in no particular order

Settle in, 'cause this might be a long one.

November's always been a very melancholy month. I mean, I get all pumped through October for Halloween/Youmacon, and then from there, November's just kind of the road block in between that and the Holiday season proper. It's kind of funny that my birthday happens to be right smack in the middle of it (was the 16th for the curious), but when I think about it, that really kind of adds to the melancholy for reasons I won't go into.

It kicks off with Halloween gone/post-con depression from Youmacon, then there's a furry con relatively close to me that I keep wanting to go to but missing out on (usually because Youmacon sucks up all my funds, this year because I couldn't get the days off work) for the past several years, and it's also when things start to get really cold (I hate the cold) and it gets really dark early. Earlier in the month it's rainy, and then it usually starts to get snowy around the second half. The first snowfall is a depressing enough moment on it's own because I hate snow. Living in Michigan makes it even worse because through November, the whether can never decide what it wants to do. It's been at the worst I've seen it this year, going from mid-fifties one day to below freezing the next. And of course, the only consistency through the indecisive weather is that it will be cold, wet, and gray. That is almost always a constant. Eventually, winter will start to kick in around Thanksgiving (usually, it was in the forties today, so this year could be the anomaly), but without the one redeeming quality of having the holidays or the excitement of a new year to perk things up a bit.

I mostly just float through November hoping to make it past Thanksgiving and Black Friday to get to the Holiday season proper (Black Friday doesn't count, it's just a clusterfuck and I avoid it like the plague). I love Christmas, and I really just wish I could jump right to December after Youmacon, instead of having to endure November, the shitty downtime in between two things I love.

But enough of that noise, things have been generally okay for me. Still not all the way settled into the new apartment, but getting there. Work is a little taxing, not because of having to work 40 hours, but because it's divided up between three shifts of 3:30PM - 12AM and two shifts of 11PM-7AM, which messes with my sleep cycle a bit. It's not too bad though, considering my sleep schedule has always been pretty messed up though, and the job itself isn't hard, I'm just a little worn out by it. All in all though, I'm adjusting alright. I'm starting to get into a normal routine, which I never thought I'd welcome, but it feels good to have some stability for a change.

Of course, it would've been nice if my car didn't decide to die in the Meijer parking lot last night. Usually I call AAA for a jump, but turns out that AAA had expired a month earlier than I thought, so I had to have a friend come out and jump me, but it turned out he had bad cables. I bought a jump starter thing for $30, but it didn't come charged (I figured) so I had to catch a ride home and then back to work today. The battery thing gave it a bit of juice, but not enough to get it going. I did end up renewing AAA though, so they came and jumped it. The great thing is though, when I finally got it up and running, there's a "no fuse" indicator on my display, and my interior lights, remote start and lock, radio and CD player, automatic lock, and power windows all didn't work.

So now I have to have that looked at, and I'm just really hoping it'll be an easy electrical fix and I won't have to pay through the nose for it. Still though, it's such a downer, it just seems like every time I get to a level of contentness, something comes along to try and ruin it.

Oh, and since I've posted about my ear before, I may as well mention that I did get out to a specialist, seems the hearing in that ear is rapidly declining and I'll prolly need a hearing aid within the next ten years for it. That kinda sucks, but I'm trying not to make a big thing of it. Still though, I guess it could be considered a significant life event, so I guess it's worth noting.

November has been very good for one thing this year though, and that's been games. I passed on Skyrim because I didn't like Oblivion too much, but I picked up Modern Warfare 3, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, and Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

Modern Warfare 3 has of course already been beaten, but no one's buying that game for the single player. The plot of the campaign is as incomprehensible as ever, but I mean, it's still a fun FPS, so it's a good way to kill some time. Wish they could've made it a bit longer than MW2, but like I said, no one's buying it for the single player. I shouldn't have to tell you that the multiplayer is really good if you like that kind of thing. I shouldn't, but I will. It's very good.

ACR I haven't played too much of yet. Brotherhood was excellent both in story mode and in the multiplayer. I've only played the MP for a few hours, but it definitely seemed like they did a good job improving on it to make it even better. The new modes are cool, though I wish some more of the characters from the MP in Brotherhood returned, but that's a pretty minor gripe. The campaign has been rather fun and rather promising so far. It's weird seeing Ezio so old, but he's still as deadly as ever, so at least his age isn't hindering him any. It does get a little creepy when he starts to hit on really young women though. Anyway, one thing the series has been really good at so far is updating the gameplay. In each game, they introduce a new mechanic that allows you to overcome obstacles a little easier, which keeps the gameplay of the series from going stagnant. Of course, in order to balance it out, they must introduce new challenges and up the difficulty a bit to keep things from being a cakewalk, without seeming like they're reaching or relying on fake difficulty. Ubisoft has been really good about this so far, and though I haven't played enough of ACR to say with any kind of certainty, it seems like they've done just as good a job this time around.

Skyward Sword has had a lot of critical acclaim, but I dunno, I was really not feeling it when I played through the first few hours. There are a few things about it that really bug me. The first is that, though it's a Japanese series, it's always had this sort of European legend feeling to it. In Skyward Sword's intro, the narrative just felt incredibly Japanese. In fact, to me, it felt like it could really just be any anime or an intro to any ol' JRPG. One of the most popular conventions of Shounen series is to take the conventions and feel of a high school drama but adapt it to fit a fantasy setting, and up the action a lot. And let me tell you, right from the beginning of Skyward Sword, all those conventions are there. There's the school (the Knight Academy) the easy-going protagonist (Link), the childhood best friend who doubles as a love interest (Zelda), the bully and his cronies (Groose and co.), the well-meaning but incompetent classmate (can't remember his name), the know-it-all classmate (another name I can't remember), and they even dug straight into the cliche of having the bully have a crush on the main character's love interest. I mean, for god's sake, the plot of the entire intro revolves around this race in which Link and Groose are the top contenders, and of course Groose tries to sabotage Link and Zelda helps him recover and yadda yadda yadda we've seen this plot a million times before.

Then of course, we have the very JRPG-ish element of having to play a minigame before the game proper begins that is either un-losable, very hard to lose, and that if the main character can lose for good, it's usually meant to happen and also usually scripted after the player themselves wins or comes close to winning.

Also I'm really tired of floating continents, they're starting to get really overdone in Japanese games.

The other big thing about it that bugs me is that it seems like it can't decide how it wants to present itself. Zelda has sort of split itself into two separate ways of presenting itself (most evident in the diverging art styles). There's the more cartoony style that developed with Wind Waker, typically with cell-shaded graphics and toonier characters and environments. Then there's the more, I guess you could call it "realistic" style that I would say started with the original 3D installments and grew into how Twilight Princess looked, with more realistic-looking environments and characters (even with the less-humanoid races).

Skyward Sword kind of seems caught between the two, and it puts me off a bit. Overall, the presentation leans more toward the "realistic" side, but gets derailed by some very cartoony-looking characters and setting elements, and they just seem really out-of-place. Moreover, the cartoony elements seem to have sunk into the plot. I mean, Zelda games always have a light-hearded, silly side to them that is part of their charm, but it's not played for quite the same effect in this one, it seems to me.

There's a few other minor things here and there that nag at me too, like I don't like that Link just starts out as the chosen one, instead of sort of coming into his destiny somewhat of his own accord.

And then there's one thing I'm a bit conflicted on. I noticed that in town, you couldn't smash random pots. Also, when I tried to raid the cupboards and chests of other people's houses in the starting town, the game scolded me and I couldn't. Now, on the one hand, I guess props to Nintendo for fixing what could be considered a gameplay flaw that has plagued the series for ages, but on the other hand, some of those enduring older game cliches are a big source of charm for long-running game series, and my first reaction to the changes was "What? THIS IS NOT ZELDA."

As I said though, these are first impressions. I only played through the beginning, and I'm hoping things pick up when I really get into the swing of things. Gameplay is pretty decent, the normal movement is just a touch wonky, but the combat is pretty neat and a lot of fun. The flight controls for the loftwing were a bit difficult though.

Moving away from games though, I did mention Youmacon, and I would like to say that it was an absolute blast this year. I cosplayed WV from Homestuck, and I really like how it turned out. If anyone's interested in seeing pictures, shoot me a comment, I'll link ya some good ones.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that's all. Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!