot better than to be in a love triangle between Jean and Scott as we see on other media.

I was also surprised at how many classic X-Men storylines they managed to cram in into 4 seasons. While some of them were watered down versions that teased their original counterparts coming in the future (in the show's canon), they were still enjoyable to watch. One thing I didn't like was how they treated Spyke. He basically was written out of the story during the 3rd (?) season and only appeared in one episode (except for the finale where he didn't even have a single line if I remember correctly) during the 4rd season while constantly being shown on the intro lol. I would have liked to see him explored more. :(

"X-Men: Evolution" will surely be one of the cartoons I will remember on a good note, and probably rewatch my favorite episodes again sometime in the future.

That also reminds me... There haven't been any new X-Men cartoon lately, so I'm waiting impatiently for the X-Men 97' revival/reboot show that Marvel teased recently. ^^

* She didn't pay it too much attention at the beginning, but later on she was watching watching. The funny thing is, she didn't realize it was Hugh Jackman playing Logan again until the scene where the kids playfully shave his beard (like his original look). At that moment, she was like, "Oh, it's the guy with the claws!" That was a funny memory.