25) The Future Is Random!

Posted on 05/26/2019 by Natalie Neumann

This past week I finished up the first iteration of what I hope to be a new segment to go alongside my Reviews, Rundowns, and Rambles, which I’m dubbing Randoms. Randoms are short stories based on various ideas, concepts, and prompts that I either stumble across or pop into my weird brain. A segment meant to contrast my novels and novellas, which take me forever to write, and require me to commit to an idea and characters and make everything part of one big continuous multiverse. The first Random will debut on May 31st, but I am not committing to a more specific schedule going forward. Could be monthly, could be quarterly, could be whenever the hell I feel like it. Remember kids: Die Zukunft ist Zufällig. Continue reading →

Rundown (5/12-5/18) Writing Woes

Posted on 05/19/2019 by Natalie Neumann

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but throughout primary school I was not allowed to take regular English classes for reasons I still don’t fully understand. I did not really mind it at the time, but I regularly wonder if I would be a better writer if I had been permitted to take regular classes. I bring this up because I recently fell down a rabbit hole of some of my old writing on this site, and found it to be rife with minor mistakes I either did not catch the first time, or did not know any better back then. It makes me wonder if I am still a garbage writer and will always be, or if this is just a natural creative process, where one grows to dislike the work they did a few years prior, as I have seen that mentality pop up from time to time.

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Rundown (5/05-5/11) Ticking Troublesome Time Bomb

Posted on 05/12/2019 by Natalie Neumann

Over the past few years there have been a number of instances where individuals with a strong internet following have effectively ruined their self-made careers. Through hateful comments, improper conduct, or general misuse of their platform, it is very easy for acclaim accumulated by individuals to be demolished in a matter of days, if not hours, and for their reputation to be effectively tainted by their misactions. It’s something I am very well aware of, have been for years, and after seeing this process undergo so many iterations, it’s all too easy to view every creator, if not every human being, to be a ticking time bomb of troublesome activities. Or in other words, the longer anybody exists, the more likely it is that they will become racist, sexist, hateful, psychotic, or try to exchange pornographic images of themselves with children.
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Rundown (4/28-5/04) The Reviews Will Never End!

Posted on 05/05/2019 by Natalie Neumann

I’m steadily approaching the 7th anniversary of this site’s quaint little existence, and with it over 7 full years of reviewing every game I played for a significant amount of time, amounting to something like 370 reviews in total, only 230 of which are still public. In that time, I have begun associating the very act of playing a game with the act of collecting my thoughts, writing the review, editing it with varying levels of thoroughness, gathering a sample of the hundreds of screenshots I took, and posting it onto this site where it likely will not garner any real attention, as the only things people come here for are my Press-Switch and Student Transfer reviews. Or rather my flowcharts. It has become such a big part of gaming for me that I honestly cannot ever see myself stopping, and even if I did, I would assuredly miss the sense of closure that penning a review provides. But enough about reviews. This is a rundown, so rundown some gaming news!
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Rundown (4/21-4/27) Resolution Solutions

Posted on 04/28/2019 by Natalie Neumann

One of the reasons why I am apprehensive towards the very idea of upgrading beyond my current 1080p monitor is that I play a large number of games with set resolutions that generally look like crap when scaled upwards due their quantity of 2D art assets. While 3D games are generally safe from this thanks to the magic of polygons and anti-aliasing, and sprite-based games can look great when displayed at 3 times their original resolution, games that rely heavily on 2D art assets are not so lucky, and it makes me worry about their future. I know there are programs like Waifu2x that can quadruple the size of artwork with minimal quality loss and ReShade can do great things for 3D titles, but I have yet to see anything that allows for, say, Muv-Luv to be boosted up to 1080p as you play it, which would be bonkers and make me utterly ecstatic.
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Rundown (4/14-4/20) Natalie Versus Transit

Posted on 04/21/2019 by Natalie Neumann

Sometimes when travelling back between the standbys of home, school, and work, I pontificate about how few placed I typically visit in a given year, and how that number is realistically less than 30 unique locations. I suppose this is a sign that I should “get out” more, but I truly have little desire in going to places for the mere sake of leaving, especially when the process of getting from one place to another is such a dull affair for people without the ability to work, read, or mess around on their phone while in transit. Seriously, I went to two new places yesterday but my 6 hours out involved about 4 hours of setting up computers and another 2 of sitting in a hot car in silence. It, combined with how often paratransit is late in picking me up really does make me worry about the future and the transportation related woes it will contain.
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Rundown (4/07-4/13) Natalie Likes Schedules

Posted on 04/14/2019 by Natalie Neumann

When I schedule the games that I review, I tend to prioritize two things. Variety and timeliness, as I do not want to have two similar reviews back to back, but I also need to take into consideration my schedule, which I have ranted about in detail over the past year or so. This has left me unable to keep my promise of reviewing longer games, as I only get about 15 hours of quality gaming time in a given week, and is largely the reason why I started the whole monthly Ramble segment. That, and I wanted to try performing deeper dives into subjects that I feel strongly about and do not see discussed by people better and smarter than me.
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Category Archives: Rundowns