September’s been a mix of gaming highs, building the portfolios, and unexpected injuries. Here’s a snapshot of what kept me busy (and sometimes injured) this month.

The Ghost

Absolutely loved the game, from story to gameplay and to the visuals, it was a treat for both the eyes and ears. I’d heard about it for a while, but since I didn’t have a PlayStation, I never got the chance to play. I thought Sekiro would scratch that itch, but instead it just reminded me how bad I am as a player, rather than making me want to keep playing.

Where the game truly shines is in its story. It sets the stage beautifully, helping the player understand who they are as the protagonist and how they should approach the journey. That said, one area felt a bit disappointing: the forced assassin missions with Yuna. The game spends so much time talking about honor and the samurai way of life, only to push you into stealth kills just because Yuna is scared :/.

The game initially blew me out by saying that it can start as a Japanese movie, where the characters speaks in japanese and I would have english subtitles. The game also had a Kurosawa style where the game is in black and white mimicking the Akira Kurosawa, Take that for immersion!!

Still, it’s far better than the Spider-Man games where you pay €50–60 to play as Spider-Man, only to be forced into playing Mary Jane especially during in heat of the moment (what in the actual hell?).

I’m still working my way through Ghost of Tsushima and plan to write about it in more detail later.

Finishing the Portfolio

Speaking of writing — since finishing my portfolio (or as I like to call it, my wiki) 12 days ago, I’ve been planning a bunch of posts related to it: how I built it, and what I’m currently learning.

Here’s one I’ve already published: Why I Built This Site , where I dive into the reasons behind creating it.

The Injury

September turned out to be a pretty testing month. First, I got hit with a fever, and then I managed to injure myself on a bench press :D. With the gym off-limits and long hours straining my neck, I used the downtime to finally optimize my ROG Ally — or rather, free it from its toxic relationship with Windows (read: I installed SteamOS).

I should probably also write about how handheld gaming devices are carving out their place in the industry, especially now that devices like the PlayStation Portal are being so well received. In the meantime, here are my physical companions that kept me sane this month (and probably will for the next few):

All in all, September felt like a strange blend of recovery, creativity, and play. Between samurai duels, debugging Astro collections, and experimenting with handheld consoles, I’ve got plenty more to write about in the weeks ahead and I pray that I write more :D

Spiderman 2 - The end

Even though I tried to keep myself engaged to the game until I complete, there were many instances where I wanted to move away from the game.

Sure, the game was interesting and amazing, but for someone who played the Spiderman and the Miles Morales before this, I was getting bored with the usual spiderman shenanigans, may be a bit of oxymoron I guess, What else should I’ve expected from a spiderman game? But after a while comes THE VENOM, and good lord what an amazing sight it was. The game took an extra leap from the usual spidey stuff and more into Hulk (or Venom) SMA-SH, Loved the novelty.

As a sidenote, I should prep notes while Im playing games to write better 🤷.

Redesigning the portfolio.

Well, this somethign that I come across alot, I’ve been working on this portfolio since december from the very basic version to this-multi collection, multi faceted, over engineered and over glorified blog.

It all started from a thought of having a decentralized content platform which would act as a repository for my knowledge and the content I’ve produced or should produce.

Previously, my site had two versions of documents, Long formatted and short formatted. I also tried to incorporate mastodon to scratch the need for micro blogging but then it didnt serve me quiet well.

I often have a requirement of writing contents in fragments and then keeping it arranged only for it to later be chopped down and refine further, and hence I thought of building… “Series”

I would use this series to write more about how I built this site, and the games that Im currently playing so that it would act as a detailed repo and then we can formulate notes or essays from it to talk about specific instances.

AI Coding.

I’ve been trying to delve into coding for a while and since I was learning on how to be a better designer (Not saying that Im a better designer 🤷🏻‍♂️) it was very hard for me to maintain both aspects of learning and hence I thought of focusing only on the design aspect.

But since, AI tools like Trae and Cursor emerged, its been helping me alot in learning and helping me to recall what I’ve learned.

So, after lots of attempts and tryouts I’ve built this site using Astro and React with the help of Trae.

Playstation

Even though I had many different consoles over the years for gaming ranging from the Gameboy era to Rog ally (which is technically a PC), my recent aquisition of Playstation 5 has allowed me to experience the ways in which controllers could provide a different experience to the user.

I'm in an absolute awe about the way it handles haptics and provides a surround system by providing sound through the joy stick itself.

Playing Spiderman

I’ve always leaned toward PC when it comes to gaming. More control, better performance, ability to mod things the way I like. Console exclusivity always felt unnecessary to me. Why lock great games to a specific platform is what I thought all the time and I hated that some consoles charged more for games than their PC versions.

But playing Spider-Man 2 on the PS5 made me pause a bit.

There’s something about it. The way the controller reacts to what’s happening on screen, the haptic feedbacks, the way controller produces sound on shooting the web… It’s hard to explain, but it felt right, just like the game was meant to live on that hardware.

I remember Steve jobs quoting Allen kay in one of his presentation as “To build a great software you have to build a great hardware” and the console exclusivity just felt like the same. maybe it isnt just about gatekeeping. Maybe it’s about building something deeply optimized, where the hardware and software are fully in sync. That kind of tight integration isn’t easy to replicate.

WOW, that sounds like my next post :D. Well, more on the holistic experience later.