14) I Stan My Stand

Posted on 09/15/2019 by Natalie Neumann

In my reviews of The World Ends With You Final Remix and Pokemon Let’s Go Eevee I mentioned the difficulties I encountered when trying to play both these titles in handheld mode, and how I sought to remedy this through the use of the Nintendo 3DS Stand that came bundled with Kid Icarus Uprising. It was something I was quite happy with, and cut forward about a year I am still using this stand regularly. Yet rather than playing oodles of Switch games, I’m instead using it to prop up my smartphone so that I can play games without needing to hold something for extended periods of time. Part of me feels that this is antithetical to the very idea of handhelds, since I am not holding them with my hands. Another part of me recognizes that I am enjoying games more by playing them my special way, so I’m going to keep doing that.
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Rundown (9/01-9/07) Natalie Must Remain Enigmatic

Posted on 09/08/2019 by Natalie Neumann

Something that might not be obvious from the deluge of personal information and historically hued anecdotes I offer throughout this jolly old website is the fact that ‘in real life’ I tend to be immensely reserved around others. As in, I like to give as few personal details as possible, and only share said details when prompted. This applies from co-workers to classmates to even my immediate family, and my justification stems from a deep fear of rejection or being misunderstood by others. I mean, I could tell them that I enjoy writing and video games, but those things could be wildly thrown out of proportions, and saying that I write novels and review games for a small website sounds a trifle bit bizarre to some people. So the way I view it, there is no winning and I ought to keep my mouth shut, lest I accidentally spew something problematic.
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Rundown (8/25-8/31) The Pursuit of Hard Work

Posted on 09/01/2019 by Natalie Neumann

While working at my office job I frequently catch my assorted co-workers ceasing whatever task they were in the midst of or simply passing time by socializing with others. It is an activity that I understand in small instances, but many of their conversations go on for 15 or more minutes, and center around unrelated minutiae rather than anything work-related. Which I personally find to be… wrong at least to some degree. I approach work with a very regimented and task oriented mindset, and while I do take time to check my email or RSS feeds on occasion, I always go back to whatever needs to be done, and try to finish the task in an efficient manner. I suppose this is just due to how I have a more serious work ethic, but it regularly surprised me to see people take such a lax approach to their professions, especially when they have families to take care of. Maybe that’s the right approach to take, and I’m just a fool for working so intently, or maybe they’re just a bunch of slackers. I dunno.
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Rundown (8/18-8/24) Dude Whatever It’s Summer

Posted on 08/25/2019 by Natalie Neumann

The mixtapes, remixes, and mashups created by Team Teamwork, also known as Timothy Jacques, are a regular part of my musical rotation, and have been very influential on my personal tastes in music, introducing me to a number of genres and artists I otherwise wouldn’t have given the time of day. Whether they take the form of endearing tracks to jam out to while doing more mundane daily activities, or, as is the case with this more recent work, surreal auditory odyssey that blend genres, tones, and concepts, resulting in something bizarrely claiming, yet also eerie and abrasive. I bring this up because Team Teamwork recently released their latest entry in the Dude Whatever It’s Summer series, which is what I imagine nearly overdosing on one’s recreational drug of choice is like, but in the form of a 64 minute long diverse continuous medley. So, yeah, if that truncated and clunky description sounds appealing to you, maybe give Dude Whatever It’s Summer 2019 a listen.
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Rundown (8/11-8/17) My Game Collection Fits in a Shoebox

Posted on 08/18/2019 by Natalie Neumann

I often stumble onto musings from gaming enthusiasts who boast about their collections or hem and haw about physical clutter being an annoyance. I’ve been playing primarily on PC since 2013, so I don’t have much of a modern physical library, and I have long since given up any aspirations of keeping a presentable collection and chucked my games in assorted cases and disc binders years ago so they consume less space. Now everything roughly fits inside a shoebox! I still have the cases mind you, mostly in the event that I choose to sell off parts of my collection, which I would be willing to do, since I’m never going to hook up and play something on any of my older systems, but that would require actual work.
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Rundown (8/04-8/10) Drop the Crack, Nat!

Posted on 08/11/2019 by Natalie Neumann

Seeing as how I now have a smartphone, the idea of playing mobile games suddenly became a very real possibility for me, and I figured what better way to go about things than returning to Fire Emblem Heroes. After using up the orbs I accumulated on my Android tablet, I tried getting back into the established groove, and quickly remembered why I stopped playing the game in the first place. This game is bloated with content, time locks just about everything it can, and is designed to fuel obsessive tendencies while being built around a stream of constant grinding. It is suffocating and overwhelming how much time-gated content and rewards there are in this game, and I honestly could not tolerate it after a two days of playing it during my free time rather than doing anything remotely productive. Like playing Sushi Striker.
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Rundown (7/28-8/03) Forgiveness

Posted on 08/04/2019 by Natalie Neumann

There are few things that irk me more than the animosity expressed towards individuals for mistakes they made in the past when they acknowledge whatever bad, awful, or questionable thing they did, and offer an apology. I am a person of very simple morals, believe that forgiveness should be granted to those who admit their faults and at the very least express a desire to reform their ways and become better people. It upsets me whenever I see people dismiss this notion, claim that an apology was not good enough, that some vague unrealistic action is needed to make amends, or insinuate that these individuals are tainted and deserve to be rejected by society. Yet it happens regularly and, honestly, it makes me want to sever all ties and connections I have to anyone and anything, and immerse myself in isolation. But I won’t. I’ll still hold ties and biases because those things bring me happiness and a life devoid of happiness is a life hardly worth continuing.
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Category Archives: Rundowns