Philly Cheesesteak (sort of)

 

1-2 lbs pot roast (or pork, or chicken, whichever you feel like)

2 green bell peppers.

2 onions.

2 tbs olive oil.

1 packet Au Jus gravy mix.

4 cups water.

1 cup diced *Velveta cheese (preferably the queso blanco type)

Salt (or garlic salt if you want to get fancy).

Pepper.

Hoagie Buns.

 

Pour water into the instant pot and add the Au Jus packet.  Whisk together until the powder is mixed in.

Cut your meat into several medium sized chunks and place in the gravy mix spaced evenly apart.

Pressure Cook for 50 mins, and allow 10 mins to depressurize afterward.

 

While the meat is cooking, dice your peppers, onions, and Velveta.

 

When you have 20 mins left (10 mins cook, 10 mins depressurize) pour oil into a large skillet pan and heat up on high.  Add your diced veggies, lower heat to medium, and sauté until thoroughly cooked through, should take about 15-20 mins.

 

Once the meat is done, add 3 cups of the Au Jus to the skillet and bring to a boil.  Discard or save the remaining.  

 

Add in the diced Velveta and stir constantly until it has melted completely into the mixture.

 

Lower heat to medium and shred your meat with a fork.

 

Add shredded meat to the skillet and mix and stir in so that the sauce soaks into it all then leave on the heat until it thickens.  Add in 1 tbs of cornstarch if it seems really watery.

 

Season with salt and pepper to your preference.

 

Serve on hoagie buns.

 

 

*I use Velveta because it melts really well, you can use other cheeses if you prefer.

Persona 5 royal

 So, a few months ago, around the time I finished with my plethora of Riftworld novellas, I saw that Persona 5 Royal was on sale on the Playstation store.  I'd heard good things about it, and decided, eh, why not?  ...after a quick check to make sure I didn't need to play the previous 4 in order to understand what's happening anyway.  Luckily it's its own contained story, with a few vague connections that people who had played previous games could point and Captain America, "I got that reference" at.  I also have no idea what the difference between Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal is, but I assume it's one of those paper Burger King crowns.

Aaaaaaanyway, I loved it.  It's one part Jrpg dungeon exploration.  One part visual novel.  And one part dating sim (not the creepy kind, I'll explain on that later)  It is an epicly loooooooong game.  I finished it with just over 126 hours of gameplay.  And for $25 that's a lot of bang for my buck.  It literally took me months to finish it with a few hours here and a few hours there.

You play as a guy who tried to do the right thing, but ended up doing it against a powerful politician who basically wrecked his entire life, getting him thrown out of his home and school, and placed on probation with prison time waiting for him if he screwed up again for it.  He goes to live in a foster home and soon finds that he has been granted the ability to enter the hearts of those who have been twisted by their desires to force them to confess all of their crimes.  As the story progresses he picks up quite a few allies and supporters until it all comes to a pretty crazy epic conclusion.

The story is a bit on the weird and convoluted side, but where it really shines is with an amazing cast of characters.  I probably wouldn't have stuck through the game to the end if not for the characters.  They're all really entertaining and well fleshed out.  Each of your party members has their own story that unfolds slowly throughout the game by spending time with them (hence the dating sim aspect) as you progress through each character's story, you're given dialog options that give you different amounts relationship points as you'd get with a dating sim, but this is less dating, and more getting to know your friends.  It's just very similar to a dating sim in that regard.  There are also a bunch of side characters with stories that you can build bonds with.  As the levels of your bonds go up, you gain access to more and more powerful support abilities, so spending time with the people around you makes you stronger in the dungeon exploration and boss fight parts of the game.

There are also long stretches of story cutscenes that are presented in visual novel format.  My brother found it a bit tedious, but I loved it.  The three aspects of the game blend together into a very fun and entertaining game with a pretty good story, amazing characters, and fun gameplay.  The game also has a very distinct visual style.  It practically bleeds style.  It's very visually interesting to look at.  People can gush all they want about photorealistic graphics all they want, but I'll take something that is visually unique and interesting to look at over realistic any day of the week.

There's only two small things I didn't really like so much about the game.  The first is that the music is kind of meh.  There are one or two memorable tracks.  The final boss music being really, really awesome.  But for the most part it's just kind of generic elevator music.  And the second is that it does that silent protagonist thing, where you choose dialog options, but the character never actually speaks.  I've always hated that.  I know it's supposed to make you feel like you're more a part of the story, but for me it does the exact opposite.  Would it kill them to have the character say whichever dialog option you choose aloud, like in, say, a Mass Effect game?

Anyway, I really, really liked the game.  I had a lot of fun with it.  There are a few parts where the story drags a bit, but it's held up by the great characters and their interactions with each other.  I thought the three different gameplay types blended together pretty well with the story and characters, and the visual style, to make a game that was truly unique and definitely worth the time to play.  (also it's on sale again right now on the playstation store as part of the Black Friday Sale, so, pick it up if you've some extra cash and 126 free hours.)

Jambalaya

 My parents got me an Instant Pot for my birthday and I've been experimenting with creating a few recipes lately.  Thought I'd post a few on my blog.  You might be thinking, isn't that kind of a weird gift for a 40-something dude?  Cooking is one of my hobbies, and I've always wanted a pressure cooker, so here we are.

So this is a recipe for pressure cooker Jambalaya I came up with:

2 tablespoons olive oil 

1 onion diced 

1 red bell pepper diced 

1 green bell pepper diced 

3 green chopped green onions 

3 cloves garlic chopped 

2 cups chicken stock 

1 6 oz can tomato paste 

2 tsp Cajun seasoning 

1 tsp onion powder 

1 tsp garlic powder 

3/4 tsp sea salt 

1.5 cup rice 

2 large chicken breasts 

3 uncooked sausages 

Salt and pepper

 

Instructions

1.)  Rinse the rice.

2.) Pan fry your sausage until it’s cooked through enough to keep its shape when you slice it.  It doesn’t have to be completely cooked through.  Set aside to cool.

3.) Cut chicken to whatever size you prefer.  Season with some Cajun seasoning, salt and pepper and let marinate in a bit of chicken stock, just enough to coat it all, while you prepare everything else.

4.) Add oil to Instant Pot and sauté vegetables.

5.) Turn off sauté function. Add chicken stock. Use a wooden spatula to release any brown bits that are stuck on the bottom.

6.) Add in garlic powder, onion powder, and Cajun seasoning.

7.) Slice sausages into 1/3 to 1/2 inch thick slices and add into the pot.

8.) Spread the rice in the pot as evenly as possible. Top with the chicken without overlapping.

9.)  Pressure cook for 10 mins.  Allow another 10 mins to depressurize.

10.) Shred chicken if desired, or leave as is.

11.) Mix it all thoroughly.

12.) Salt and pepper to your preferences.

 

Takes about 45 mins to prepare and cook, 30 of them being ignoring the instant pot while it works its magic.  Feeds 5, you can also upscale it if you need more, by adding more rice and chicken stock, everything else remains the same.

Star Wars Squadrons.

 I was really excited for this game.  Back in the day I LOVED X-wing, Tie Fighter, X-wing vs. Tie Fighter, and the rogue squadron games.  I really enjoyed the flight sim, space combat gameplay in the Star Wars universe, usually with at least a decent story to go along with it, oftentimes a pretty good story.  I mean, have you played Rogue Squadron 3: Rebel Strike?  That game has an amazing story, that fit really well into the original trilogy, and fun and challenging gameplay.  The opening level where you have to defend the Yavin 4 base while the Empire is bombarding the crap out of it in retaliation for the destruction of the Death Star was so good that i instantly fell in love with that game.

Anyway, I really like the Star Wars flying sim games.  They're fun, and let me live out my childhood fantasies of being Luke Skywalker.  Childish?  Yeah.  But, I mean, I was a child.  So sue me.  So, I actually preordered this one.  The trailers made it look great.  EA had finally made an okay Star Wars game in Jedi: Fallen Order last year, and I was optimistic that this game would be at least decent.

Yeah.  No.  It was not.

So, I play games for the story.  I DO NOT care about online multiplayer AT ALL.  I don't like people.  I might even go so far as saying I hate people, in general, as a concept.  My idea of heaven is being alone, forever, without having to interact with another human being for the rest of eternity.  I don't want to have to deal with people.  Dealing with people is extremely stressful for me.  I have anxiety attacks just thinking about it.  I will go ridiculously out of my way just to avoid having to interact with people in my daily life.  I play games to relax after a stressful day of having to deal with people.  I don't want to have to deal with people while I'm trying to relax.  So that aspect of this game will never appeal to me in any way.  I expected at least a so-so story mode.  Even with such a low bar, I still managed to be disappointed in it.

The story mode of this game is basically just an extended tutorial for the multiplayer side of things.  The game never actually shuts up and just lets you play it and figure things out on your own.  The story is bland and uninteresting.  The characters are either very flat, very annoying, or very unlikable.  And the gameplay itself is kind of boring, really, and feels copy and pasted from Battlefront 2 with a few minor bells and whistles added to it.  The graphics are decent, and the music is all right.  But graphics are not everything.  My all-time favorite video game is 16-bit.  The story mode of this game feels a lot like the story campaign of Battlefront 2.  It's just not told very well, or very interestingly.  It's lazy, boring, full of bad or nonsensical writing.  And the characters are just grating.  I would not be surprised at all if you told me that the same person or team wrote the story campaigns of both games.  This was NOT a story that needed to be told, and, when you get right down to it, it was barely even a story at all.  This game feels like it was just slapped together in a few months as a cheap cash grab.

 

I did attempt to play the multiplayer mode once, and I just felt like there was no overall point to it.  It's just playing the game for the sake of the gameplay, which, in my opinion, wasn't all that great to begin with.

Unless you REALLY want an online multiplayer flight sim space combat game, don't bother.  It is only $40, but I'd say the actual game content and quality is more on the level of a $15 indie game off Steam.  Not worth the price.

Four things. And a lizard. Sans lizard.

 Okay, so I finished my editing work on all my little novellas that I wrote this summer and if you so feel the urge, you can read them by following This Link. They're at the bottom of the page.

Soooooooo.  Here's a little synopsis of each of them:

1.) The Reality Engine - A scholar runs away from home, searching for an ancient artifact that may hold the secrets behind the creation of the world.  (28k words)

2.) The Fox King - A slave girl uses a war to make money toward buying her own freedom.  (26k words)

3.) A Certain Necessity of Evil - A slave girl murders her masters and is sold to an assassin who begins training her as his apprentice.  (33k words)

4.) The Bastard Princess - A queen's bastard tries to make a life for herself in a world that hates her and blames her for a devastating civil war.  (39k words)

 

Like I said, these novellas are meant to set up the characters and the world for a forthcoming novel that I plan to begin work on later this year.

Red Dead Redemption 2

So, for my birthday, my brother got me Red Dead Redemption 2, a game he's been trying to get me to play for ages now.  This is the same brother who got me all of the Mass Effect games for Christmas, not because I wanted them, but because he wanted me to have them.  Notice a bit of a theme here?  He didn't even get me a new copy of the game.  It was used, and didn't come with a case.  Whatever.  So I figured, I'd give it a try, I did end up enjoying most of the Mass Effect games, excluding 2, after all.

So, up front, I have to say that I have never had any interest in Red Dead Redemption 2 at all.  I saw a bunch of trailers, tv spots, and ads plastered all over the internet, but I also heard some really, really bad things about the working conditions  for the people who worked on it.  They basically got paid slave wages to work 90+ hours a week on it, and didn't even get bonuses when the game did well, while the executives raked it in and kept it all for themselves.  I'm not really huge into westerns.  I'll watch an occasional one here and there if someone else suggests it, but I don't really watch them on my own.  It's not a genre I've ever really cared all that much about.  Except for High Noon.  That movie is pretty badass.

 

So, I really liked the prologue of Red Dead Redemption 2.  I thought it was fun to play.  It had interesting characters.  I liked the combat, which is kind of reminiscent of Mass Effect or Gears of War.  The hide behind thing, shoot at things, move up to hide behind other thing, repeat, etc etc etc.  I thought to myself, well, if the whole game is like this, I'll probably end up loving it.

And then the prologue ended, and the game turned into the EXACT kind of open world game that I hate.  The kind where your main story progression quests are not marked out, if they even exist at all.  There's a whole bunch of side quests marked out all over the map, and some of them are rather entertaining little stories, but there's no main story quest you can go do to progress in the game once you get bored with doing side quests.  Look at the Witcher 3.  You've got about 17 million side quests and points of interest splattering the map like a freaking Jackson Pollock painting.  But where you go for the next leg of the main story is ALWAYS clearly marked out for you, so once you get bored with doing side stuff, you can move on and progress to the next part of the story.  It's the same with Horizon Zero Dawn.  And Final Fantasy 15.  And Xenoblade Chronicles X.  And Nier Automata.  And Mass Effect Andromeda.  All of those games are big open world games full of all kinds of side quests and things to explore.  BUT THEY ALL HAVE A CLEARLY MARKED OUT MAIN STORY TO PROGRESS IN WHEN YOU GET SICK OF THE SIDE STUFF!!!  

 

Red Dead Redemption 2 has no main story that I can find.  It's a big open world with nothing to do in it but side quests.  I did a bunch of side quests.  I got bored of doing side quests.  There was nothing else to do.  So I quit playing, because I have better things to do.  Sidequests do not a good story make.  Frankly, I don't really care if a main story comes into it later, it bungled things so badly here in chapter 1 that I have zero desire to play any further than that.  When there's no clear goal, or next step to progress the main narrative of the game along, what's even the point?  Do they expect you to just sit around and do 300 hours of side quests and then tell you the game's over?  Yeah, no thanks.  Don't care.  Just doing sidequests endlessly, no matter how interesting their own individual stories might be, just isn't fun to me.  I want to be able to progress in the story when I get bored of side crap.

So yeah, did not like, would not recommend.