all made up with nowhere to go

It was my nephew's tenth birthday the other day, and honestly w t f where have those last ten years gone?

~

Anyway, the rest of this entry is going to be about music!

First of all, so as I am sure y'all are aware, Youtube does this thing where after a set amount of time, it will tell you that you have not watched videos you have watched. I'm sure it has something to do with data protection, but it gets frustrating when I know I've seen something, but I don't particularly want to watch it again.

However, it told me I hadn't seen either of Outside Xtra's list videos about times video game music blew their minds. I have. The first one was posted mere days after my birthday in 2019, so it felt like a weird birthday present at the time, even though it absolutely wasn't. So I decided to watch them again.

Now. I don't know if you know this, but I absolutely love music. If you do, apologies for repeating myself.

So while I was watching these two lists, I compiled a list of my own of stuff I liked that I wanted to listen to RIGHT THEN.

And then. Well, then, my friends, I somehow, four hours later, ended up with a list of my own of stuff I liked from video games I liked/had played/etc. It is a very long list. There are fifty, if not sixty plus tracks on there. I decided that I would like to share it with y'all. I just need to type it up.

I'm going to post it as a free to all post on ko-fi. There will be no links to anything, so you'll have to go and look up the tracks yourselves (although chances are for at least some of them, you will probably already be familiar with). But I love music and I wanted to share!

(Also: not gonna lie about thinking about future lists - this one is Random Shit I Like, but future ones might be Chill Stuff or Creepy Stuff, or whatever else I can think of. And also not necessarily game music).

And then the other thing is that two years ago (approximately), I bought myself a new stereo. It has a USB input, to which you can slot in a memory stick full of music, and it will play it. (It will also play MP3 CDs, but I must admit I haven't actually tried that out yet. I should!)

And I had a 16Gb memory stick lying around that I had bought to save screencaps from my PS4 on. Except it never got used. So I filled it full of music, and sometimes I plug it into the stereo, and I listen to music and I am happy.

(I'm also still trying to get back into the groove of being able to use a stereo again, which I know sounds daft, but it is a thing).

And then yesterday, when I was loading some more music onto it, I realised that hey, if I can plug it into the stereo and listen to stuff, I can also plug it into the laptop and listen to stuff! GENIUS! And thus, that is what I did this morning, and it has been glorious. Although I am after an alternative music program than Windows Music Player (as always). I downloaded one called Musicbee, which I've never heard of, but thought I would give a go!

~

In news I thought I would never say: because it's ~a year since I played FFXV, I am feeling weirdly nostalgic about it, and I don't know why!

(Last night I watched a Eurogamer video where Ian and Aoife were playing the FFXV VR fishing game (?!) that came out in 2017, and at one point where Ian mentions something about plot in this game, Aoife says, "well, there wasn't much in the main game," and it kind of pleased me that she acknowledged that. I mean, IDK how she feels about the entire game these days, but basically I'm glad I'm not the only one irritated by this).

I beat FFXV yesterday afternoon. I was level 48, and it took me as many hours as levels. I am annoyed that half that time was spent grinding for said levels, as you really don't encounter many enemies unless you go exploring.

I've been thinking about Skyrim a lot while I've been playing this. Because one of my beefs with that is that the story is, well, lacking. And it is. But in a much different way to FFXV's. I know the entirety of the story in Skyrim, it just plays out extremely quickly, especially so if you just follow the main plot and don't do any exploring (you don't even need to be a specific level to beat the final boss, iirc, you just can do it regardless).

So does FFXV's story (I got to the end of chapter 12 in 20 or so hours, which is about right). HOWEVER. I have the same amount of questions I had when the game started, if not probably more.

But I'm not going to go on another rant. I feel like I did enough of that yesterday. This entry is more to mark that I beat it, and it only took me one go for each of the final three bosses (unusual, but I was probably overlevelled at that point), even if the middle one felt gimmicky. And now I'm doing post-game stuff till I get bored.

I am so glad that I am now on holiday so I don't have to deal with bus shenanigans for a couple of weeks!

~

FFXV was meant to be my game to play over some of my holiday, when I wasn't doing the other stuff I'd planned for. Except that I am extremely near the end now, I am just grinding for levels/money/items because at a certain point, you get railroaded and can't do that easily.

I'm going to put everything else I'm going to say under a cut, because spoilers! and I don't want to be backing and forthing, as it were. If you're going to comment on this, no spoilers past chapter 12, please! I'm in chapter 13 as I write this, but I'd like the end to remain unspoilt, thanks.

( beware spoilers! )

So yeah, that's my thoughts so far. TL;DR version: ehhhhhhhhhh.

Now I need to go and cook some dinner because I am hecking hungry.