What’s Up 2020: Week 14

Another week has passed by as we jump into week 14 of 2020! The rhythm of working from home and balancing out the to-do list for blog and home stuff is definitely setting itself into place. Everything here is finally more balanced now.

READING

• Blackthorn by Terry Tyler (Review)

Currently reading: Highland Cove

Back on track with reading (kind of) as I finally finish up Blackthorn! Its not a dreading way that I’m saying this because Blackthorn is a really good read. You can check out my review that I’ve linked above. Terry Tyler is a really good author, judging from the two books that I’ve read of hers so far and definitely an author I’d like to read more of as she has some fantastic world building skills.

Of course, its time to move on as I’m reading Highland Cove, a story along the paranormal horror genre. A genre that I honestly haven’t read in a while so it will be a nice change in pace.

PLAYING

Currently playing: Happy Color, Cookies Must Die, Bounce That Bird, Demon’s Tilt

As I try to find some time to stream (which should be coming up), I’ve been working on my next gaming post reviewing some of the games who made the finalists in the Google Play Indie Games Festival for this year. Its quite a feat and probably won’t be done until they announce the winner of the whole thing but you know, its an attempt. With that said, Cookies Must Die and Bounce That Bird are both free games on the list that I’m checking out at the same time.

WATCHING

• Pride and Prejudice (2005 rewatch, Review)
• Hell House LLC 3: Lake of Fire (2019)
• Justice League (2017)

It was a week of taking it easy on the reading as there was just a lot of TV that I wanted to watch and I had a few things that I needed to take care of. With that said, I tend to enjoy rewatching Pride and Prejudice every once in a while as its one of my favorite movies. Its probably the top movie of the week but then, I never choose rewatches to highlight so we’re going with Justice League, a movie that surprisingly was a decent watch since I have been pretty much indifferent to the DC Universe films except for Wonder Woman. This was a fun watch. As for Hell House LLC 3, I’m going to be doing a double feature on both the sequels so I’ll just review it there.

BINGING

• Nailed It! (Season 4, 2020)
• The Great Canadian Baking Show (Season 1, 2017)

Currently binging: Skate into Love, The Singer 2020, Youth Is You 2, The Great Canadian Baking Show (Season 2), J-Style Trip

TV has been a huge focus this week. I’ve been watching a lot of baking shows as you can see. Nailed It Season 4 arrived and well, I watched that over two days. Its still a lot of fun and I should be doing a little review on that since there’s not a whole lot to talk about except maybe a few little things. While I am watching through the 2 seasons of The Great Canadian Baking Show that landed on Netflix and since I have zero actual TV channels at home, I don’t even catch CBC shows so didn’t really know this existed before. Still, its a good show as I start tackling Season 2 already.

Most of everything else has already been in progress but Skate Into Love is wrapping up in the coming week and boy, that series is SO AWESOME! Luckily, when that one ends, there’s another one that I’ve been looking forward to coming out. The good stuff for Chinese dramas are popping up now and its starting to look forward to!

That’s it for this What’s Up!
What have you been reading/watching/playing/binging?

Black Friday Haul!

Happy Saturday!! Apologies for the late post! Its been a busy day of many errands including putting up the Christmas Tree and decorating.

Black Friday recently just passed. But let’s face it, its more of a weekend event that runs into Cyber Monday nowadays.

Its a perfect time to get a Black Friday Haul post for the weekend. Of course, I’m also very much into online shopping so not a whole lot of this is actually in my possession yet. I probably mentioned in previous haul posts but I’ve been doing an overhaul so buying less books and movies, like physical forms of them and also investing more on games as I’d like to have the content for Game Warp for reviews and such. If you see a huge amount of games, that’s the reason.

Let’s go!

Amazon

• Resident Evil 7
• Uncharted: The Lost Legacy

Playstation 4 games have gotten so expensive that we always need to wait for sales before we pick them up. These two games are two of the most anticipated for us and they had a pretty great deal, especially Resident Evil 7 being only $20CAD. In the quest to catch up frantically with the 2017 titles, this fits our goals perfectly.

Google Play

• The Villainess
• Layton’s Mystery Journey

I’ve been resorting to the Play Store for a lot of more recent rentals as they have like 99 cent rentals every now and again for selected movies. They actually had one for Black Friday and I ended up renting 47 Meters Down. I love shark movies so while there are million other titles I could have picked, its one I’ve been wanting to catch up with. Black Friday also saw some great deals. For games, Layton’s Mystery Journey had a 60% discount. I love the Professor Layton games. I actually own all of them on Nintendo DS and look forward to catching up with the 3DS titles eventually since they seem to be available on mobile also. The latest game is Layton’s Mystery Journey and for those familiar with Nintendo, games tend to be costly so the deal was pretty sweet. To be honest, Play Store might have had some of the more impressive deals this year so I also got a 50% off coupon for a movie and of course, I went for the rare foreign film and got the highly praised The Villainess which I missed at Fantasia because its an opening movie and my pass didn’t grant me entrance so the tickets were sold out super fast as well.

Fanatical

• Last Day of June

Fanatical is the new name for what used to called Bundle Stars and its honestly a great spot to check for discounted games. They even give out free game deals every once in a while. Its older titles but sometimes, there are some cool stuff. Plus, I don’t say no to free games. They had a pretty neat way for Black Friday called Black Friday Flash Deals which they released discounted titles one per hour and each game had 24 hours to be at that price. Of course, my eyes was on the 2017 indie titles so Last Day of June popped up and also was cheaper than the discount on Steam so I had to pick it up. This game is right up my alley. Its really hard to say no.

Indigo Books

• Neil Gaiman Box Set
• Snowflakes & Morning Frost – Poured Glass Candle

The story behind Indigo purchase is actually a little more out of the fact that I went to the actual store to check out their deals and there was so many people and what I wanted ended up being all available online and what I wanted physically there, the buy 2 graphic novels and get the 3rd free, didn’t have the books I was looking for. Plus, they had a better online discount than the actual price for one of them and I know that during the year, that book should drop in price on a sale even more. Being selective, I went home and thought about it and just couldn’t get my mind off the candle which smelled delectable and the fact that I’ve been wanting to check out Neil Gaiman books but never found them at a good price and at $12.50 for 4 books, that’s a pretty awesome deal.

Steam Fall Sale

Finally, we come to the Steam Fall Sale which wasn’t exactly called a Black Friday sale but was centered in that time frame so I batched it in here. Not a ton of new games per se. Trust me when I say that the deals started on Thursday night (I think) and I mulled over it for 2 nights before finalizing the choices. Some of these titles will be featured games on Game Warp and others are just games I’ll review on my own because I’ve heard about it or the premise interests me.

La Buche

The final thing I got was really just a household thing but since I do share about it, I’ll add it on here. We burn wood during the winter to help lower actual heating costs and we just love it however, ever since we’ve moved it, we discovered these ecological logs which burn longer and better for the environment. The company we finally bought the most time with is La Buche (and we’re not sponsored although I wish we were..haha). Its a pretty sweet deal if you are in the Montreal area and burn firewood in the winter. Thought I’d share that in case anyone was interested.

That’s it for the Black Friday Haul!!

While I didn’t think that there were any spectacular deals, the stuff I got came at a pretty awesome price so I didn’t actually spend that much money overall.
What about you? Did you find any sweet deals on Black Friday?

Visual Novel: LAQUE: Premonitions by Jean Fukuda Miyasato

One more visual novel before jumping back to actual novels.

This next one is called LAQUE: Premonitions. Like I said in the first visual novel post, I’m starting to grow a fondness for them. For one, they aren’t long and two, they have art to look at. Its like a picture book for grown-ups. Plus, the last one was not exactly what I expected a visual novel to be. If you missed it, you can find it here. This one should be a bit more interactive. Let’s see, shall we?

LAQUE: Premonitions
by: Jean Fukuda Miyasato

If you knew that the girl you know you will die for a FUTURE know would avoid? Laque is a boy with a special gift, he often has prophetic dreams, and one of them manages to see his future love gives her life to save his, now have to decide whether to approach it or avoid it so as not to sacrifice for him. – Google Play Store

Laque is structured much more like what I thought visual novels are. This one has actual choices to decide on the path. It floats between the premonition ( maybe dream) world that the main character Laque resides in. At the beginning, we learn that he has a gift of premonition. Ghosts or images will show up that clue him in on the future events. Then he meets a girl in one of these who don’t talk. There are some blood and deaths and whatnot and now he needs to hunt down who this girl is and who the killer is to try to stop it.

The story itself is pretty basic but the idea here is pretty. The experience still left something to desire. For one, there are some unnecessary random cheap jumpscares here and there. Sometimes they caught me off guard, most of the time it was a WTF moment because it didn’t seem to fit with the story. Note that horror and mystery/suspense are two different genres therefore jumpscares are not necessary. The second point and also the last was the story and dialogue was really like watching an anime or reading a manga or whatnot but the words looked like they were being typed slowly on. I don’t know if it was for anticipation or to make the unveiling of secret feel more effective but in random conversations, it felt much longer than it needed to be.

To be fair, Laque Premonitions is pretty good. The lesson he gives at the end is a good one, at least the ending I got. I have a suspicion that there may be multiple endings. While thete are plenty of saves on the progression, the impatient me just couldn’t handle another session of slow dialogue particularly when Laque’s inner monologue could be sped up to show all at once and not thr actual ones out loud to other characters. Still, a decent experience other than some minor technicalities.

Visual Novel: Ambre by Träumendes Mädchen

Here we are trying out a new thing like I mentioned in My Weekly Adventures. I usually review books and novels and by accident, thinking it was something different, I landed on this visual novel. It turns out that visual novels are quite popular in the app world and I will check these out as I find them. The first to start is this one called Ambre. I guess a good start for those who don’t know is that visual novels are packed with illustrations and scrolling words and music. It can be more interactive as well.

Let us check this out!

Ambre
by  Träumendes Mädchen

Tristan Malory is an ordinary salary-man, caught into the same routine of “commute, work, sleep” since the departure of his wife. That is until he meets Ambre, a sweet and naïve little girl who happens to be homeless. Touched, he decides to shelter her for the moment. Their cohabitation quickly becomes very strange, if not creepy, until the story breaks apart to reveal a terrible secret. – Gamejolt

Being the first visual novel that I have downloaded from Google Play, Ambre is a nice experience. Right off the bat, the animations are done really well. The characters are drawn nice and the backdrops have beautiful colors. The music is pretty nice complement as well. The only thing I didn’t think was as necessary was the scrolling words that covered up the entire screen by the end. It was pretty much like reading a novel and covered up the characters and backdrop they had put together. However, reading a visual novel definitely has that potential to build more of an atmosphere where its like reading a picture book as we see the characters and even music to give it a little more mood.

Ambre’s story actually is rather easy to head into spoiler territory if I start going deeper. I’ll try to steer away from it. Ambre’s story is easy to see where it goes awry and you can actually start suspecting that the situation is a little complicated and messed up. It also blurs in the part where it feels like maybe there was a timeline issue that went on but as the finale reveals itself, it is quite an effective surprise. My only issue with Ambre is that it is actually a simple and short story with a decent message behind it. However, once the secret is revealed, the story continues and drags out an extra section that felt unnecessary. Yes, it does change the pace near the end to give it a little more emotional value but it started to feel more dragged out than necessary.

However, Ambre is a quick read. I probably finished it over the course of an hour. It has a good story and I realized while writing this up that they have some other visual novels out, so I’ll probably go and give those a go.

Do you read visual novels? Have you read Ambre?