Idle Thoughts And Meaningless Musings : Neverness To Everness Edition

I spent most of the morning writing a lengthy post about AI and then I read it back and decided it was full of things I'd already said. More than once. There were a few ideas that hadn't been done to death mixed in, here and there, but those probably need a proper post of their own, a post I don't want to write just now, so the whole thing will have to stay in the draft folder for the time being.

I'm technically on holiday anyway (Although when you only work two days a week and you haven't gone anywhere, the expression doesn't really carry the weight.) so there wouldn't normally be a post here today, anyway. Also, it's a Saturday. No-one reads blogs on a Saturday. That's a proven fact. 

Of course, they do read posts that were posted on a Saturday later the following week, when they're at work and bored and the boss is out of the office, so it's not like you can put stuff up on the internet at the weekend and expect no-one's going to see it. More's the pity.

Given all of that, I think I'll just indulge myself with a hotch-potch of screenshots and observations about Neverness To Everness. No theme, no purpose. Take it as it comes.

I just really like those shots of Lacrimosa. She's very photogenic. I ought to remember to get her out when I take screenshots instead of always showing The Appraiser. It's very clear, looking at Lacrimosa, how much more effort went into what she's wearing than the utilitarian outfit Flora's stuck with, at least until she can build a strong enough bond with someone else to steal their look.

Speaking of bonding, Flora still has a house guest. She came home one day to this, which was when it occurred to me there was only one bed.  

I mean, there is a sofa...  I thought Mint must be sleeping on it but apparently not. So I bought another bed. 

Sidebar. Are there any games where characters actually sleep in a bed? As in under the covers? I can't think of any. Everyone always lies on top. At least in NTE they do wear nightclothes to sleep although only by the expedient of walking around the flat like that all the time. Still, better than going to sleep in your clothes. Which, come to think of it, is what Flora does...

There's hardly room on the mezzanine for two beds, though. I could do with moving to a bigger apartment but Flora doesn't seem to have made much progress in that direction. I probably need to look up how it works.

And anyway, now I come to think of it, Lacrimosa might make a better flatmate. At least she'd sleep in her own coffin. 

Flora went to the drive-in with Nanally the other night. We saw Sin City Chronicles because of course we did. I'm not sure Nanally knows there are any other movies. We also didn't take a car, even though Flora has one. For some reason we sat on top of someone else's car and it wasn't even anyone we knew.

There were fireworks at the end and a strange bit of dialog where it was made clear that didn't usually happen but not why it was. I'm not sure if it meant anything. 

I was a bit disappointed the cut scenes don't show any of the actual movie. I could hear some of the soundtrack in the background but that was all. When Flora went to the movies with Mint we got to see a few scenes although it turned out to be the same movie that's the only one that ever shows up on Flora's home wall-screen.  

Kuro's missing a trick here, I think. I bet they could quite easily arrange it so you could stream from your PC onto the screens in the game. I would happily sit in my chair at home, watching Flora and Mint watching actual TV shows or movies in their apartment, instead of watching those same shows on my laptop. I bet a lot of people would.

If you think that's weird, following our successful manga-reading party, Lacrimosa is planning an anime marathon. She wants to hold it at Eidon because she doesn't have a TV and she thinks it would be a great idea to watch anime on Taygedo's head. I don't know if this is a thing that's actually going to happen in the game but I'm praying it is!

It's perfectly feasible, too. It's already well-established that Taygedo can show broadcast images on the TV screen he usually uses for his face. The only problem seems to be whether he'd be willing to sit still for long enough, which knowing him seems unlikely. Then again, he's easy to intimidate. Or trick.

Harping on the theme of who are they writing this stuff for, I did another very good, long quest the other day that revolved entirely around helping an architect to come to terms with repressed feelings of grief, loss and guilt over her mother's death, when she was a child. There was some fighting near the end but it was pretty much a short, stand-alone point-and-click adventure. It would fit right in on Itch.io. 

That's a screenshot from the quest, above. It's from the part where Flora had to go into a florists and pick out a suitable flower for the architect to plant in the garden of the house she was having built for herself. Just the kind of thing every adolescent male dreams of doing in a video game, right? I mean, that's why Call of Duty's so successful - all the flower arranging.

Or maybe you'd rather spend an hour running messages between three talking dogs that aren't on speaking terms any more because they're all behaving like seven year-old girls who'have had a falling out over who's best friends with who? I did that one last week. Again, a theme guaranteed to grab the attention of any red-blooded, twenty-something male, I'd say.

It sounds like I'm cherry-picking but the whole game is like this.

Getting back to Lacrimosa for a moment, she's really pathetic. As in she oozes pathos. She's a Sad Goth Girl, which weirdly doesn't seem to be a TV Trope. It should be. 

The scene where you visit her home is quite disturbing. She has hardly anything in there, just some small pieces of furniture and a lot of tomatoes. She rents the place from an old couple, who we don't get to meet, but they seem to be as much her guardians as her landlords.

She didn't find the place herself. Skia, who Lacrimosa refers to as "Doggo" (She gives everyone nicknames, possibly because she can't actually remember their real ones.) found it for her. She certainly would never have managed it on her own. She barely seems capable of looking after herself. 

Lacrimosa may have some mental health issues but exactly what they could be is, as always, unclear. The sheer amount of subtext packed into this vignette is astonishing but I'm finding Neverness To Everness to be all about the subtext. What's often missing is any actual text. 

It's not just written subtext, either. Compare Lacrimosa's barely lived-in room with Nanally's. The effort that's gone into the detail in both. It tells you so much. Nanally evidently has a full and almost certainly happy home-life. The stuffed toys, the Anomaly Guide, the drawing materials, the family pictures on the wall. 

There's a basketball, a soccer ball, the bass guitar Nanally plays now she's in The Whoots!!!! There's the beanbag chair and the potted plant and the bookcase with all the knick-knacks cluttering up the shelves. And look how untidy it all is, while still looking clean and cared-for. That fedora on the rug is a masterful touch.

This is the room of a girl in her early-mid teens, for sure, although to return again to the vexed question of just how old these people are supposed to be, I can't forget something Nanally says in Dreamwalk Corridor, the quest where we learn what little we know about her and where she loses half her mind and half her soul.

She asks the Appraiser "Can I still be the boss of the family if I'm this weird kid, like for ever and ever and ever?" We know Espers frequently experience changes when they come into their powers - physical changes like horns and tails but also temporal ones, like shortened or extended lifespans. I'm wondering just how long Nanally might have been a teenager. The Anomalies began forty years ago. She could be in her fifties but like Peter Pan, she just never grew up.

As for Sakiri, abut whom I know nothing, not having done any character quests with her yet, she looks half Nanally's age but she talks like someone at least in their thirties. In a way it doesn't much matter but in another it's crucial information. It's odd enough sharing an apartment with Mint. I don't want to think about sharing one with Sakiri...

Shark: Got. Bee: Got. Supergirl: Want

Hey! I did something I said I was going to do! That makes a nice change.

This morning I downloaded and installed DCUO again. The client's a svelte 38GB, positively slimline by today's standards. Still took about an hour. Daybreak doesn't have the pipes, I guess. 

It's always interesting, coming back to an MMORPG you haven't played for a while. Since I have a blog (Oh, you noticed!) I can often check back to see when I last played something. Chances are I blogged about it and those chances are especially high when it's DCUO .

A long time ago, I fell into a pattern with the game. I haven't played it seriously since... well, ever. But not even half-seriously for years. What I have done, fairly consistently, is keep an eye on the freebies Digital Ink hands out, so I can log in when there's a good pet or a base decoration or maybe a cape I want. Then I patch up, log in and grab it.

The thing about that is, there's often a long enough gap between freebies that enough has changed in the meantime to make coming back slightly disorienting. (Disorientating? Never know which of those is right.)

Since I was last there, which was towards the end of August last year according to the record, the whole UI seems to have undergone an overhaul. It looks like a new font to me, a lot thinner and tighter. Some of the menus seem easier to follow. And the conversations with NPCs are now shown in social media style, extremely similarly to how they appear in Bagel in Neverness To Everness. Everyone got to be modern, don't they?

It's an improvement all round, although that's not saying a lot. I love DCUO, even though I only ever futz around there, but boy, is it showing its age. Visually, that is. Especially the faces and the animations. They weren't great fifteen years ago and they have not aged well. And yes, before you ask, for once I have the graphics jacked up about as far as they'll go. 

If you look at my character up there, Nini Mo her name is, (Why, I'll explain in a moment. In a Sidebar. I really like sidebars now. So much better than footnotes. I can do footnotes, you know. It's just way too much trouble and footnotes are intrinsically more disruptive than having the information in the body of the post. I'm not writing a sodding dissertation! Also, I could have put this in a sidebar, now I come to think of it...) you'll see it looks like she's wearing a mask. She is not. That's her face. 

Most characters, player or NPC, look like they're wearing kabuki masks to me. And nothing in anyone's features ever moves, It's like we're all playing china dolls.

Sidebar: Nini Mo, since no-one asked, is named after Flora Fyrdraaca's idol and role model. She's "the Coyote Queen, greatest ranger ever" and Flora thinks she's just a character in a book until they meet. Flora, as all regular readers ought to know, since I must have name-checked her here almost as many times as Lana del Rey, is the titular heroine of the trilogy by the frustratingly inactive Ysabeau S Wilce. Write a book, Ysabeau!

All her old books are either out of print or will be soon, by the way. Prices are rising. If you haven't taken the hint the last ten times I dropped it, now's the time. You can get them on Kindle...

Once I'd sorted myself out and figured out how to use the refreshed controls, I had a chat with Supergirl, who inevitably had a job for me. The DCUO superverse is a weird place like that. You can be the absolute newest hero on the block, barely able to handle a street mugging without referring to the Hero Handbook, and you'll still get a call from some megastar telling you your powers somehow fit the exact requirements needed to face down some intergalactic overlord or other.

In this case it's some arch-villain going by the extremely unimpressive name of Kryb. I assume she's in the comics but I have never heard of her. Then again, I didn't know we had Blue Lanterns and there was one of those standing right next to the Girl of Steel. 

Sidebar: I just checked and there are now eleven colors of Lantern in the DC Universe! Eleven!  Green, Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue , Indigo, Violet, Black, Grey, White and Ultraviolet.

Kryb has been doing unspeakable experiments on children. No details (Or "deets" as Supergirl extremely unconvincingly puts it. Would Kara ever say "deets"? No, she would not.) but I'm betting it involves turning them into some kind of monsters so she can weaponize them. It's almost always that. 

Kryb has the Blue Lantern's niece. (She has a name but I've already forgotten it. The Blue Lantern that is. Not sure about the niece. I mean, I'm sure she has a name, just not that we get to know it yet.) I assume we'd be going after Kryb regardless but the family connection adds a little frisson.

Niece or no niece, (Now there's a game show...) I had absolutely no plans on doing the new chapter but it takes place in a version of Argo City that's somehow on the floor of the ocean and I wanted to see if we had underwater content now. We never had any before. 

And we don't have any now, either. I guess Argo's in a bubble. But then, Argo's always in a bubble . In space, underwater, what's the diff?

Anyway, I got sucked into all of that and ended up spending the morning kicking Kryptonian robot ass, which is less fun than it sounds but still some fun. I was in a group for a while, too, which always seems to happen in DCUO. It's about the last game I play where I get group invites. No-one ever says much and I generally don't know what's going on but it's easier to accept than refuse so I join. 

I don't know how to play my character and Nini Mo's not even level 30 yet, which as I always say is Basic Tutorial Level in the game, so I don't contribute much but no-one ever seems to care. I think it's just one of those "If we're grouped we all share credit" things. The xp certainly flowed. I dinged 29.

People came and went and I died a bunch of times because don't know what I'm doing and eventually I was on my own again. I kept going. Supergirl whistled up Krypto, which led to my character making a sarcastic comment that I found quite amusing. You're bringing your dog in now?

Well, yes, of course she is because the superdog is the superstar these days. Except Krypto in DCUO is Original Krypto, the short-haired kind-of-a-Labrador, not the super-cute tousled terrier from the movies.

Come to that, DCUO Supergirl isn't the one from the movies, either. Or the TV show. Or, as far as I can tell, the comics.

As a DC fan, albeit an out-of-date one, I rarely recognize any of the heroes in DCUO as the same people I know from the comics or the TV and movie spin-offs. They look like them but they don't talk like them. Or act like them. 

Or sound like them, if you have a particular voice actor in mind. All the voice acting in the game is generic and always has been. Competent but unconvincing. Then again, you try being convincing, reading some of that dialog.

So that was all fun but by the time we reached the underboss, Annihilus...  no, wait, not him... Atrocitus, that's it... I'd had enough. I'd have had to stop and relearn my skills for him and I didn't feel like it. Instead, I warped out to my base and started hanging some posters. Base building is the real endgame.

Before all of that, though, I popped into Metropolis to visit the Pride Parade and pick up my free flying shark. They've made an effort for the event as usual. Lots of balloons, flags, music, dancing...

I was curious to see which heroes were staffing the thing this year. Ha! I say "heroes"... Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy were there, of course. And Aqualad. I cannot get used to the American pronunciation of his name, by the way. Him and Aquaman. That long first "a" is just weird. 

Batwoman was there, too. And a few others I've forgotten. I'm guessing all of them have some established gender identity in the comics but I'm out of that loop. When I start my DC Universe Infinite subscription, maybe I'll get caught up.

The shark is as great, as I knew it would be and I also got a bee. Haven't flown that one yet but it looks good in the preview. I'm guessing it's from last year. I must have missed it.

 

That was more than I'd planned on doing so I felt pretty pleased with myself. About the only other thing I might do for this Chapter is try to pick up Supergirl as an Ally. 

To get her for free I'd have to log in just about every day for a a month and actually do something so that's not going to happen but there's a peculiar system in DCUO, where you can chip away at the monthly Chapter rewards by doing a little every day or you can just buy them for Daybreak Cash. The price is on a sliding scale. The Buyout is 4K DBC but one session this morning knocked 200DBC off the total and it only took a few minutes to get the update. 

You can do that once a day while the event runs. After you trigger it each day, it makes no difference how long you keep on doing the content, you won't get any more credit. There's a 24 hour time gate so grinding isn't an option.

I think that's good? Hard to tell. It's a tax on impatience, basically, which I'm fine with. Then again, I would be. I have a lot more DBC than I know what to do with. I might just buy Supergirl's loyalty for cash money.

And that's about all I have to say about it for now. DCUO: it's always there and I always have fun whenever I play. For an hour or two. Then I've had enough for a month. 

Still, I might drop in a few more times before the event comes to an end,. Drive the price down a little but also fly around a little, show off my shark and my bee. 

If you got 'em, flaunt 'em, right?

Gnomes, Pandas And Flying Sharks - It Can Only Be Summer At Daybreak

I've been out and about doing stuff today so this is a bit of a cobbled together at the last minute post. It's also one of those "Here are some things I'm going to do that I haven't actually done yet" affair, by which I mean I've taken a few press releases and made a post out of them.

Which, yes I know, is cheap. So sue me. You think I get paid for this?

In all cases it's Daybreak I'm talking about. We're just about to hit the big summer festival season in EverQuest II and Niami Denmother has a couple of articles up at EQ2 Traders about it. The first is about Tinkerfest, which she describes as the "annual gnomish (including honorary gnomes) celebration".  Ratongas like to tinker, too, but gnomes don't like to talk about that much. Don't like the competition.

I used to take this one quite seriously. Well, as seriously as you can take anything involving gnomes. I played a few of them (And Ratongas, too.) and at least one of my gnomes had a suitably gnomish residence (See how I resisted saying gnome-home there?) full of the kind of widgets and cogs that make any self-respecting gnome happy.

And, let's face it, all gnomes are self-respecting. A bit too much so for some people. Have you ever met a gnome with an inferiority complex? Or a gnome suffering from imposter syndrome? No, they're all hyper-confident megalomaniacs with delusions of grandeur. It's compensation for their obvious deficiencies in other departments, I imagine, although I'm no expert in gnomish psychology. Thankfully.

But they sure can tinker. If you want something bolted onto something else, these are your guys. Tinkerfest is one of Norrath's  bigger festivals so after a couple of decades it's acquired a lot of cruft. EQ2 Traders has a neat overview and I'm going to steal it, just to fill the post out a bit:

Is this your first time celebrating this event? Or is your memory fuzzy enough that you need a refresher?

• Gnomeland Security in the Steamfont Mountains is the main hub for this event, with portals from all "celebration" areas sending you back to the main hub in Gnomeland. (Celebrating gnomes, surrounded by harvestable cogs and purple shinies, can be found in all home cities as well as the docks of Thurgadin, the gnome area in Solusek's Eye, and Dropship Landing in the Moors)
• The shiny tinkerfest cogs, used for shopping and for crafting, are harvestable "!" items in all celebration areas. They can also be brought back by an upgraded pack pony (100 per 2-hour run).
• The second purple shiny collection (added in 2016) requires that you have completed (and handed in) the first purple shiny collection. Once you have done so, half of the collection can then be found in the Gnomeland Security area; the other half of the collection will be found in Qeynos and Freeport in the celebration areas.
• You will need to know the gnomish language (from a language trainer if you're not a gnome) in order to obtain some of the quests.
• Vendor Tarly in Gnomeland Security will sell all of the past Tinkerfest recipes and items for you while vendor Myron will sell the current year's recipes and items. You will need some shiny tinkerfest cogs before you can buy the books, so scrounge up a few before you go shopping.
• The quest tracker included in a section below will be a godsend if you are trying to run more than one alt through the event. Quest details for all quests can be found on the wiki's Tinkerfest article.
• During the event, there will be a markable sign in several of the Tinkerfest areas, for the Party Sign! Excellent! achievement for those who missed getting the Tinkerfest update for it last year.
• Protip: if you see an item sold on either Myron or Tarly that costs 2 Shiny Tinkerfest Cog, it usually means that it can also be crafted. (Or is a special achievement unlock.)

That quest breakdown, linked in Niami's piece, is huuuuuge. I'm reasonably confident I've done everything on there at least once, some things many times. and by this stage, I'm pretty much tinkered out so I have no plans on doing any of it again. 

I do generally try to do any new quests that get added, just for the sake of being able to say I've done them all, but by now there's really no need for any more activities in most of the festivals. There's literally more than enough to do already. Technically, there is one new Tinkerfest quest this year but it looks to be nothing more than a repeatable option added to an existing quest. If so, I'll pass, thanks.

Even if you're done with the event itself, though, it's still worth noting down the dates because the special Summer Jubilee dungeon, Triad of Elements, only opens during the big three. 

The three tent-pole attractions are:

Tinkerfest — June 6, 2024 to June 19, 2024

Scorched Sky Celebration — June 28, 2024 to July 11, 2024

Oceansfull Festival — August 8, 2024 to August 21, 2024 

Running Triad of Elements multiple times is the only way to get this year's Plume for your Plume slot. I don't think there are details on stats for those yet but if things follow the usual pattern, it will be better than any of the inferior Plumes crafters can make. 
 
As to how essential Plumes actually are, I'll leave that to someone who does the harder content. I got mine the first year they added them and I haven't bothered since. I'm not a fan of running the same dungeon over and over.

The Summer Jubilee currency, Platinum Medals, can also be earned while the other summer festivals are running, the regularly-scheduled minor festivals that sprawl across the summer months, things like the Moonlit Enchantments and the City Festivals. The full, official write-up for the Jubilee is on the EQII website and EQ2 Traders version is here.

And that's it for EQII for the moment. I am still playing most days, by the way, although by playing I mostly mean logging in to set and collect my Overseer rewards. We'll see if the summer splurge of festive activities draws me back in. I do like me a good festival.

On, then, to DCUO, which I am very much not playing. I'm not playing it to the extent that I haven't even installed it on the "new" PC. It wasn't on the SDD I transferred across so it's languishing on the old machine. 

I am contemplating setting the old one up to be permanently available. The issue is where to put it. Until then, though, if I wanted to play DCUO, I'd have to re-install it. And why would I want to do that?

That's why! Come on! Wouldn't you re-install for that shark? I want that thing!

Daybreak has a very solid record on supporting Pride Month. I haven't mentioned EQII's contribution to the cause yet because I'm incompetent and disorganized but it's moar pandas!

I actually have more multicolored rabbits and red pandas than I know what to do with, which won't stop me collecting these, too. I might hold back on getting them for every character this time, though. It's a lot of bag space. 

That shark, though... with the flag! Gotta have it!

Just to round out the Daybreak news, there's a limited time promo on subscriptions happening. Wilhelm wrote an excellent piece comparing MMORPG subs, in which I thought Daybreak's All Access came out clearly on top. It's going to be an even better deal for a while because they've added some extras. 

100 slot Broker boxes and a 25% boost to what is now arguably the game's primary currency, Status, are  not to be missed. And while they're limited-time offers, the limits are pretty generous - the end of August for quarterly subs and the end of November for six and twelve months. If you were vaguely thinking of subbing, that might swing it for you.

And that's all I have from the Daybreak News Desk for now. I'm off to download DCUO and get my flying shark!  

Wuthering Waves Is Dead To Me Now

This is going to be a very short post. I know I say that a lot and then run on for several thousand words but that won't be happening today. I had a specific post in mind and I haven't been able to write it so this is the "what would have been" version.

It was going to be about the Wuthering Waves/Edgerunners collab that started this week. I'd been trying to pretend it wasn't happening so I wouldn't start fomoing at the mouth about it but yesterday I saw the trailer in my YouTube subs and couldn't resist. And it was excellent.

 So, I watched that and I read a whole bunch of people saying how good it was, not just in the comment thread but in articles like this one and I thought, well, maybe I'll just check to see if you really have to be all up to date in the game to see the story. And it turns out you don't. 

Kuro recommends you do it in sequence to get the most out of it but they also realize a lot of people might be coming back just for the Edgerunners content because that's one of the main reasons companies do collabs like this in the first place. With that in mind, they've made it a standalone episode you can access immediately or as part of the storyline, as you prefer.

I haven't played Wuthering Waves for a while. A good while. Last September in fact. I didn't stop because I got bored or lost interest. I stopped because it got to be too intense and I found myself taking it too seriously, which is very much not what I want from my gaming. I did plan on watching the story content on YouTube instead, since it felt like I was watching a movie every time I played, but in the event I just drifted out of thinking about it at all. Until now.

The next thing was to check if I had the game installed on this PC. I didn't think I did because I bought it after i stopped playing but as it happens I moved the relevant SDD across and although I removed a few things, Wuthering Waves wasn't one of them.

Great! No need to download the whole thing again, then. I can just patch it up. Yeah... nope. I had to download a new launcher from the website because the old one no longer worked and the new launcher insisted on downloading the entire game, all 100+GB of it before it installed it in the same directory. It took a couple of hours and by the end I had a fresh 108GB client, up about 20GB from where it had been.

That took me past the time I had available to play the thing so I left it for this morning. After breakfast I opened the launcher and hit Play and the damn thing downloaded another massive update. The client now weighs in at an enormous 133GB!

Phew! Still, at least I can finally play the game, right? Ahahahahaha! No!

I can't play Wuthering Waves because I do not have my account details any more. In the quarter of a century I've been playing online games this has barely ever happened to me. I almost always keep a note of my account details for everything - games, services, forums, you name it. And if I don't, I can always at the very least work out what email address I used and recover them.

Not for this one. I almost certainly used the extremely tempting and convenient "Sign in with Google" option. I use it a lot because I'm lazy. It's a bad idea and I know it's a bad idea but I do it anyway because what could go wrong?

Apparently what could go wrong is I could not be able to figure out which google account I used. I have a lot. At least a dozen I use regularly and probably as many more that I've made and then forgotten about. There are only about five or six I regularly use for something like this, though, so again, how hard could it be just to go through them all and find the right one by trial and error?

Harder than I expected. In fact, impossible. 

I tried the obvious two or three and they weren't right. Then I had the clever idea of checking my email to see which one had been sending me the press releases. I have all my in-use email addresses set to forward to one central address so I don't have to keep logging in to all of them.

It was then that it occurred to me that I don't seem to get any emails from Kuro about Wuthering Waves. None at all. I did a search and I never have. Not a single one, ever. Which is very weird. Surely they send them? They'd be the only gaming company ever if they didn't.

Just in case the mail was going to an address I hadn't set to forward, I went through the laborious process of logging them all in. None of them had ever heard from Kuro. While I was at it, I even checked some of the more obscure addresses I haven't used in years. It was a useful hour in that at least I've reset the timers on those so Google won't delete them for a bit longer but it didn't get me any further.

I went through my Little Black Book of Logins page by page. Nothing. It seems I never wrote down anything about Wuthering Waves at all. I don't keep as many handwritten notes about this sort of thing as I once did but I do usually at least make a note of which email address I've used for a new game. Not this time.

Even if I don't keep a note of it, Google must or how would it work? I googled that and found out how to check what apps you've given permissions to, which is a handy piece of information to have. Then I checked all of them and none of them showed "Wuthering Waves" or "Kuro" in the list. 

By this point I was pretty much stumped. I tried checking my laptop, where I once tried to play the game and found it wouldn't run, and my old PC, which meant connecting everything back up, which was a pain. No joy with either of them. And that was the last, worst idea I had.

Reading around the web, it seems there are some quirks with Kuro's login process that mean accounts set up by typing in an email address are registered independently of the same email address selected through "Play with Google" but either way you'd think there'd be a stream of promotions going to that address, which as far as I can see there never has been.

There's also an issue where your account is specific to the Region where you chose to play. If you pick the wrong one on login, the game acts as if you never played before. I tried Europe and America, the only two I'd ever have chosen. Nothing on either. 

I do have a blog though. I know I would never have mentioned a specific email address in a post because I am not completely irresponsible but I do sometimes mention other useful details. So I checked my First Impressions and came up with this potentially telling piece of information: "Downloading and installing the game (It's something like an 18GB footprint.) took just a couple of clicks.... There was no time wasted registering an account. It accepts a Google login, which it doesn't even bother to confirm with an email to the Gmail address you give it." 

Hmm. First, it's grown like Topsy, hasn't it? Second, it never sent a confirmation email. Now that is odd because, while I was trying to get in this morning, I used Google to start a new account and that did send me a confirmation, although it didn't ask for any response. Not that it helps at all but it's a data point.

I'm in on that account now and I see there's an option to "Link Email". Maybe I never took it on the real account. That would explain why I never got any emails. 

Anyway, I've tried everything and every account I can think of and nothing works so the only other option is to contact Kuro Customer Service and see if they can restore access. Thanks to screenshots, I do have the name of my character and the User Id but I never spent any money in the cash shop so I don't have that crucial piece of evidence, without which I'm not sure they'll be all that interested.

I could start over from the beginning. As one person advising someone else with a similar issue helpfully pointed out, if you skip all the dialog it wouldn't take long. Or I could go back to Plan A and watch it all on YouTube.

That sounds like the better option. I'm not convinced pressing the buttons adds anything much to the experience.

EverQuest Legends, Stars Reach And Valheim Battle It Out. GW3 Watches From The Sidelines.

There's been a flurry of announcements concerning Games Of Interest of late and I haven't found time to talk about most of them yet. Today's the day! Here's a Grab Bag of upcoming launches and what-not.

EverQuest Legends

Last to be announced, first to market. We're so used to hype cycles lasting years that a four-month arc from the opening announcement to the game going live seems almost indecent. 

To recap, this is the version of EverQuest you can solo. There's more to it but that's the USP. It was clearly inspired by the success of an unsanctioned, rogue EverQuest server by the name of The Heroes Journey whose USP was... ah, you guessed!

That one was so successful it made the mistake of making money so EG7/Daybreak took the developers to court, where a $3.5m settlement was agreed. The THJ devs toddled off to make their own game, Hollowed Oath, without the borrowed IP and assets and they seem to be doing alright for themselves, having pulled in $166k on a Kickstarter .

Meanwhile, Daybreak farmed the idea out to a company called Game Jawn, which I believe is run by some of the people behind the Officially Sanctioned, Not A Rogue Server At All legacy project, Quarm.  With the whole thing neatly formalized and codified under the catchy, if recycled, title EverQuest Legends, everyone who would have liked to play on The Heroes Journey but felt too uncomfortable about the dubious provenance can now feel happy they're giving their money to the right people. 

EQL, as I'm sure we'll end up calling it, is a bit more than just a retro server. Although it will start back in 1999, the devs, who are entirely different people from those currently running and writing for EQ itself, promise "it will evolve separately with its own lore and timeline...have its own spin on classic zones and will also add never-before-seen content.”

 The game will be on Steam and you can have it for an upfront payment of  $19.99, followed by $10 a month in subs. You do, of course, get the first month in that box fee but sadly, since Game Jawn is entirely separate from Daybreak, your All Access sub won't get you in. 

You can give Game Jawn your money right now, if you want. The game goes live on July 28 but you can pre-order. 

That gets you guaranteed access to the beta "on or about July 1", which puzzles me a little. The beta will close on July 21 so pre-ordering gives you just three weeks to try out the game, after which your character and all your progress will be wiped and you'll have to start over from scratch another week later. 

For regular MMORPGs, where there's some form of competitive raid structure, some people find this sort of thing an attractive prospect so they can learn the strats and get ahead of everyone else come launch day. For a game that's selling itself on its solo-friendliness, though, one where "even a solo player can build a character strong enough to take on the toughest challenges and acquire the most epic gear in the game", those three weeks seem like a bit of a waste of time and effort. 

I guess there will be achievements, maybe? World firsts and that sort of thing. Although it won't be very authentically old-school EQ if there are. Still, it's supposed to be a modern take on the old game...

I'm still undecided about whether to bother with EQL. I don't want to play it. I don't have time to play it. I've already seen just about all there is to see in the first half-dozen expansions so until they start adding new, original zones, there wouldn't be a lot of point. 

On the other hand, I feel I ought at least to check it out and so I can write about it a little. I can't say I'm looking forward to it. Rather the opposite, in fact, for both the playing and the writing. If I do, it'll be more out of a sense of duty than with any enthusiasm, although duty to what or whom, I couldn't say. 

And I very definitely don't want to pay a sub for it, that's for damn sure. A one-off box price of $20 I can rationalize but an ongoing, monthly subscription? I think not. It'll be one month and out, if at all.

Stars Reach

Playable Worlds' sandbox MMORPG set in space is coming to Early Access "this summer". A bit vague, I know, but at least they have a window. They also have a trailer. Want to see it?

It's... alright. Not terrible. The character animations look wonky but it's pretty enough. Doesn't make the game look very exciting, though, does it? Or interesting. Or new. 

It looks as though Early Access will be free to play although you can, of course, buy supporter packs. Or will be able to. Wilhelm has all the details. In fact, he has everything you need to know about the whole thing so I suggest you pop over to his place and get yourself up to speed there, if you need to.

All I'm going to do here is editorialize. I've played some Stars Reach. It's okay if you like that sort of thing although I'm pretty sure there are better options. No Man's Sky gets brought up a lot in conversations but I haven't played that so I can't comment on the similarities.  

What I can say is that Stars Reach is dull. It all works but none of it is much fun. "Worthy" is a word that keeps popping into my head when I try to write about it. "Bored" is the one that pops up when I play. 

There's not much of a game there, that's the biggest problem. It's a fairly pure sandbox so you need to make your own entertainment and the tools for that are limited. It could use some kind of spine like all the crafting/survival games have and it hasn't got one. Without one, it kind of flops around, limply. As it would.

There's been some speculation about why they're going public just now. Money drying up is one obvious possibility but my suspicion is that they just can't get enough people through the doors any other way to maintain a meaningful test population. 

That's not guesswork. HeartlessGamer said in the comments at TAGN that Playable Worlds has admitted as much on reddit. There's numerical evidence, too. The only way you can play the Stars Reach alpha has always been through Steam so we have exact numbers and concurrent population has been in single figures for months. 

The peak player count this year was 32. Average concurrency peaked at 7 in March and now it's less than half that. No-one wants to play any more. Actually, if you look back, hardly anyone ever did. The all-time peak was well below 200 players online at the same time.

I asked yesterday who Neverness To Everness was for. That game had thirty million pre-registrations. Stars Reach has one person online as I write and a 24-hour peak of four. 

Who is Stars Reach for? I guess we'll find out this summer.

Guild Wars 3

Here's an announcement I did find the time to cover. I'm not going over all that again but I will say something about how the news affects the other Guild Wars titles and particularly Guild Wars 2.

ArenaNet, like Daybreak, is in an interesting and somewhat fortunate position. They've been through this before. They've seen what happens to an existing playerbase when you launch a second title in direct competition with yourself. They each have that experience to draw on, now they come to launch a third. (Or in Daybreak's case a fourth. Never forget EQOA.)

First time around, the two companies took very different tacks. ANet mothballed Guild Wars the moment GW2 arrived. They shunted it straight to maintenance mode and stopped developing it at all. Daybreak (Or SOE as it was at the time, of course.) did the exact opposite, running EQ and EQII in tandem, continuing to develop them both pretty much equally.

ANet now seem to believe that was the better choice, although Colin Johansen inexplicably spins the idea that they're going to support new and old titles as "not the norm" whereas I'd say deciding not to was the exception.They've already begun to take GW1 out of mothballs and they're promising development will continue on GW2 as before. They know they need to get out there and assure the people paying their bills right now that it's worth carrying on for the next couple of years because a lot of them, like Azuriel, will be questioning whether it's likely to be worth it. 

Colin Johanson is suggesting it's just a blip. There'll be a short hiatus in new content as they go back and tidy up all the bugs, then everything will get back to normal, with annual  expansions and whatever else it is they've been doing since I last played a few years ago.

I am, to be polite, skeptical. In the decade I played GW2, one of ANet's defining features was a complete inability to establish either a cadence or a pipeline for supplying content. They kept chopping and changing. They rarely stuck to any of their plans long enough to see if they worked although in most cases it was blindingly obvious they weren't going to, so I suppose they should actually get some credit for dropping them as fast as they did. Just none for coming up with them in the first place.

They frequently floated grandiose frameworks for large-scale changes to the game, changes they then discussed literally for years without implementing any of them, during which time most of the key individuals would move departments or leave the company. If and when any of these plans did finally make it to the game, they'd look nothing like the promises and they'd often wither away and be forgotten almost immediately. World vs World suffered particularly badly in this respect but it hit all parts of the game at times.

And yet, somehow, the game muddled along. It rarely prospered but it didn't fail. GW2 players became inured to frequent content droughts combined with constant churn in all kinds of systems and mechanics and learned to put up with it, albeit very grudgingly. Either that or they left. 

If that's what Colin Johanson means by business as usual (Not the phrase he used but it's the implication.) then I'm willing to believe him. The game was always a shambles when I played. I'm sure it can carry on being a shambles for a bit longer.

The idea that the company that struggled so hard to maintain a steady content flow for a single game will somehow now be able to manage it smoothly and efficiently or three titles is fantasy, though. Unless, I guess, they're planing on hugely expanding the workforce. Are they doing that? And even then, I very much doubt it would help. It'd just be more daft ideas and discussion document than ever.

We'll see how it all pans out in a couple of years time, I guess. My feeling is that if GW3 is a success, GW2 will end up being like GW1 is now, a comfortable niche title that people like enough to feel nostalgic about but mostly don't play. It could still get more content but it might not even need it. GW1 pottered along for a decade and more without any and a few people still played it.

If GW3 bombs or just under-performs, though, we might end up with an EQ/EQII scenario, where the older game holds most of its current audience, while the new one fails to attract another. At that point, I suspect ANet's promises of triple-game development might fall apart quite quickly. 

By then, though, I'll be too old to care. 

Valheim

Valheim is my most-played game on Steam at 385 hours but the last time I logged in was over two years ago. When the game finally leaves Early Access on September 9, will I return? Doubtful.

The further we get from the pandemic, the more certain I am that this was one of the artifacts of that strange time. We all had more hours in the day than we knew what to do with and we weren't always even allowed out of the house. Valheim filled a need.

It also introduced me - and many others, I'm sure - to a whole new genre, the crafting/survival game. I've played a few since and most of them have been better in objective terms than Valheim, which is kind of barebones when you look at it hard.

It was my first, though, and you're always still a little bit in love with your first, aren't you? I'd like to get to the end of Valheim but the the last two biomes were so radically un-enjoyable I don't have much hope for the last one, the Deep North. I imagine it'll be a miserable experience for anyone other than gaming masochists.

At most, I might set all the controls to as easy as possible and have a quick tour around the end zone like I did with the Ashlands. At the moment, though, I can't say I'm even motivated to do that. Valheim was a game of its time and that time has gone.

And that's my bag filled for the day, I think. I have a feeling there may have been some other announcements I was going to attend to (Edit: Like this one.) but I can't remember what they were and I didn't bookmark anything so I think we're done. 

For now. 

Let's All Go Get Ice Cream! Every Day A New Adventure In Neverness To Everness

Here's the question that keeps coming back to me over and over while I'm playing Neverness To Everness: who is this game for? It's a question I often find myself asking, when I read about new games in development or try them out in testing, but for most games, what I'm really thinking is "I can't imagine enough people wanting to play this to make it worth the time and money it took to build it". For NTE I'm thinking something very different.

Neverness To Everness hasn't had any difficulty finding an audience or making money. A staggering 30 million people pre-registered and at launch the Free To Play title generated $14m in revenue on its first day. By any measure, it's a hit.

But who are all those people? Why are they playing? As Toyah would say, it's a mystery.

Well, it's a mystery to me, anyway. The more I play, the more I can't help notice the disparities between what I thought the game was going to be and what it is.

Based on the vibrant, exciting promotional videos and the intriguing lore on the website, I imagined a fast-paced, action-packed cyberpunk experience, where I'd be part of a cool, confident, highly-skilled team of agents, employed by a quasi-governmental organization and tasked with keeping the world safe from bizarre incursions from another reality. I expected a lot of fighting, some car chases and a tense, complex plot.

What I got was an open-ended offer from a woman in an office to settle down in a new city, find a job, make some friends and spend most of my time hanging out with them. Maybe she'd call me if she needed me. Maybe not.

The big crisis I thought I'd be dealing with actually happened forty years ago and it turned out to be not that much of a problem anyway. Anyone under thirty almost certainly likes things better the way they are. No-one's talking about fixing any of it or pushing the incursion back. It's all about managing it safely and integrating the incoming oddities and anomalies into society. If I do get ever to work for these people, I'll basically be some kind of bureaucrat, making sure everyone follows the regulations to the letter and being sure to follow them myself.

Everything about the set up is a little bit vague and hand-wavy anyway, entirely intentionally as far as I can tell. There are government agencies like BAC handling the ongoing situation but there are also private organizations, contractors, corporations and individuals, all working together as part of something called The Circle. 

Where the player character fits into all of this is surprisingly difficult to determine and even harder to rationalize in context of the aforementioned pre-publicity even if, at the start of the game, it all feels like it's going to plan. The game begins with my character, Flora, escaping from some facility or other in a flurry of explosive action. In a rush of set piece fights and dramatic cut scenes she somehow finds herself inducted into one of those cryptic quasi-governmental departments just like I imagined and then...

...next thing I know, she's working in an antique shop owned by a drunk and run by children. How did that happen?

It's an antique shop that somehow also operates as an independent contractor in the handling of "Anomalies" so adventure seems like it could still happen but it's very low-level work for the most part. Instead of being sent to handle major incidents, we wait for clients to turn up and ask for help in sorting out their little problems. Things like a missing child or something stealing from the bins outside a shop. 

It's probably just as well it's nothing big. Most of our operatives are still too young to drive. When Flora goes on a commission it's usually with the instruction to keep an eye on them and make sure they don't get into trouble. The boss can't do it herself; she's too busy drinking.

Flora's official role isn't "babysitter". It's Appraiser, which means she can judge whether anomalies are present, "Anomalies" being the catch-all for extra-dimensional entities. It's not exactly the kind of front-line, car-chasing, gun-slinging, bounty-hunting career I was expecting. More of a support role. It's one step away from administration, let's be honest.

Flora does have a contact in the aforementioned government agency, where there are supposedly some plans to use her talents for something bigger, when she's had a chance to acclimate to her new situation but Mint, who I guess is Flora's handler, is hardly the sophisticated spy you might expect. She's an office worker who keeps fluffing her promotion opportunities because she gets flustered at the very thought of taking an exam.

So far, so peculiar. But it's just the backgrounding being laid down, surely? A solid base for the wild adventure to come. Hmm. I suppose it might be but if so that wild adventure is taking a long time coming. 

Which isn't to say there's nothing happening. That's the really strange part. There's so much happening I can't keep up with it all! It's just that very little of it is what you'd call "adventure". And there's hardly any fighting.

Almost every storyline I've been involved with so far, big or small, has focused heavily on either the social or the commercial. Taygedo and his date. The camera shop losing business. Professional rivalry between Eidon and Sterry. Finding a lost dog. Petty vandalism. Even when we finally get to hear about Daffodil's mysterious upbringing with the ominous "Mother" and her sinister "family", something that looks tlike it might be the actual main story thread, it's far more like a warped family saga than any kind of epic adventure.

Yesterday afternoon, I finished what did feel a lot like like an epic story arc, only it was all about starting a band, learning to play and performing in front of a big crowd for the fist time. Flora, Nanally, Haniel and Akane played Night of Moondog as The Whoots!!!! (Four exclamation marks mandatory.) 

This, for anyone who doesn't know, is the culmination of a long "Spinoff" quest-line, which starts when Haniel invites the Appraiser to go see a band at a cellar club. It's a fine example of the disconnect I was talking about at the start of the post. If this really is some kind of fantasy-adventure game, designed around fighting monsters and saving the world, how come I'm playing the drums in a band started by a couple of teenage girls and we're all acting like coming top in a battle of the bands is the most important thing in the world? And it's the most exciting thing that's happened in the whole game, too!

It's no isolated incident, either. I've done plenty of quests now and they're almost always like this: detailed, complex, layered, nuanced, almost wholly conversational and concerned with anything but fighting monsters or saving the world. Some do have a few fights sprinkled in like seasoning. Some even have a couple of set-piece boss battles. But some don't have any combat at all and a few don't even have any real conflict.

Questing is only one aspect of the game, of course. Arguably, it's not even the central feature. There are many ways to pass the time. You can run a business, play games, go fishing, collect and return lost items, deliver packages... and of course you can explore the huge, sprawling city and its hinterland. 

As you do, you'll meet many of its citizens, all going about their business. Some are happy to talk to you. Some have little problems they'll tell you about. They'd appreciate your help but don't expect much in the way of adventure. You might be making sure the cakes get baked or learning how to take better photographs.

The developers send out regular questionnaires, asking how players are finding the game and gathering information on what they think about it. No doubt they also have extensive metrics, telling them exactly how players are spending their time. Apparently those sources are telling them "players are spending more time exploring the urban world than engaging in combat." That's leading publishers Perfect World to consider "introducing paid city-themed content that includes character skins, clothing, houses, and cars".

The developers are reportedly also planning on "improving gameplay to enhance its appeal and increase player retention." which I guess might have something to do with putting some actual adventure into the game. I can't help wondering if that's in response to customer demand or in an attempt to redirect attention to what was probably intended to be the core of the game, which was surely the fighting since improving your team's combat ability would seem to be the main motivation to spend money.

And here's where I start to have trouble with the whole concept. Maybe this is old thinking but I still tend to envisage a largely male, mostly young audience for games like this.

It's not just the presence and apparent importance of combat in the game that suggests it. Or the illegal street racing and bank-robbing for that matter. There's also that aspect of the anime-flavored, open world gacha genre we tend to dance rather tentatively and uncomfortably around, here in the West: sexualization of the characters. Particularly, although not only, the female characters. It's ever-present in many of the games and it's something that has, in the past, needed to be toned down for a Western audience. 

In most of the gacha games I've played, it's an aspect that's played a fairly low-key role but it's undeniably present to some degree. In NTE, for example, it's noticeable that a disproportionate number of the key characters are female and the dress code in Hethereau is certainly what you might call.. relaxed. 

It's never been remotely unusual for video games, even in the straight-laced West, to use sexuality to grab and hold the attention of what was, for the longest time, deemed to be primarily, if not exclusively, a young, male audience but in more recent times the general audience for video games has expanded to include a much broader range of genders and ages and whole subgenres have grown up around the concept of socializing with imaginary friends or romantic partners. Interactions between players and NPCs are more numerous and varied than they were even a few years ago.

On that basis, it shouldn't surprise anyone that Hethereau is full of attractive, outgoing, friendly NPCs or even that some of the gameplay involves socializing with them rather than fighting monsters. What does surprise me is the nature of some, possibly most, of those interactions.

Yesterday, for example, I helped Mint cram for her exams then later I bumped into Lacrimosa in the street and she invited me over to her house, where we both ended up drinking tomato juice and reading manga with someone she met on Bagel. This was before my stint playing drums behind Nannally, Haniel and Akane. It was all quite odd but at least it made a change from all the child-minding, babysitting and teen drama that often seems to take up the majority of Flora's evenings. 

And it's not like these are isolated incidents. At times, living this kind of heightened version of a normal life seems like it's the main thrust of the game.

It works for me although some of that may be novelty value. I can't remember ever having spent this amount of time doing things so apparently unrelated to the main plot and utterly devoid of physical violence in any other supposedly adventure-oriented game. 

It's all so gosh-darned nice, too. Playing Flora, there's an engagingly innocent, endearing feel to it all. She's like an older sister figure or even a favorite aunt. She keeps an eye out for the kids, makes sure they're safe and having a good time and in doing so, she has a good time herself. She doesn't even mind chatting to Edward on Bagel although god knows he not the most stimulating of conversationalists. And when she does get a minute to herself, she's glad to spend some downtime with her friends, almost all of whom just happen to be women or girls.

I wonder if it mightn't feel a little different, if I was playing as the male version of the Appraiser? A lot of these activities are arguably stereotypically female scenarios. Would a male player character slip into the role as smoothly?

Actually, he probably would, assuming his dialog was the same. The Appraiser always comes across as sober-minded, sensible, responsible and selfless. Unlike many of her friends and colleagues, Flora also dresses demurely by local standards and always behaves impeccably. She's long-suffering, patient, ever-willing to help out, even when the crazy plans she gets drawn into are sure to go wrong. She's the calm voice of reason amid a frenzy of sugared-up hysteria and drunken self-indulgence. 

She's usually the adult in the room, even when there are clearly older people there. I imagine it would be the same with a male Appraiser. I don't think gender comes into it much, if at all. 

Is this what the modern player of a magitech adventure game wants now? To be the designated driver in every situation? The calm voice of reason? The Sensible One?

Maybe it is. Maybe everyone playing NTE really does want to live a vicarious, innocent, work- and family-oriented life, doing their job to the best of their ability, minding the kids who inexplicably work there too, before skipping off down the street with their friend, holding hands, heading off to eat ice-cream, see a movie or just hang out at each other's places after work, where they'll talk mostly about food they like and shows they watch on TV before heading home for a good night's sleep. 

If so, I guess there's hope for the world after all. I mean, it's got to be better than becoming a murder-hobo, hasn't it? 

Maybe it's close to what the target audience already does in real life. Maybe what they enjoy is seeing those lives, interests and concerns reflected in these characters. If so, that would be welcome news from a gaming perspective, if also slightly worrying from a real-life one, given the general level of scattiness, disregard for personal and public safety and the plethora of all-round performative, hyperactive behavior on display. 

Until and unless Hotta or PWG decide to release some hard numbers on the demographics, the way cinemas routinely report on who's going to see which movie, it's all just speculation. For all the critical analysis, I'm no wiser as to who the game is supposed to be for, let alone who's actually playing it. 

Although I do feel pretty safe in saying it wasn't made for pensioners like me. I am definitely not the target audience. I probably should stick to my lane and play Stars Reach or Pantheon with the rest of the geezers. 

Now, doesn't that sound like fun?

I Don't Mind If You Love It Or You Hate It

Well! How time does fly. I was feeling chary about putting up another What I've been Listening To Lately post because it felt like only a few days since the last one but I had a few really good tunes I wanted to share, so I thought I'd just check exactly how long it's been... and it's been two weeks! 

Yes, that long! No, I couldn't believe it, either! Semi-monthly was always my target for this "feature" even though I've barely ever come close so this is totally justified.

Still, there could be a couple of arguments for holding off a little longer. One is the recurring problem I led with last time - repetition and familiarity. (Isn't that two reasons?) I'm afraid it is going to be a lot of the same people again. I have not been doing my due diligence and searching out new stuff so most of what I have bookmarked is new songs from acts I'm already following. 

But they're really good ones! And I don't think it can be such a great idea to favor novelty over quality anyway, can it? Not all the time.

The other argument against is that I don't have quite as many tunes lined up as usual. I have enough though and perhaps a slightly shorter playlist might be a little less off-putting for the casual listener. Or then again, maybe the more there are, the more likely everyone is to find at least one they like. I don't know. I'm not a psychologist.

Anyway, whatever. It is, as the incredibly irritating saying goes, what it is. Or perhaps I should say these are what they are. And they're all great! Enjoy!

 Playboy Bunny - Charli xcx

My favorite song of 2026 so far. Yes, even over Lana's White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter. Although I'm playing that one right now to see if that's really true and maybe they're tied. It's like comparing apples and amphetamines though, isn't it? 

Often - usually, in fact - these posts, supposedly filled with songs I've been listening to lately, are more like lists of songs I've heard once or twice and bookmarked to share. Recursive argument. Playboy Bunny, is not that. Playboy Bunny has been on what passes for hard rotation around here, these days. I've played it on the desktop, on the laptop and on the big Google TV downstairs. Multiple times on all three.

I'd have played it in the car, too, if it was on CD but it's not and for the time being it won't be. Charli does this thing where she releases "B sides" to her singles only on the vinyl singles themselves and on her appropriately-named Instagram account, b-sides. I don't have an Instagram account (Maybe I should...) but fortunately if Charli sneezes it turns up on at least two of my music feeds so I heard about this one right away. 

Oddly, even though it's kind of an Instagram/vinyl exclusive, it's also on YouTube as  an "official video", albeit not on her own channel. Isn't modern life wonderful? Can you understand any of it?

So much for provenance, anyway. What about performance? Just perfection. (Anyone who's thinking  "chef's kiss" or imagining the emoji for it, which I just bet there is one, gets a virtual slap. I don't condone violence (Well, I very much do condone imaginary violence, as I could hardly pretend otherwise, as a gamer...)  but standards must be maintained somehow.) 

Everything about the song and the video (But especially the song.) is perfect, from the abrasive mix to the stuttering images to the drops and the floods. She's a genius. She can do anything. Well, musically. I'm not saying she could re-wire a bungalow or swim the channel...

Lyrically, it's delicious: ironic, astute, self-aware and true. All the lines would look good on a placard, come the revolution. Or on a T-shirt, as she says in the song. Or in the title of this post. 

I'm qfting this couplet, too:

All my music sounds the same
Well, that's because I made it

And the callback

All my music sounds the same
Sometimes I wish didn't make it
So I could be a listener watching for the first time

Preach, sister! 

Brutalist - Kim Petras

Pretty sure this is going to be in my top five for 2026, too. Also on rotation just now. Having ignored her forever, apparently now she's one of my favorites. These things happen.

The lyric is just fascinating. The YouTube comment thread is stuffed full of people affirming or analyzing it as a metaphor for transitioning but I came to it not even knowing Kim was trans so I took it on face value at first. 

And I'm still going with that, mostly. I think she likes brutalist architecture and she was upset that they tore down one of her favorite buildings, as who wouldn't be, especially if the building in question was this one, as one architectural detective in the thread posits? Of course, all the rest of the subtext is there too but subtext doesn't negate text.

I love brutalism. I grew up with it so it's at one and the same time familiar, normal and now nostalgic and bittersweet as it vanishes. And beautiful. let's not forget beautiful. Just because the aesthetic was frequently misapplied, don't make the mistake of believing it was never there. 

When A Good Man Cries - Olivia Rodrigo (CMAT cover)

Oh, it's all the big names again, isn't it? That's how it goes, though. We all know it. People have their moments, when everything they touch turns gold. Leave it a while and they'll fade back out of sight. Or maybe they'll be Madonna. 

This is a great cover of a song I didn't know but I feel like I do. That's maybe because CMAT is such a classical songwriter. Well, she can be. I'm not sure Bacharach and David could have written Jamie Oliver Petrol Station. 

Speaking of which, we never had the official video, the one with the man himself, did we? Click through and treat yourself! In fact, you know what? It's too good to waste on a link.

Jamie Oliver Petrol Station - CMAT

If CMAT reminds me of anyone it's Tracyanne Campbell from Camera Obscura. I'd like to see Olivia cover Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken sometime. Or Jamie Oliver Petrol Station for that matter. 

PARTY - Goldie Boultier

While I'm going over old ground, I left this out last time because, as I said, there was bound to be a video coming and now here it is. I don't exactly like everything Goldie does but I like this, particularly the interpolation. 

That Lesley Gore was a bit of a dark horse, wasn't she? Did you know she co-wrote some of the songs for the movie, Fame? Or that she was in two episodes of the Batman TV show, playing Pussycat, "one of Catwoman's minions"? Her Wikipedia entry is massive and fascinating. I recommend it.

 California Nights - Lesley Gore (As Pussycat)

Oh, heck... why not? This post sure isn't going the way I expected.

Song 2 - The Electric Mayhem (Blur cover)

Believe it or not, I really did have that one bookmarked for the post. There was a news item in the week about some band being removed from the Disney Rock and Roll Rollercoaster. Might have been Van Halen, which would have made William Reid happy, always assuming such a thing is possible.

Ah, no, sorry, it was Aerosmith. I quite like Aerosmith. At least I don't mind hearing them once in a while, like on the radio or something. The ride is now All Muppets All The Time and the Muppet house band, The Electric Mayhem, has pretty good taste. Their set includes Born To Be Wild and Walking On Sunshine, although there's also a Def Leppard number in there, so it's not all good news. 

(Just as an aside, are Blur seen as one-hit-wonders in the States? I know Song 2 was a big deal there but did they have any other hits? I mean, I could look it up but where's the fun in that?)

I'll lay odds here and now that this is the only time Van Halen, Aerosmith and Def Leppard get a name-check in the same post here. It'd be a fair bet that none of them will never be mentioned again. Let's hope so.

 

 

It Could Be Better (But It's Good Enough) 

Aimee Fatale 

Three artists in my subs have new videos out. Goldie Boutlier is one, Tiger le Flor is another and Aimee Fatale is the third. As I said last time, the Tiger le Flor song, Kodachrome, is so authentically sixties I don't actually like it all that much (Although every time I play it, it grows on me a little more...). 

Aimee's new one is a song I've featured here before but only as a live version. The official release is a bit different in that it sounds as though it was recorded underwater until about a minute in, when the band kick in and the volume seems to jump a couple of orders of magnitude. Even then, it sounds woozy and strange. Judge for yourself if it works. I'm still not sure.

 From Down Here - Lola Young

Lola Young's latest single sounds a lot better in this live version from Radio 1's Big Weekend than it does in the actual recording. She's put out three videos for the single, all in different locations - one in the living room, one in the pool and one from the water. They all start off, like the Aimee Fatale video,  sounding as if either she's submerged or we are. Maybe it's a thing now? I really hope not.

 In Heaven - Xiu Xiu

Well, that's a mood-killer. Possibly better known as the "Lady In The Radiator Song", it's yet another cover, this time from David Lynch's Eraserhead, which I still have never seen all the way through. We've had it here before, in a version by Princess Chelsea, which I very much prefer to this one. But I didn't remember that until I came to do the edit and now it's too much trouble to take it out, so here it stays.

Xiu Xiu has a whole album called "Eraserhead" coming. I might pass on that one. But since we're having all the covers today, how about a Xiu Xiu cover? 

Sad Pony Guerilla Girl - Scarlett Sladek (Xiu Xiu cover)

We'll say this is for Pride Month since I haven't done anything else for it so far and that's the dedication Scarlett gave it, this time last year. Although I suppose I could have mentioned it when I was talking about Kim Petras earlier... 

It's yet another one where half the time the vocals are inaudible but the bit where she gets the rosary beads out is stellar. Worth it for that alone.

WAX PAPER - Tierra Whack

Tierra Whack does not like to be constrained. She makes whatever music she wants. But she wants you to know that, for all her versatility and range, she is a still rapper. 

Wonder why I don't rap much
'Cause when I rap, somebody's bound to get wrapped up
They yellin', "Oh, shit" Like my stomach is backed up
I'm so sick, I really think you should mask up.

Now you know. I'm not about to argue with her. Are you?

 Telepathic Butterflies - Spacemoth

Saved this one for last so there'd be a banger at the end. Always end on a high. Is it weird, a moth singing about butterflies? Something to think about.

Until next time, then, when I might even have something new to offer. Although I wouldn't count on it. 

Oh, and look at that! The post ended up as the classic baker's dozen after all. It's like I planned it or something. 

I didn't plan it.