The Weekly Grind

[fandrogyne]

~ Not going to start updating this weekly. I just took a week of relatively Internet-free time so that I could enjoy other stuff in life. It was totally worth it, by the way.

~ My GST rebate cleared in my bank account, so aside from treating a friend to dinner at one of the local Chinese restaurants, I also splurged on a couple of video games. Dark Souls, and Lego Star Wars. They were on sale at a local drugstore, of all places, and for a decent price, and I thought they'd provide a load of entertainment and so would be worth the price.

I'm the kind of person who thinks that video games are a pretty good entertainment investment, since I usually play ones that have a lot of story and so playtime, and I rarely only play a game once. So if I spend $50 on a game that promises me 50 hours of gameplay, that's $1 per hour of entertainment, and that's assuming I only play it once and only take that amount of time to unlock all the game has to offer. It's a lot of money to invest in upfront, but if you're the kind of person who plays games the way I do, it's worth it in the end.

~ The first batch of games in the Humble Monthly Bundle were dropped, and hot damn, are there ever some good games in it! The gem for me is Valkyria Chronicles, which normally sells for $21.99, and even if the subscription hadn't been a gift, then spending $12 for the subscription would be worth it for that game alone!

~ Also used some of that GST money to buy some cheap bags of Halloween candy from the Bulk Barn, so now I have delicious sweets to last me for a while.

~ Now that my book reviewing days are behind me, I'm able to better focus on things like writing. I'm unofficially doing NaNoWriMo this year, and so far I'm on track when it comes to wordcount, even though I keep wincing at some of the things I write. I'm trying to follow the advice I was given by numerous people: write now, edit later. Hopefully it will help me finish things this time...

~ Surprisingly, I didn't actually do much cooking. I got together with a friend to make a Samhain feast, which consisted of various vegetables, chicken, stuffing, and other delicious things, but for the most part, it seems that this break from the Internet was also a break from the kitchen.

Which is a bit sad, since I do like cooking, but I think not cooking for a while actually made me more eager to get back in there and make good food again, so maybe it was worth it.

Though I did make a meatloaf that turned out pretty well. I'd never made meatloaf before, so I'm glad it was edible, let alone good. Definitely something I'll make again in the future, because especially if I can get the ground beef on sale, it's a pretty cheap meal that's not hard to make.

Comments

[torachan]

I love the Lego Star Wars games! I've only played the first two (prequels and original trilogy) and as the first Lego games, they definitely have been improved upon in a lot of ways since then, but they're really fun.

[fandrogyne]

The one I bought was the complete saga, so I anticipate many hours of attempting to get 100% completion in it! :D

I've heard from numerous people that the Lego games are a lot of fun. I want to try the Harry Potter ones, and the Lord of the Rings ones, too! (And if I can find them for $20 the way I found this one, I suspect I'll splurge on them too!)

[torachan]

I think the HP ones are my favorites. With LotR I found the overworld kind of too huge and overwhelming and the levels themselves seemed a little too short and not a lot of exploration. Whereas with the SW games, there is almost nothing to do in the overworld and all the exploration is in the levels themselves. The HP games strike a nice balance, with a lot of exploration and secrets to find in Hogwarts itself, but also a lot of exploration in the individual levels.

The nice thing about the Lego games is they do drop in price. I think you could probably find all but the most recent games for $20 or less. (Of course there's a lot of them now, so at $20 per game that adds up in and of itself, but if you just buy them one at a time and spread it out then it's not bad at all, especially considering a lot of games just never drop below $40 unless you're buying a used copy with disc/cartridge only or something.)

Also one nice thing about the Lego games is you never die. If you fall or lose all your health you will lose some of your "coins" but there is no game over, and you regenerate in the same place you died, not at the beginning of the level.

Plus they are just really my kind of game. I love exploration and finding secrets, and there are so many in the Lego games! And all the scenery and stuff in the level is made of legos and you can just bash away at all of it to get more coins (actually small lego pieces) and find secrets.

[lassarina]

Interestingly, I calculate my game value the same way you do - a dollar per hour is a great investment. (Because I read so fast, my books are often, by this metric, a less good investment than my games, but I think we're talking about different things to be measured, and I don't use the same metric for books that I do for games.)

[fandrogyne]

A friend has spent over 1000 hours playing Skyrim. Even assuming he bought the entire system for only that game, that's still less than $0.50 per hour of entertainment. Video games are an expensive startup, but depending on a person's playstyle, they're some of the best entertainment investments I've found. Not so much for the people who'll play a game for $10 hours then never play it again, but for people who replay a lot and/or play longer games, it works out so well.

I can't even begin to calculate the cost per hour of reading books that I own. If I assume $10 per paperback, and 6-8 hours of reading (depending on the length of the book, of course), then it comes in at about $1.25-1.67 per hour, but that doesn't account for hardcovers, shorter or longer books than average... But if I take into account the fact that about 95% of the books I've gotten over the last 5 years have been complimentary review copies, then I'm totally coming out ahead in cost per hour of entertainment, since I spent nothing on them. But that's a minority situation, and I think for most people, video games would still be the more economical option.

[lassarina]

I once made the mistake of asking FF14 for my playtime. Let's not do that again, ever.

See, for me, an average 300-400 page book is about 2-3 hours, unless it's especially dense or I'm sufficiently uninvolved with it that I'm dawdling, so books are coming out at a few dollars an hour for me. That being said, I do re-read a lot, so it probably works out all right in the end. My newest addiction is the "books on sale" posts at Smart Bitches Trashy Books, since my Kindle is a great place for all things romance to go, lest I be judged on the train (or worse, in the work lunchroom - I had a coworker who was openly reading 50 Shades of Grey in the lunchroom and I just - why would you....in public....)

[fandrogyne]

Wow, I wish I could read at that speed! That's impressive!

Ebook readers are very awesome for being sneaky about one's reading material. One of the many reasons I really like mine!

[lassarina]

I have always been a very quick reader (and typist; I do most things very fast if I do them at all because I am hella, hella impatient.)

I realize belatedly that I sounded pretty judgmental up there about my coworker's choice of reading material, which was not my intention. What I meant to be reacting to was why would you read erotica in the work lunchroom, especially a very well-known piece of it? Read whatever you want on your own time, but I think it's just....not on the right side of the professionalism line.

[fandrogyne]

Heh, no, I totally took the Fifty Shades comment the way you meant it. I saw people reading that at work a few times too, and all I could think is that if I brought in a Playboy magazine, even with all the NSFW images covered up, I'd be told I couldn't even read the not-porny articles while on shift. But someone can totally read Fifty Shades and nobody says a thing.