Greetings. I am Stebloke, and I am a bit strange. This website contains my blog, where you can read about the things I create, the games I play, and any other things I get involved in.

I make this blog mostly because I like to look back on the things I do and feel nostalgic, but also because it motivates me to keep doing things outside of my otherwise boring and mundane existence.

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Yes, it's time for another pointless look back at the year, where I allow myself to waffle on about what I managed to get done and what I didn't.

When compared to the time I had available, I feel like 2024 has been my best year for the most consistent progress, without having any massively impressive progress in any one area.
Indeed, there has been double the blog activity this year compared to last, which can't be a bad sign.

Computer Games

I managed 10 completions this year, plus two much needed replays. This is pretty much the minimum amount I want to get through in a year, but ideally I'd like at least several more.

The main downside with my completion numbers is that only 4 of these new completions were PC games. As I have so many more PC games to get through compared to other platforms, I really need to do better in this area.

What I didn't realise last year was that Guardians Of The Galaxy was my 99th completed game since starting the blog. Had I noticed that, I probably would have made it my mission to complete a worthwhile game later in the year to be number 100. As it is, Treasure Island Dizzy picked up that accolade completely by accident. Oh well.

I didn't really set myself any specific targets for the year, except for FF7: Rebirth and replaying FF8, both of which I managed. The original intent was to go straight into a replay of Rebirth, but it never happened. Indeed, the PS5 spent the vast majority of the year stuffed into the loft, a place it has now returned to. Had it not been for Stellar Blade, there would have been no need for it.
Also, it's just such a big, clunky, ugly looking thing that I'm not just gonna leave it lying around if it has no purpose.

I was originally on schedule for finishing a few really big games later in the year, but my momentum was hampered by failing to get through Mad Max. Now some time has passed, I think I might actually go back to it and try again at some point, rather than let it sit on the unfinished pile.

Resident Evil 0 still sits waiting for me to play. I got my map to about 95% done just from watching vids, and now I just need to play it myself and confirm some things.
The thing is, it was so long ago I can't remember what those things were, and I just really don't fancy playing it at all. Those vids made the game look very boring and frustrating.

I did unfortunately fail in quite a big way, because another 31 new games joined the list this year. Just 7 of them were freebies from Epic Games, so a lot of spending was going on as well. Hopefully, I can have a 2025 more like 2023, and not pick up so many other games.

As I sit here, I really can't think of any specific goals that need to happen next year, except maybe that Rebirth replay at some point. Maybe I should just have a year where I really focus on Windows games and rattle off as many as I can manage.

Tabletop Games

There was quite frequent tabletop action all through the year, though wargaming took a massive back seat to board games, where it was easily the biggest board game year since the explosion we had back in 2016.
To be fair, I highly doubt that year will be topped, as we had so many games nights, frequently with 8 or more people. It was wild.

The highlights were going to a board game cafe for the first time, as well as finally getting to play a proper game of Detective. Late in the year, we even got Dune: Imperium to the table, which has been waiting for its time to shine for several years at this point. It was silly indeed, not getting around to playing it, when it was by far the highest rated game we own on BoardGameGeek.

In addition, I was able to aquire copies of two of my long term board game crushes, in Jamaica and a proper version of Whitehall Mystery at last. Good times.

Wargaming opportunities were very scarce. Yes, we played 40K-S for the first time, but that was it. No other game was played at all. I'm most disappointed that no Epic-S hit the tabletop.

Even my journey down the road of terrain making failed to see any accomplishments of note. There were just too many pot holes, of various sizes, along the way, and all my efforts went in vain.

There were a few sporadic painting efforts early in the year, but far less than I normally manage. And then, once again, the summer was an absolute bust on this front.
The big win of the year came just this week, when I finished off my Epic Evil Sunz.

It's taking me longer to paint things these days, but I think it's mostly because I'm putting in more effort. And this year, I've been glad of the progress I've made in terms of skill, if not volume.
I find myself really happy with the Callidus Assassin, and the Evil Sunz Nobz are easily the best Epic infantry I've ever done.

Hip hip hip hooray!

What a long slog it has been over the last few years in my efforts to get these ladz all painted.

It was actually all the way back in mid 2020, just after the lockdowns started, when my Epic Evil Sunz painting journey began.

Now, I never intended to work on them non-stop, and it was always the plan to do some of these, then paint something else, then come back to these, and so on.

Still, it's certainly been yet another one of my painting failures for it to take this long. Looking back, I see I have not actually finished an Epic Ork clan since May 2022. And to think I was hoping to complete all of the Orks that year. I've still got four clans left!

Nevertheless, I'm happy they are done, and as they are by far the biggest and most difficult of the clans, hopefully things will get easier from here.

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I really needed a darker silver, so I wasn't quite ready to give up on that Humbrol paint just yet. I pulled the top off with some pliers, and dispensed it into an empty pot.

Not a great deal came out of it, but after giving it a damn good mix and shake, it turned out to be quite a good paint, probably the best of the four Humbrol paints I bought, at least.
It does however seem to be quite a "weak" paint, in that if I picked up the model by any parts that had that paint on it, the paint would rub off quite easily.

I ended up using it quite a lot on Ramtut, and on some bits of the Evil Sunz. It's not as dark as I'd like, but it's better than the other bright silvers at my disposal.

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Epic Orks aren't the only things I've been painting recently. For some weird reason, even though the game isn't on our radar at all, I decided to paint a couple of random Blood Bowl star players.

After first playing through FF7 Rebirth earlier this year, I had intended to go back to it and complete a lot of the side content I originally missed.
This didn't happen, however, and my PS5 was stuffed back into its box and vanished into the loft for the next several months.

Just recently, I finally purchased another game for this system, allowing it to return from its exile.

Several years ago, I saw the short release trailer to this game, and it immediately got me interested. Back then, the game was still using its original, and far superior, name of Project Eve.

It took way, way too long for this thing to come out. I mean, why bother announcing games that are still several years away from release? It took so long that they even removed its original PS4 compatibility.
Oh well, I digress.

After all the wait, including letting a few months pass so the damn thing wouldn't be so expensive, I finally got to play it.

So these are the chronicles of my adventures through the wastelands, as I tackled Stellar Blade.

Firstly, I needed a console update to even play the game. But then, after updating, it wouldn't even let me use my controller if I didn't update its software as well.
Seriously, the controller software needs updating? What the hell is going on with consoles these days if that shit needs to happen? And what kind of software could possibly be in a controller anyway? I mean, you press a button, and the controller sends the signal to the console. It's not hard. Figure your shit out Sony, for fuck's sake.

Anyway, I was finally into the actual game, which is a third person action game, much like many others, I guess. In it, you play as Eve, a soldier who was a part of the latest expedition to retake Earth from hostile creatures. While on the planet, Eve gains allies, and does quests for, a bunch of people in the last human city, Xion. There's also a couple of large, open zones, with a myriad of secrets and collectibles to find.

Sound familiar? Because it is. There's no doubt that this game is massively influenced by Nier Automata, that I played last year.

Like that other game, this one puts a stunningly beautiful and very competent female warrior front and centre. And there's no doubt about it, her inclusion is one of the reasons why I wanted to play this. Having a bunch of weirdos hate on the game because of her also gave me fuel.

So how does our leading lady measure up in the character department?

Now, there's a big problem with this game in my opinion, and unfortunately Eve is part of it. Yes, she is gorgeous and kicks total ass, and it's a pleasure to follow her around while she does her thing. But just like all of the other characters in the game, and indeed, the entire story itself, she's just so bland. And as a fan of games that have great stories and characters, this was a massive let down.

In fact, when the barber first sees her, he looks her up and down and calls her dull. Now, at the time, he's commenting purely on the way she looks, and is therefore an idiot.
But the truth is, as a character, she is dull. Dull as fuck in fact. The entire cast is the same way. They have little in the way of personality, and while the sound of the voice actors suits their characters, their lines are delivered with such boredom and disinterest that the characters suffer even more because of it.
At times, Eve can even come off as quite rude to some of the other people in the city, whereas most of the time she's quite sweet and good-natured. It's just weird how she goes off on some people, especially if they comment on how good she looks. I mean, she wears all those crazy outfits, but doesn't think people will notice?

What's even worse is, she's seemingly as dumb as a used, soggy tea bag. How the hell does she not know what a guitar is? Or a piano? Or even a drink can? But somehow she knows what a matryoshka doll is? So strange.

She simply doesn't even enter the conversation when it comes to great female characters, like Tifa from FF7, or indeed 2B from Nier. And it's such a shame, because if the personality matched her looks, she could easily be up there with my other favourites.

While the game has plenty of exploration and sometimes frustrating platforming, the main meat and potatoes here is the combat. However, it's not the kind of combat you would normally think a game like this would have.

It's not the silly button-mashing mayhem of a hack'n'slash, or even the fast-paced counter attack style of something like the Arkham games. Rather, it's very tactical and precise, much like some of the boss fights in the FF7 remake games, but just for the entire game.

Most people would say this combat style is very much like Dark Souls, but as I have not played any of those games yet, I can't really comment. In fact, the only game I've played that I think could be described as even slightly Souls-like would be Jedi: Fallen Order, and there are definitely some similarities to that game here.

I can't really say that it's one of my favourite combat styles, by any means. And if anything, it's made even more frustrating because of the weird timing required for the parrying.

While I got more used to it as time went on, it felt almost like there's an input delay of sorts. At first, I could rarely get commands to register. I pressed block and she would just stand there and get smacked in the face.
It's like they made the game more challenging, not by making the enemies hard to beat, but by making the controls feel very sluggish. You almost have to anticipate everything rather than react with split second timing. I kept having these silly moments where I was spamming block, certain that an attack was about to come in, but it didn't.

And then there's the animation locks, which I've struggled with in other games. Why won't she dodge when I tell her? Oh, she's not finished swinging her sword around yet. Silly me.

My other issue with combat was the controls. As block/parry is on L1, I was absolutely miffed that the game does not come with rebindable buttons. That's such an odd choice.
I wanted block/parry on R1 to maintain parity with FF7 Rebirth, so I had to use the PS5's settings to swap L1 and R1. Though on a few of the very rare QTEs, this came with its own issues, as I had to remember the button prompts were the other way around. And navigating the menus sometimes made me feel like I was drunk.

There's also a weird thing that happens in regard to the power of the enemies. For example, the first Alpha Naytiba you fight is called Gigas. But then later on you fight another Gigas, only this time it's not an Alpha, but is twice as hard. What the hell was that all about?

This second Gigas fight was when I actually dropped the difficulty from normal to easy, as my old brain was having trouble and I was sick of trying. Typically, I did then go and beat it pretty quickly in the boss challenge mode on normal. Then I pressed the wrong button to exit and ended up fighting it again, managing another win. This little boost in confidence did not make me reconsider the drop in difficulty, though.

After all, I was not here for a challenge. With the story and characters not really gripping me, I was here purely for the ass kicking and the jiggly bits. Getting through the main game on easy, for speed purposes, then tackling the bosses on normal, to unlock the extra outfit, was my plan. However, this too changed, when I learned that multiple playthroughs would be needed to unlock all of the bosses in the challenge mode.

And I wasn't going to do that, even for a cool looking outfit.

Still, while elements of the combat frustrated me, it's kind-of odd to admit, but I also quite liked it in many ways. As some comments on the internet stated, it was probably too easy on easy mode, and while I may have eventually managed to trudge through it on normal, it would have taken a lot longer. It's a shame then, that there's not another difficulty between easy and normal, which would have probably been just about right for me.

Like the other Soulsy-kind of games, enemies respawn when you rest, and there are shortcuts you can open up while exploring, to make it easier to get back to places you've already been. Thing is in this game, most of these shortcuts are simple, thin metal gates that are locked from the other side. And you're telling me that this highly skilled and cybernetically enhanced warrior that can slice monsters and robots to ribbons can't just use her sword to cut through this old rusted metal? This definitely seemed odd.

In fact, there were several times where I thought the level design was a mess, mostly in the linear zones. For some reason, they don't give you a map during these areas, and finding anything without one is a chore. Gladly, the open zones do have maps, though there's no minimap for some bizarre reason. This would have been nice, so I wouldn't have to keep going into the menu to see where I'm going next.

Early on in my run, I was leaping back and forth between this game and Mad Max. I even stepped back from this game for a while to try and get that other one done. During that time, photo mode dropped, which may have been an influencing factor in my decision to dump that game and get back to this.

Absolutely love me a good photo mode.

I had read some comments that this new mode was only for selfies, but gladly that turned out to be false. And while it's not a patch on the amazing photo mode from Horizon, I think I managed to get some decent action shots.

The main problem is that the depth of field settings don't seem to work properly, but it's also that the menu doesn't remember your last used settings. T'was such a chore to keep changing everything again for every picture.

So after many hours, I finally came to the end. The late game story made me do little other than roll my eyes. There was no great reason why the big reveal couldn't have happened much earlier in the game, and there were characters that could have done way more good for the world if only they'd communicated about what they knew. It was so silly.

Despite its flaws, it's definitely a game I'm happy to have played, and I quite looked forward to booting it up every time.

I also think I did pretty much everything I wanted to do for a first playthrough, completing every side mission I found, collecting all the cans, and collecting almost all of the available outfits.
So if it's the case that this ends up being my only playthrough, at least I won't feel like I have unfinished business.

Show / hide photo mode gallery

I'd been waiting for months to hopefully use the work unit to set my boards up and get them finished. Problem was, I really needed to wait for there to be space in the unit over a weekend, and for it to be decent enough weather that I could transport the boards without them getting absolutely soaking wet.

So wait I did.

Then I learned in early December that the unit was soon to be off limits for good, so I was forced into action. Unfortunately, while a 3-day weekend soon arrived with some space in the unit and nobody around, it was certainly not nice weather.

In addition, as has been the case throughout this entire process, I made a lot of mistakes.

Firstly, I decided to paint the river before tackling anything else. For some reason, I thought painting it after the grout and flock had been glued on would be more difficult. What I failed to anticipate was the state the river would end up in after scattering the grout on. It got absolutely covered in dust, which has not come off entirely, so I'll have to paint it again anyway.
Oh well.

The original plan after glueing the grout down was to seal it. I really, really should have done this as I would have discovered a problem sooner, but I was so short on time that I went straight to glueing the flock on top.
After all, I figured that next layer of glue would seal the grout down anyway.

During the flocking phase, I came up against another little issue when I somehow ran out of glue. What had been a brand new 1 litre tub just the day before had now run completely dry. Though there was a store nearby, by this point it was getting pretty late, and the store would have long been closed. I made the glue go as far as I could, but the two big boards were not as covered in flock as I'd hoped.
Oh well.

The next day was sealing day. I'd got a squirty bottle all mixed up from back in the summer when I was originally going to do this, so I didn't need any more glue yet. Or so I thought.
With Storm Darragh battering the unit from all sides, I went for the big squirt. However, the glue decided to block up the nozzle, and I couldn't get anything out of it after the first couple of trigger pulls.
Sigh.

Try as I might, I couldn't clear the nozzle, and I couldn't buy another bottle or any more glue as I had not got my wallet with me. I also didn't have time to get home and back as my evening was already booked for some Dune: Imperium goodness.

As I'm a bit of a numpty, I just thought maybe I'd mixed too much glue into the bottle and it was a bit too thick to propel through the nozzle. So instead, I took the top off, put my finger in the hole so just a little glue could trickle out, and elected to pour it onto the boards.
And that was when I saw how gloopy the glue had gone in the intervening months. There were endless, thick white blobby bits all over the place.
Sigh.

While I had planned to leave the boards for the entire final day in order for them to set, I instead had to go back with new glue and bottle to finally drench them down.
Firstly, I checked where I'd tipped the crappy glue on the day before, and somehow the flock here was still very loose when I rubbed my fingers across it. I'd thought that bit of flock would have been absolutely nailed down, but it seemed nothing was going to go well for me during this endeavour.

It was satisfying to eventually let rip with the sealer, and I absolutely hosed those boards down. It probably wasn't going to be as good as it could have been, as I'd not put any varnish into this seal mix like I had the one before, and the glue was now only going to get 18 hours to set instead of about 30 like I'd originally hoped.
And they only got 18 hours because I made my way down to the unit at 5 o'clock the next morning to clear them away before the work week started.
Sigh.

After all that, I'm left at a point where I still need to apply some static grass. Before I do that, I think I need some better glue, and probably a proper applicator.

In addition, with no space available to me at all from this point forth, I'm really unsure how I'm ever going to finish these. It might be a summer job so I can leave them set up outside for days on end.

Good job I've not thrown away the old boards yet...