I’m combining my January 2022 update alongside my retrospective look back at 2021. Keep in mind the written portion of this blog is going to be laughably short compared to the audio portion. If you have the time to take a listen, I encourage you to do so since I will cover a vast array of different topics and going down rabbit holes that are omitted in the written part for brevity.
The sexy royalty free picture of a nurse above (as well as the model on the banner image) was my decision against posting another boring Covid statistic. 2021 is the sequel to 2020 that no one asked for, but somehow was better than the original. I didn’t have a hard time finding toilet paper this year or hand sanitizer. I didn’t wait in line at the supermarket for 2 hours just to buy bread or fight with someone in the parking lot for taking the last box of Cocoa Krispies cereal. But I still couldn’t really travel anywhere I wanted to. I still couldn’t go into a building without wearing a mask. And I certainly couldn’t jokingly sneeze at someone’s direction without the possibility of being arrested for “assault”. It was a much more relaxed year, but it still felt as if a global pandemic was still in place. And the sad reality is that there still is a pandemic in place. Like all of you I’m pretty much in “pandemic fatigue” at this point, and any news regarding the issue I greet with as much enthusiasm as my next visit to the toilet. I don’t think we’re going to be out of the woods fully in 2022; but I do think the year is going to be the final phase before things go back to “normal”. So just hang in there and keep doing what you’re doing; cause if you’re alive and reading this - that’s all that really matters.
Moving onto other health related issues, I thought it would be a good time to briefly address something in 2021 that got a lot more attention it deserved. That’s the mental health and wellbeing of content creators; especially those who do it for a living. Thankfully I’m not in a place like this in my life where I’m stuck in this pit of hell, but there are a lot of folks who are. Devin Nash’s video that I linked to you above very well describes the entire problem succinctly and I highly suggest you watch it to see how the “other side” lives. I know it’s really easy for any of us (myself included) to mock, make fun of, and not put into perspective how hard it is to do what these people do. It’s also easier to dismiss the criticisms with the amount of money they make. But remember that there are much less hard-working folks sitting in offices throughout the world making 10x as much while destroying it (our world) at the same time. I won’t go on a soap box (this site is and never was about that), but I really wanted to bring this perspective to an audience that will listen. I get one “free pass” a year to talk about heavy stuff, so I’m going to use it at the end of 2021; and this is the subject I really wanted to emphasize.
Let’s shift gears onto lighter topics and get some upbeat energy flowing again. The good that came out of the latter half of 2021 was the ability to travel to more places than we could back in 2020. As I said earlier in the blog, we are not completely free to go where we may want to, but at least we have a lot more options now than we did before. At the beginning of the year for example, you could travel to places that would literally be a waste of time, since although the airlines were now open to fly; the destinations themselves were still closed off or limited to the public at large. One of the destinations that I highly recommend everyone visit if they have the chance to is the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. It moved its operations in 2021 to a new location and is now ready to see visitors locally and internationally with an updated and spacious layout. I know a lot of folks who visit this website are international (meaning not from America) so that’s why I wanted to give all of you a suggested place to visit if you happen to plan a trip to Las Vegas in the future once travel is fully back to normal. Las Vegas is a tourist hot spot for many visitors, and it can be equally interesting for nerds like myself just as it is for the regular folks who are attracted to the shows, the buffets and the gambling.
Artist is Spindles
Back in 2015 I swore to myself I would retire from MMO games forever. My health and body were taking a toll with all the nonsense (drama) those types of games demand (especially since I co-lead guilds). Ever since then I’ve pretty much been using mobile gaming to unwind and “detox” from the strain. Yet here we are years later; mobile gaming being ironically my main hobby now with “conventional” gaming taking a back seat. That’s why in 2021 when I heard the announcement of Shin Megami Tensei V finally being released, I thought I would finally get back to some type of gaming I use to do so many years ago. The Nintendo Switch Lite was the only console I was able to buy due to the limited release of the OLED version. But none the less, I’m really happy so far with the device as I’m slowly working my way through the backlog of games. As much as I jokingly base my entire YouTube channel (so far) on lewd mobile games, it’s nice to unwind with some old-fashioned classics like Animal Crossing. Of course, me being me I have to post the incredibly lewd Isabelle (Shizu) you see above!
Artist is よむ
I know that most of you don’t really follow technology outside of gaming or hobby purposes; but 2021 was a really hard year in general for the industry (tech) as a whole. The semiconductor shortage affected pretty much every industry you thought technology wasn’t involved in, and the trickledown effect caused major regulation to change the world over. More importantly the dependence on “foreign” fabrication factories was a huge wakeup call for governments (whatever they may be) to start seriously considering opening up their own factories. This translates to end consumers like me having a lot more opportunities to buy tech heavy stuff in 2022… at least at the end of the year. Personally, I’ve been sitting on the same computer I made back in 2017 for this very website and was overdue for an upgrade back in 2020. Since we all know what happened that year and what came afterward, I’m optimistic about my options for new kit finally in the upcoming year.
At last, my YouTube cult members finally have something interesting to read! It’s time to go into full gacha gaming mode and talk about 2021 as a whole. I have a few topics lined up, so let’s start with a vlog I did a while back talking about a game called Shining Maiden and how I haven’t forgotten it. In a nutshell, Shining Maiden was a game that came out in 2021 that practically no one played and yet was extremely free to play friendly. So F2P in fact that in the video I show off my account and how I rank TOP 10 in the server overall on a completely F2P account. It goes without saying that I was extremely disappointed in finding out that the game would close about six months after launch; especially since it had so much potential left in it. If you haven’t watched this video yet (or watched it once and totally forgot about it), I do touch upon some psychology topics in there as usual. More to the point, I really want to re-emphasize those games like Shining Maiden are a dying breed. Very few games come out on the market nowadays where you can be very competitive as a F2P player. I understand you may never be at the very top of a server (cause whales make that impossible), but the fact that you can even stand with the big boys on a F2P account is practically unheard of in most gacha games out there. So, when games like these graces your presence and you have the chance to play it; I highly advise you take the time to give it a chance. It may not be the most popular thing, but it will be a memorable thing. This point gets lost on so many players out there I think there is always something else psychologically at play than I don’t want to mention it. But it is a sign of the times we live in.
Earlier in 2021 I wrote a blog on the “arms race” with emulator developers trying to catch up to the Android ecosystem. I had never imagined that Google themselves would be a part of this war and hop on the bandwagon with releasing official support for the Google Play store on Windows 10 / 11 PCs in 2022. I want all of us to cautiously welcome this news in 2022 since it will inevitably push the envelope for Android gaming moving forward, opening it up to a much wider audience. That being said, Google Play is a highly curated experience as it is right now - without the Windows integration. The most intriguing aspect of this is not on the performance side of things, but whether or not we’ll be able to easily access international games not of our own locale through this process. On Android devices at the moment, your system locale is much harder to spoof and change on a non-rooted device. We’ve been getting around this restriction by directing installing APK files and bypassing the store altogether. However, with Windows integration lined up in the future, it might be extremely easier to “spoof” our location or store so that we can finally access games not in our region simpler. Time will tell how this all plays out, but I’m optimistic that this will make accessing games in different regions a lot easier now. I’m only fearful with the exposure to a newer audience the potential of politics, agendas, and dogmas to start infesting mobile gaming as it already has on other platforms. Let’s hope I’m wrong on that.
I have extremely mixed feelings overall about the gacha games released in 2021. On the whole, there wasn’t anything that I really excited about. More importantly for me, there wasn’t a lot of gacha games on the lewder side of things similar to Destiny Child or Last Origin. I also want to be very specific here; I want a game to focus on the gameplay aspects first while adding all the fan service afterward. Hence honorable mention goes to TenkafuMA, King of Kinks, and Girls X Hunter for 2021. All of these I tested, and all of these are fine games to play… if you prioritize the fanservice portion of games. I just wanted to mention that in case anyone was starting to think I was getting a bit “commercial”. I’ll one day truly get commercial when I’m making commercial money! In any case, I wanted to do something a little bit new this year and talk about my 3 notable gacha games of 2021.
First off, the “best new game” award clearly goes to Artery Gear Fusion JP. This game came a little late in the year but was well worth the wait. Personally, I feel the game strikes an excellent balance between F2P, main and side, quality of life features and waifus. The one thing holding back the game in my opinion from it making my full-time recommendation list is the fact its pacing can be a little awkward. In essence, the game has a “hurry up and take your time” syndrome going for it since you really want to be able to do new content in the form of events as they are released. This makes it extremely important for you to be as efficient as possible when you start the game and you’re in a rush to finish all the “main” content to powerup your core team. Once you do this, you end up (ironically) waiting around for events to drop so you can grind in them. Still at the end of the day it has been the most immersive and impressive for me in all of 2021 so hence I do recommend you check it out.
Moving onto the 2nd game this year that caught my eye, Revived Witch easily wins the “most unique game” of 2021. I already did a video on it so I’ll be brief in this written portion. The long and short of it; this game seems to be a single player game trapped in a gacha game’s body. There’s a great soundtrack, wonderful atmosphere, likeable cast and overall, a decent story to wrap up the entire package. There’s just not much of it to love unfortunately; and worse yet… the gacha elements seem to be really awkwardly implemented into the experience. I’m really at this point looking forward to what comes next for this IP and the developer team who made it. For what it is now, I think it’s a great starting point for a yet to be franchise down the road.
D-Cell gaming did a pretty balanced look on Final Gear EN and I will shoot you over to his video (and channel) about it. Final Gear EN for me wins the “most disappointing game” of 2021. I had a lot to say about this game in a negative light, but I realized it wasn’t worth the effort to list all of the dirty laundry for the sake of being critical. That’s because the most critical thing about the game overrides all the other negatives (and positives) it has going for it. To the point; this game gives you the illusion of choice. It gives you the illusion that pilots and mech suits (sets) are independent of one another, and that you can mix and match to your liking while being effective (enough) to make it through the content of the game. Unfortunately, the developers decided to make unique mech suits for individual pilots… which immediately contradicts the spirt of a free form system. And because the EN server was balanced around the already established CN server, you had to really min/max your team just to be effective, let alone efficient. At the end of the day this game was something I was kind of looking forward to, but it let me down in a huge way. And that’s a shame considering all the potential it has (had) in terms of story, characters and presentation. Try it out and see for yourself of course, but the honeymoon period ends swiftly and hits hard. A real big waste of effort this turned out to be.
As a final reminder for all of my loyal YouTube followers, I am always trying my best to find new content to post - but to play by the rules of big daddy YouTube. This often leads to community strikes as well as being shadow banned for content that tows the line. Please believe me when I say there is absolutely no rhyme and reason when things get banned, flagged or is found to be “problematic” in YouTube’s eyes. The message you see above for example was a strike on my “Johren and news” video that I posted over a year and a half ago. Worse yet, it wasn’t parts of the video that made the community strike - it was the link to Johren itself. Keep in mind that Johren (the site) has its own landing site that specifically asks you if you’re 18 or over before allowing you to enter. This makes my job of referencing things I’m talking about more difficult since I can’t directly link you and would have to instruct you on how to find something. It’s more problematic when things are in a different language or on a specific site that is not registered on Google’s public search engine. I can play a game of “tinyurl leads to a pastebin text” file, but even that may be a worse offense in YouTube’s eyes if they really want to take me down one day and need ammunition. Thus, comments on my videos and posts are also auto moderated.
It’s not that I’m trying to silence dissent or censor derision on my opinions, but more importantly bots have become extremely sophisticated as of late on YouTube. Modern YouTube bots copy top rated posts along with a highly intriguing profile picture to lure readers into clicking them. In other words, there’s a good chance these bots are linking to stuff they shouldn’t be linking to, and if YouTube finds out about it - the video owner could be responsible if they don’t enable moderation. Such is life! If the worse was to happen one day and you suddenly can’t find my YouTube channel anymore, please make sure to visit my site here. I’m sure to have a very lengthy reason why I’m suddenly MIA!
That wraps up the entire 2021 retrospective! Hope you enjoyed it. Feel free to leave a comment (on this post) or on anything of mine over on YouTube if you want to communicate with me. I’m always active and try my best to answer the majority of questions or comments sent my way. Let’s all be hopeful for a better 2022 and see what happens with the year!