MJR Health – Set a Record this week!

This week I hit the bike hard, working out and setting a record this week. Pretty great weather and I’m making sure and getting out there while I can. Seattle typically has a pretty mild fall season, so I have probably another month of good biking weather, and I wanna get out there as much as possible. Still mixing it up with the elliptical, which I’m very glad I bought. It’s great for those days when either I don’t wanna be outside in the elements or frankly just for convenience working out at home. That said, I’m still not entirely sure I wanna jump back into a gym yet. All of Washington State is back to a indoor mask mandate, which really sucks…and honestly, working out with a mask over my face is not what I want to do if I can help it. We’ll see…

The Biggest Game Releases of September 2021

If you have a PS5 already, maybe you’re looking forward to the Death Stranding Directors Cut, Deathloop, or The Medium. Coming to Switch we have Kitaria Fables, Family Trainer, WarioWare Get it Together, Colors Live, Eastward, Dragon Ball Z Kakarot and Ni no Kuni 2. If you play games on your PC you’ll be able to check out Cookie Clicker, Lake, Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous,Surgeon Simulator 2, Metallic Child, Rogue Lords, Gamedec, Aragami 2, and New World. There’s a whole list of games hitting several consoles this month. Make sure to check out WRC 10, Sonic Colors Ultimate, Fist Forged in Shadow Torch, Bus Simulator 21, Tales of Arise and Skatebird. That’s not all, xbox users will get to play World War Z Aftermath, NBA 2k22, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, the Ultimate Edition of Fifa 22 and more. That’s still not all! This month also sees the release of Diablo 2 Resurrected, Lost Judgment, Ghostrunner, Lemnis gate, Outer Wilds Echoes of the Eyes, and Hot Wheels Unleashed. – –  – IGN Games

The Rise and Fall of Deus Ex

During the 80s and 90s, most video game genres tended to stay squarely in their lanes. First person shooters like Doom focused exclusively on gunning down monsters. Role-playing games like Ultima epitomized inventories and statistics. And stealth games like Thief prioritized sneaking through the shadows above all else.

Every now and then, an experience like System Shock or Strife would come along, and challenge the medium’s self-imposed rigidness by melding multiple genres together. Yet many would argue that it was only after the release of Deus Ex that the idea of a genre-bending game became truly popular. The brainchild of Warren Spector, Deus Ex allowed players to make their way through a cyberpunk rendition of the year 2052 using a wide variety of different mechanics and playstyles, allowing for an uncountable number of solutions to its life-like quagmires. The experience that it provided was as stupendous in its execution as it was difficult to quantify – so much so, that it would single-handedly usher in the term “Immersive Sim” to describe all prior and future games that would be included in its lineage.

Countless developers would incorporate Deus Ex’s most salient aspects into their craft in the wake of its release, and many would reap the benefits of doing so for years to come. Yet Deus Ex’s own developers would struggle to fully capitalize on their opus’s success, producing only a single, underwhelming sequel in the years that would follow before being scattered to the wind. A passionate team based in Montreal would eventually take up the series’s mantle, and release a respectful reboot over a decade after the first game’s debut. But in the end – despite following up said reboot with a solid sequel – the team would be forced to focus its efforts elsewhere, and the series would go dormant once more.

This is the rise and fall of Deus Ex.

MJR Health – Lost a few more pounds while traveling

I lost a few more pounds this week! A nice surprise considering I was unable to workout during my Retro Road Trip up north (Monday and Tuesday on the fitness tracker below). Those days were mostly me in the car and then shooting video at retro gaming stores. Believe it or not, I shot over 500 pieces of footage on my iPhone and GoPro for that video! Insane. I tried eating healthier in towns I was unfamiliar with (thanks Yelp!) and that seems to have paid off. No fast food for me 🙂