You Do Realise You Could Have Gotten A Full Week Of Posts Out Of This Little Lot, Right?

Friday Grab-Bag for real this time. No one story hijacking the post and running away with it like last week. Probably. I have eight or nine possibles bookmarked. Let's see how many I can get through before the whole thing collapses under its own weight. I'm going to take them in the order I found them so don't expect any kind of coherent through-line.

Also, anyone liking the introductory paragraph above the first illustration here? I think it works quite well for a portmanteau post. I have kinda spoilt the effect with this second para though...

Oops! I Clicked On One Of Those Side-Loading Ads On MassivelyOP And Look What Happened!

Seriously, what even are those? They're so annoying! I get that websites depend on advertising to exist and ad blockers screw that up but the reason people use ad blockers in the first place is because of how infuriating the ads are. Making them even more intrusive so they can circumvent the blocks isn't going to get anyone to click on them!

So, anyway, I clicked on this ad...

It was for a game called NIKKE. All caps, which should have warned me. The full name is actually NIKKE: GODDESS OF VICTORY, still all caps only the second part in smaller caps. Like that, sort of. 

The game describes itself as an "Immersive Sci-Fi RPG Shooter With Adorable NIKKES". Again with all caps all the way but enough of that. And what the heck are NIKKES? Is that a thing? Google doesn't think so. Not outside the game anyway. 

Inside the game? Well apparently that's a subject of some debate...

I lasted about ten minutes before quitting and uninstalling. From the website, I thought I was going to get a cut-price Hoyoverse knock-off  but what I actually got was an indescribable hotch-potch of hyper-sexualized robots with gameplay that ressembled duck shooting at the county fair, all set to a crashing soundtrack that had me turning my speakers down in the first five seconds because I couldn't wait long enough to find the in-game audio controls.

If that sounds like your kind of thing, MOP has you covered, although I note that although they promote it, they don't write about it. I wonder why that might be?

Do The Ostrich

Somewhere downstairs in one of my boxes of vinyl 45s I have a couple of singles I bought in the 1970s or maybe the 1980s, each of which features a couple of songs written by Lou Reed before he was famous. From memory, one of those is Do The Ostrich, in which Lou exhorts us all to do the ostrich as he attempts to kick-start a new dance craze. I haven't heard it for about forty years but I can still remember exactly how it goes, which isn't all that surprising when you consider the entire lyrics consist of "Do the Ostrich", repeated endlessly.

I can't remember who that one is credited to (It's by The Primitives.) but I can remember one of the others is "You're Driving Me Insane" by The Beachnuts. Or maybe they did "Little Cycle Annie". (They did. I just checked. It was The Roughnecks that did Driving Me Insane.) 

I can still sing the choruses of both of those after all these years, too, which suggests that Lou's early sixties stint as an in-house songwriter for schlock pop music factory Pickwick wasn't the misfire you might imagine. The guy had a knack with a chorus, for sure.

If you, like me, would love to hear all the songs he wrote for them then I'm very happy to tell you your dreams are about to come true. All twenty-five of them (!!) are due to be released in a compilation called "Why Don't You Smile Now?" - which now I hear it I realise is yet another one I already own.

I'll be getting a copy. Who'd want to miss Spongy and the Dolls doing “Really - Really - Really - Really - Really - Really Love” ? Not me!

Ashes Of Credibility

Back around the time the saber-tooths died out, just before the discovery of bronze, I pledged a kickstarter for a game called Ashes of Creation. Because all I really wanted was the base game and a quick look at it before it started but mostly because I'm cheap, I only pledged one of the lowest tiers. 

From memory, it gave me access to Beta 2. Might possibly have been Beta 1. I imagine there's some account I could log into to check but if I had the details I lost them long ago. I'm still going to get the game eventually, though, because developers Intrepid send me monthly emails about it so they must  have my details even if I don't. 

At the time, I was sufficiently enthused to take a second pledge for Mrs Bhagpuss as well, so we're going to get two of the damn things some day. The chances of me playing it for more than a session or two are slim. The chances of Mrs Bhagpuss even logging in are none.

I wrote the cost off as lost long ago but even so I found it more than a tad itrritating to hear Intrepid crowing about a new, year-long "Alpha Two", starting in October, that you can buy into for an extortionate amount. 

Initially, your hundred dollars was going to get you alpha 2 access and that was all because everything Intrepid have ever said about the game and everything they ever send me suggests they have a hyper-inflated sense of their own importance and we should all feel eternally grateful they even deign to let us kneel and touch the hem of their garment...

Ahem. Anyway, the reaction to that idea was... not favorable and now they've extended the offer to include Beta 1 and 2 and a month's subscription at launch. It's somewhat galling to realize that if I'd kept my credit card in my wallet way back when, for the price of those two $50 pledges I could have bought one $100 package now and been playing next May, which is likely still at least a couple of years before whatever passes for launch.

Not that I want to play the damn game any more. I wonder if it's too late to get my $100 back? The weirdest thing about the whole affair, though, is that the first two phases of Alpha Two won't have an NDA but the final one will. What's that about?

Robrat Summer

Back in the lockdown years I was quite excited for the future of the metaverse as I understood it, which was mostly as a way of watching live events in a three-dimensional virtual environment. There was a lot of that going on back then and I made an effort to join in where I could.

One of the more memorable meta-events I attended was PinkPantheress in Roblox. It was fun in a "This is New!" kind of way although in retrospect PinkPantheress's gentle, introverted re-interpolation of 90s drum'n'bass scarcely seems like the most obvious choice for the platform. Charli XCX seems like a much better fit, which makes it a shame the current Brat-themed Dress To Impress offer in Roblox is just some clothes and emotes not a virtual stage appearance by one of the acts of the summer.

Absent the novelty factor, it seems as though there's as much or more value in just watching events livestreaming in flat 2D or even in plain old sound-only. I've been listening to the recording of a French radio live broadcast of Lana del Rey's set at Rock en Seine in Paris last night for the whole time I've been writing this post and even faux-live and without visuals it does a pretty fair job of making me feel I was there.

The tech for immersive performance doesn't quite seem to be there yet. I still think it's the real USP VR has been searching for - I know I'd buy a headset tomorrow if it meant I could "attend" live performances all over the world from the comfort of my sofa - but apparently that's just me.

And So It Begins

Next month sees the debut of SM Entertainment's newest would-be KPop Idol, nævis . Not something I'd normally bother to mention only there's something a little different about nævis and it's not just that she spells her name all in lower case with a really annoying dipthong, either.

I'd forgotten until I started writing this section but we've met nævis here on the blog before. Back in 2023 I explained she was merely "a fictional AI who "connects" a real band [Aespa] to that band's virtual doppelgangers". Now it seems she's done with facilitating the success of others. She's out to become an Idol in her own right as an "AI-generated singer".

I'm not entirely sure how one of those differs from an already well-established virtual star like Hatsune Miko, other than that the vocaloid tech that underwrites Hatsune was specifically developed using vocal samples from a single, specific human performer, voice actor Saki Fujita., rather than whatever gestalt is likely to lie behind nævis. The NME article where I first read about her says "the virtual K-pop idol was created using computer graphics and AI voicing technologies, while her upcoming content will be produced using generative AI" but it seems a fine distinction.

Honestly, I don't really care about the exact methodology behind the project. I just love the whole idea. The metafictionality is dizzying. About the only thing I don't like about it are all those bloody dipthongs that make the names so damn hard to type. 

I'm going to namecheck Carole and Tuesday again, as you'd expect. We'll be in their world faster than you can imagine. We're halfway there already.

I Can't Get No Satisfaction (All I get Is Early Access, Baby!)

Nah, I'm happy enough. I just thought of the line and couldn't resist. If you can't make self-indulgent in-jokes and drop references no-one is going to get in your own blog then what's the point of having one?

I really enjoyed my hundred or so hours with Nightingale. I was looking forward to it and it did not disappoint. If it had been a single-player, offline title then the time I've spent with the game would have been a very solid return on the £22.49 I paid for it. Better yet, it had a linear storyline that made me feel I'd "finished" it, which is probably why I've barely touched the game since.

Or perhaps I should say I thought it had a linear storyline. It seems not everyone agrees. The upcoming Realms Rebuilt update doesn't just add new mechanics and content, it also includes a revamped central storyline:

"While the fundamental premise of the story remains the same (Earth has fallen, the Portal network collapsed, and what remains of humanity is adrift looking for Nightingale), in Realms Rebuilt the player journey has been…well….rebuilt!"

I have very mixed feelings about this. For one thing, I was more than fine with the story and progression as it was. It made sense, it was logical for the most part and I found it interesting but not so interesting that I want to see the extended Director's Cut. Especially not if, as I suspect, that would involve making a new character and going through it all from scratch. 

This is what you get with Early Access titles these days, though. It's not just that you come in at a relatively early development stage and accept there's content missing, which I think used to be generally thought of as the deal. EA is starting to feel much more like a beta or sometimes even an alpha, where everything is mutable right down to the fundemental premise of the game. 

I think that's why I'm starting to think of Early Access titles, even for games that strive to be Live Service titles or MMOs, as more like finite, buy-and-play-once games. Valheim is a great example. It was an amazing game when I got it and I put in over three hundred and fifty hours, almost all of which was in that initial run. 

I find now I don't much care that Iron Crown is still working on it. I finished the version of Valheim I bought. Whatever they're doing to it now might as well be a sequel or an expansion to a game I no longer play and I think I might feel much the same about Nightingale and quite probably every other Early Access title I'll buy in the future. 

It's fine. I just need to re-align my expectations.

(Also, I notice MassivelyOP is now using the form "Tencent's Inflexion Games", just like they're calling Funcom "Tencent-Owned Funcom". Not sure exactly what's going on there but I have my suspicions.)

Extinction Level Event Detected

And now some sad news: Nintendo finally noticed they've been giving something away for free so they're going to put a stop to it.  

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp, the free-to-play mobile Animal Crossing game that's been running since 2017 and which I played, wrote about and very much enjoyed during the pandemic, when everyone who wasn't playing Valheim was playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons and I couldn't because I didn't have a Switch, is sunsetting on 28 November.

I haven't played it in a long while. It was fun for a good few months but it gets repetitive eventually, like most games. Still, I wouldn't have said I was totally done with it so it's a bit annoying to hear that I won't be able to visit my characters any more.

Except, hey, guess what? I will! If I pay a ransom. 

After Animal Crossing Pocket Camp the free version ends it will be replaced (Possibly immediately, possibly a little later, it's not clear yet.) by a Premium, paid edition. How much that will cost and what, if any, will be the difference in gameplay remains to be seen but it is confirmed that you will be able to transfer your F2P characters into the new game.

Gee, thanks. I suppose it would be worse if the game was just closing down altogether and your characters would be lost forever but still, it feels like a really tacky move. I don't imagine I'll bother transferring mine but I have a couple of months to think about it. 

I might, if the new game is on Google Play Games, currently still in beta. Do they have paid games on there? Maybe I should look into it.

End With A Big Number

 

OMG! I have so many tunes backed up, waiting to their chance to shine in one of my famous music posts! Did you know my most-viewed post of all time is a music post? It's this one from March of this year and according to Blogger's own stats it has been viewed 188,531 times! And they say blogging is dead! 

If you want to know why I don't believe any of my stats, there's your answer. 

So, the question is, which of the hundred or so "possibles" do I choose for this single slot? I suppose I could let the dice decide...

Nah. I'm gonna go with something I think a few people might actually want to watch for once. I think it might be an idea to end these portmanteau posts with a cover. Let's start the tradition right here.

Don't go chasing any rabbits now.