Zero Lives: 2022/05/23

May 23, 2022

It’s the end of another week. The wife and I took off on a short little vacation. Some time by the lake, hiking, terrible food, and making macarons…it was perfect.

Even better, I found a couple of new orphans to bring home.

What I’m Playing

The carry through Elden Ring continues. After being able to respec, I was able to put together a more viable build. This has made world encounters more survivable, but boss fights still pose an issue. At some urging, I dug into the lore a little bit. It’s fucked up, but not in the enjoyable eldritch kind of way. I’ll go through at least one playthrough, but I’m not in love with it like the majority of players.

Call of Duty Vanguard had a double XP event running the course of the weekend. I got on while I could to level up. I fell in love with sniping again and modified a weapon for the SHIPHAUS playlist that seems to be holding up well. I got through my 200 sniper kills and unlocked Polina. It’s been going much better than expected. I’ll start tinkering with the other maps this week.

What I’m Watching

The Gundam fever continues. As such, I’ve finally started to watch Iron-Blooded Orphans. I’m only a few episodes in, but the animation is top-notch. We’ll see if I can stomach all the political theatre that tends to go on with these.

I went to see Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness this past week…and it wasn’t great. After seeing Everything Everywhere All at Once and how it handled the concept of the multiverse…Dr. Strange felt incredibly lacking.

Additionally, I kind of expected the horror spin it took once I saw that Sam Raimi was directing, but I was still shocked at how far he pushed it for a Marvel film. I’m not a fan of the direction they took Scarlet Witch and the big surprises felt really inconsequential. Overall, despite killing off several characters, it didn’t feel like it had made any real impact.

On top of that, it’s hard to see where the series is going. We know that the Infinity Gauntlet saga was the major story of the first several phases, but it wasn’t readily apparent early on. Skrulls have been teased here and there. Maybe Secret Invasion?