Hello again! About time for the usual update, and I have a few things to say/announce today, along with new ETAs. Some good news, some worrying news, and a precaution about a darker subject i’ll get into later. For now, let’s begin!
A Proven Premonition
I mentioned last time I was a bit fearful of Cohost and their financial status, and sure enough, they finally came out and detailed everything. Somehow, the fate of the site is depending on a private investor guy who’s literally MIA and can’t be reached. This is after a few recent surges of people trying to join the site and have it click with them, only for the website’s very hostile nature toward freelancers/artists/people trying to have their content discovered due to no recommendation options to show up and cause a bunch of them to turn away from the site.
I could do a whole ramble/article about Cohost and how I really felt it’s been a bad pick for promoting my website, but I still like it the most of the social medias due to the more carefree/relaxed environment and them being very swift with banning bigotry, a luxury other social media sites don’t offer sadly. Thus, while this news isn’t unexpected and I absolutely believe the staff dug their own grave with being stubborn on helping promote/suggest users for people to follow rather than relying on you hoping you didn’t tag a post something that sent it to the void, I will be sad to see it gone.
Yes, I’m being pessimistic because if you’re depending on an outside party that went MIA and have only a month to keep the site up unless they come back, that’s incredibly dangerous, risky, and pretty much a done deal unless a massive wave of funding comes. No, I don’t think people who’re subscribing to their Cohost Plus plan and even some who are admitting to spending the last of their free money on subs are smart or realize that a social media website costs a fucking lot of money to maintain, and $5 subscriptions won’t save it. Also, they ran a makeship campaign for their mascot a month before this news broke, and I have a feeling maybe they should have come clean a bit earlier around then, rather than a month before possible doomsday.
Still, I’ll miss a ton of cool people if the site dies. A great account sharing chrontendo screenshots, tons of cool gaming flyers/article scans, lots of Japanese game trivia, cool fan art, new twitch streamers I found… It’s abhorrent for my own freelancing but good for the small circle that I know who stuck around, even if most of my friends who joined have long since left the site. Believe me, my mental health has been WAY improved since leaving Twitter and that’s why I wanted Cohost to get off its ass, implement friendlier options for freelancers/content creators, and do well.
However, I said if this happened/I felt more like it would, I’d discuss alternate sites, and well… I have a Bluesky now. This is not a move. This is not a main social media account. This is mostly me claiming my name, (to prevent a repeat of what happened with Twitch when I announced a rename before claiming it) dropping a few posts to show that I was who I am, and leaving. I’ll share major articles, reviews, etc and see what happens, but I’m not expecting any significant traffic whatsoever. If I get more views than cohost I’ll be gobsmacked.
Still, who knows. Follow me if you want. I don’t care much to post and I don’t want another repeat of the mess that is Twitter, so I’ll back off and likely stick to reddit if Cohost implodes. Not much of a “social media” but still some fun communities. I’m debating Threads still, but that seems to have fallen off with my gaming press peers.
A Bunch of Reviews coming!
Good news! I got more stuff on the way. Like I promised, I got RICO done, along with Neo Atlas, so that’s two games from the queue done pretty quickly. Lost in Harmony is next, and then I plan to alternate between Rain World and THE MISSING. I’m getting close to only doing the bigger games soon, but those bigger games are still less taxing than your Yakuza 5, Cold Steel IVs and Sakura Wars, which the PS4 block is gonna be sometime after Switch is caught up.
Steam wise, we’re getting to newer fun stuff, and Berserk Boy is a newer fun game. I’ll try to get it covered by Friday night, but it may not be until Tuesday. Monday is occupied by something for good reason (more a bit later) I’m also going through the Tomb Raider I-III Remasters, which just got a big patch that makes me have to rewrite a complaint I had about the lighting. For the better! But yeah, that’ll likely be late next week, though I wanted it out this friday, there’s no way I’m gonna beat any of these games in 2 days, let alone one like i’m hoping to do, while dabbling into the other games and the bonus content they have. It’ll be a traditional compilation style review, so that’ll be nice to do again.
Full Quiet on Xbox is till in the works, it’s just gonna be my “off time” game I play off and on, at a slower pace. Being a game suggested for me for a system I’m already caught up on, it’s not the highest priority compared to my ancient games on the queue, but I am digging it a bit more and I think it’ll be a fun writeup.
Oh! And also coming next week, is Contra: Operation Galuga. I have that review almost ready with my notes just about done, and I even beat the game already. But it’s Contra, so you play it again and again and there’s even fun bonus modes to mess with, so I should have it out sometime next week. Big thanks to Konami for the launch day code via Keymailer.
Interviews… More than One?
So a promising update on the bigger interview; I sent my questions to my translator and am awaiting the finished translations to forward to the company who’s helping me with this. It’ll be a bit different from my Tomie one, but still a short fun one I hope will bring new fun insight into certain games that I admire. If I get that going, it should be out early next month.
But, there’s a smaller interview incoming! I plan to interview a fun youtuber I’ve really been a fan of lately, who’s done a lot of cool chrongaming videos that I really think you should check out if you like 8-Bit stuff. They have a pretty cool history and I wanna spread the word about them, mainly. That’ll likely be out in a week or two.
The Five Year Tragedy
Well, it’s almost time. Last update, I mentioned I was nearing the day I lost one of my bestest writing pals ever, my friend Chaz/Toon0Mate. This was the event that kicked off a very, very bad year mentally for me, and is currently the worst year of my life I have gone through post my adoption (being that my pre-adoption life was you know, me almost dying near the end of it, it was still way better than some of those years since I don’t have PTSD flashbacks from the worst parts of that year). Not only did I lose him suddenly, but I lost my grandfather to cancer that year, and have dealt with extreme health anxiety about myself since. Lots of troubles in the years to come, lots of motivation problems, and lots of self confidence issues.
It’s pretty much the reason why despite trying to continue to put out content, my bad habit of requesting literally everything I could and accepting literally everything offered came to bite me hard in the ass, and why I’m focusing on a queue of games from mostly 2018/2019. I never really went in-depth about how I felt outside of a few updates here and there, but I wanna just ramble and vent; vent about general anxiety, how it feels to be a writer with struggles, and how it feels to have survived something pretty bad only to have very, very bad health anxiety that makes you feel every year might be your last. I also want to share how I did slowly, learn to grieve and deeply missing an internet writing bestie who I never even met in person nor knew that long, and how I try to keep my current friends close.
Thus, it’s gonna be a heavy article on Monday as I ramble about all that, and thus I’m giving a preemptive content warning that I will be discussing sensitive subjects. Death, NSFW writings, my history with flashbacks, and well, the whole “mental health going down a crater due to loss, leading me to getting deep into necromancy for a period of time.” No, that is not an exaggeration. Yes, I was that devastated. It’s not meant to be an excuse on why I was so long with reviews, but I do hope it at least illustrates that hey, despite all the mental battles, I still pushed myself hard to get content out on a pretty regular basis and will keep doing so, pre finishing queue, and post finishing it. Let’s try to nail that queue before the 10th anniversary of SFG in June!
Well, that about does it. For now, I need to try and catch up on sleep. I did crunch 3 big-ish writings in the past 3 days, and this one is a bit shorter. I’ll do my best to keep up the pace with my full time job. Until next time, Take care!
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