Discussing 25th Anniversary of Quake

Quake's 25th Anniversary Logo.

This month has been pretty rough for me, to say the least. Although I don't want to keep go on about personal stuff, it was really hard to choose the topic for this week's post. Initially I thought about checking out some games at recent Steam Next Fest, but my motivation to play any game is still rather low. That's when I realized "Wait a minute, Quake's 25th Anniversary is happening this week!" So yeah, I got saved.

My celebration of this important day in gaming industry was pretty underwhelming. I thought about maybe finding some server to play Deathmatch on again (was fortunate to spot some "New DM" server on QSS; It was a lot of fun, even if I played mostly against bots), complete some more Arcane Dimensions maps... Instead, I just went through The Dimension of the Doomed. With that, I would like to discuss some announcements that were made at that day... and a bit of personal thoughts regarding Quake, sort of speak.

A Blink Return of Splinter Cell

First look at Splinter Cell animated series. Taken from Twitter.

Splinter Cell is one of those franchises I loved since I was a kid. Before falling into a rabbit hole with World of Warcraft, I remember playing the Game Boy Advance version of the original game on my Game Boy Advance SP. And I was very excited to watch my dad play through Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Double Agent on his Xbox 360... which is kind of funny since nowadays I don't want to touch both versions of that game. As well as two mainline titles that followed before the series stepped into shadows.

And it is great at staying hidden. So much so Ubisoft can't spot it for long enough to make a new proper game. Instead, we get various Sam Fisher cameos in different games, VR title and animated series. Of course, not having Splinter Cell being twisted over by their current formula is a gift to be cherished, and you can even say it already endured that with the likes of Conviction, but it doesn't change the fact that many players around the world are hungry for some proper stealth action with Third Echelon, Lambert and famous night-vision goggles.

A Few Thoughts about E3 2021

Taken from E3.

Despite the fact that it did lost quite a bit of relevance in recent years, many people still anticipated E3 2021. Including myself, in a way. Obviously, I didn't have any specific expectations as 94% of the titles that get announced here are "out of my jurisdiction", but it's still often interesting to look at what comes out when it, well... interesting.

For example, only Metal Slug Tactics caught my attention during the opening of this years' Summer Game Fest. I really love the artstyle of this series ever since I've seen my dad playing one of the games from it (I don't remember which one it was) on original Xbox. There's still so many games to play, really. Here's yet another series in my "Should play it one day" list.

Low Spec Breakdown

My scuffed setup.

This post was a long time coming, but not in a way it'll most likely end up being. It's going be kind of "off-topic"... again. I was always kind of a retro gamer, especially nowadays. Multiple factors played their roles here: those games are cool, fun, and they can run on pretty much everything. Latter part is something I wanted to talk about for some time as I think it could be interesting to view how someone like me tried to play some games.

With a "screenshot inside" from my Slayer Arc post, its pretty obvious that I'm sitting on weak and old machine. So, I would start from here and share some insight on other similar examples and stuff like that. I think it's still important for second half of this post. After that, I'll walk even more about some other personal things as I think I just need to do that, despite me thinking that's a bad idea and wouldn't make me feel any better. Even though, some might say it should.

Expanding My Self-Improvement Journey

I could use some creativity for making better thumbnails, I know.

As a part of my incredible luck, I got sick last week and that really put me off track. It was nothing serious (just a cold), I'm feeling better now, and I don't want this post to turn into a rant about my scuffed and cyclic nature of life. Instead, I would like to take this as an opportunity to address my next steps in my quest of productivity and self-improvement in order to give me this illusionary nudge for myself to actually take action in it and not fall into miserable state of uncertainty.

I want to open my mind, sort of speak. Try out different hobbies in order to learn something, see if it would actually "click" with me and force myself to become a more active person. As with Ilko's Hall, the path of least resistance and gravitate towards things related to video games: something more familiar and appealing. There's been a few options under my radar and I would like to talk about each for a bit.