Eurovision Song Contest 2024

It's been a week, but that's enough time to gather all my thoughts. This year was great with a pretty high level on all the songs. A surprisingly large amount of songs that I actually enjoyed. 

Last year I watched Eurovision totally not understand Lord of the Lost or their music as they got a whopping zero points and came in dead last. So I while I loved Ireland's song this year I was totally prepared for them to not even advance from the semi-final due to the song being unconventional. Imagine my surprise when it didn't just advance from the semis but actually came in top 10! *surprised Pikachu face*

Ukraine's song was incredibly beautiful and I couldn't get it out of my head for days despite not understanding most of the song. 

There was an unusual amount of songs not in English this year and it wasn't all bad. Italy and Lithuania were catchy af. I loved Luxembourg and France. Both Spain and San Marino were great. Serbia was repetitive but not bad. Armenia and Greece were so not my thing, but they did well. No clue what Estonia was on. Norway had another unconventional song that somewhat grew on me over time, but apparently didn't grow on the people and they finished dead last in the final. 

Cyprus looked like it could be taken from the early 00s/late 90s and not miss a beat. And Austria sounded like it was straight from the 90s.

Croatia won the people's vote, but Switzerland won the contest and deservedly so imo. Switzerland's song showed multiple musical styles and so much talent. As fun and catchy as Croatia's song was, Switzerland's song was my damned favourite of the competition and I'm happy it won.

What happened to the Netherlands was unfortunate and too harsh and coloured the entire final. Eurovision is supposed to be non-political, but if you're denying Russia entry due to the war, then you should be consistent and do the same to Israel. 

Game completed: Redfall

After Sons of the Forest we set our sights on Redfall. Of course we had heard all the negative stuff about it, but when we bought the game the recent reviews on Steam had started to go up, which we took as a sign that the game had gotten better. 

The game is still uninspired, though. Take Borderlands and Dishonored. Water them down to the absolute bare basics. Add vampires. You have Redfall. 

The looter shooter part is extremely barebones with the same couple handfuls of weapons being constantly recycled, and who cares because you're more likely to get a flare gun than something actually useful. 

The special vampires battles were cool the first couple times. The boss battles were usually easier than a random special vampire fight. The nests were supposed to be challenging but they were copypaste to the extreme and after the first three or four we were just "the nest is on the way to this quest location, let's just get it out of the way". They were reduced to something to get over with and out of the way. If the nests that popped up on the map weren't on the way to something else we didn't even bother with them.

Player character interactions were supposed to be one of this game's big things but all the banter was extremely corny and extremely repetitive. The same handful of lines every time we were out in the world. Sometimes more than once during an excursion from the base. And every time we wandered off a little bit too far on our own to the point where the characters didn't buff each other by proximity the characters would pull the exact same line about being too far away. JUST LET ME EXPLORE WITHOUT COMPLAINING FFS. 

The story was the standard "vampires blot out the sun and enslave humanity" which is a fucking idiotic thing to want. Because as much as vampires can't be in the sun, humans very much rely on the sun to survive. Vampires need humans to live, humans need the sun, the sun is a fucking necessary evil. To want it gone is to doom yourselves in the long run. MORONS. 

How they got vampires was pretty interesting though. Experimental blood trials at a health clinic, which is also how our dear Layla ended up with psychic abilities. 

The combat AI seems to have improved since launch, but it's still sluggish. Usually we managed to kill the mobs before they had even reacted to being shot, even if they required multiple shots to die. 

I did enjoy the idea of the gameplay with the base and gradually clear the map by doing quests and favours and unlocking safehouses. Didn't like not being able to go back to the previous map after we advanced to the second map, though. Why only three guns? Why not four or a weapon wheel like so many other games? It limited how much I wanted to experiment with different guns. 

On the whole, the one thing I thoroughly liked throughout the entire game was the aesthetic. I loved the artstyle and how the game looked. And I still believe the idea behind the game is solid, it just had a really poor execution.