Weeknotes: week 11, 2023
✱ Anxious as I was to watch the ninth (and last) episode of HBO’s The Last of Us, I couldn’t manage to do it on Sunday. It was hard to keep waiting until last night, when I finally could see where the story led Ellie and Joel. There was even… a real giraffe making a cameo appearance! 😃 I’ve stated before that I’ve never played the two franchise videogames in my life, but I read that these 9 episodes were going to wrap up all the first game and its DLC. In the end, this last episode went following a path that I liked — and that, at the same time, displeased my son, who said he shouldn’t have wasted his time watching the series. Still, when I asked him what he’d have done differently, he muted. As any and many first seasons of series before it, it came to an end. Sometimes this end pleases, sometimes it doesn’t. I can’t (or don’t want to) comment specifics here so I don’t reveal spoilers, but let’s just say that the final episode of season one was just fair as I could expect it to be. And count me in for watching season 2 when it premiers.
✱ Je me souviens du français. Bien… a petit peut. I’ve been touching French again as of lately and I am remembering how fun it can be to explore a different language. I studied French for around a year and a half in the past, but of course, due to not using it on a regular basis, ended up forgetting a lot of it. As I’m studying French by my own and don’t want to pressure myself or anything, I decided to gather vocabulary through the lightest, easiest way that came to my mind: that is, by reading comics in French. It’s somewhat hard to find French comics to download, but after some scavenging, I found a couple of them, Uncle Scrooge — Oncle Picsou magazines, and they’re proving to be at the same time both challenging and lots of fun. Now I’m deciding whether to gather all my vocabulary into a flash card app to practice it through spaced repetition. Maybe I’ll do it. Let’s see. For now, it’s the fun part that’s keeping me moving. Now I’m deciding whether to gather all my vocabulary into a flash card app to practice it through spaced repetition. Maybe I’ll do it. Let’s see. For now, it’s the fun part that’s keeping me moving.
✱ Card Survival: Tropical Island is a game I had my eyes on for quite some time now. I’m not being able to dedicate much time to gaming this year, but considering that Steam’s Autumn Sale is on until the next 23rd, 20% off its regular price was enough argument to make me decide to buy it. In fact, I got to play it this morning, and did it for almost 4 hours in a row. I like this deck building gente a lot, and although the game premise seems simple enough — you wake up on a deserted island only to find out you have to survive it till you escape it, or till you get enough resources and make it your new home —, it’s perfectly possible to notice how deep the gameplay is. Devs are active and by the time I purchased it last night, I noticed their introduction of the 41st wave of updates in game mechanics. OMG 😱 In general, I’m finding the experience of having to watch my hunger, thirst, sleepiness, health, stress and so many other leves I have to keep eyes on while scavenging, chopping wood, making fires up and a whole lot of other things very… enjoyable. It does get complicated as the days pass by, and I’m a lousy survival right know, not having passed through my fifth day surviving on the island. Yet, I wasn’t wrong buying the game, as I feel something will keep me pushing back to play 🏝️😃