Author: ohnoitsjade

Jade has been gaming since the fateful day she was given a Sega Master System II. She'll now play anything for a chance at a platinum trophy, and is partial to a JRPG or several.
Games, Platinum Review

Platinum Review: The Sims 4

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It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these, but rest assured, I’m still getting platinum trophies. This year my challenge is to get 20 platinum trophies, and I’ll be honest, things are not going brilliantly, but I’m trying to turn things around!

Early on, I decided I would mop up some platinums for games I’d started, and I had an urge to play The Sims, so I opted for The Sims 4 for my first platinum of the year.

Playstationtrophies.org lists The Sims 4 as a 3/10 difficulty rating, and 26-30+ hours. I have to say, whilst not difficult it did take me a lot longer than the estimated time.

The Sims 4 platinum

No trophy is especially difficult, but the fact that so many of the trophies are for getting to the top of each career path and maxing out each skill means they are fairly time-consuming. There are a lot of tips in the forums on Playstationtrophies.org, and these will direct you to some custom content you can download to make things easier; a Sim who is pregnant with triplets being the hardest to come across in the game naturally, but with the custom content, you have a pregnant Sim who you just need to move onto a lot and wait. Simple!

Towards the end of the slog for the platinum, I sort of lost any love I had for the game. I’ve always been someone who loved The Sims, but somewhere along the line grinding for this one (and it did feel like a grind), any enjoyment I had for the game just left me.

I’m glad to have done it, but I don’t think I’ll ever play The Sims in any iteration again.

blog

Happy anniversary to Culture Shack!

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Logging onto WordPress, I recently got a notification that Culture Shack turned 9 on the 24th May! 9 years is such an incredibly long time, and whilst I might not have the most consistent track record with posts, it has amounted to a fair few entries on the blog.

Whilst editing a bunch of posts to fit, I found it quite interesting to read my older posts and reflect on how things have changed. When the blog started, it was mostly a place to post reviews and other articles that I was writing for a variety of sites. Now, I write mostly for myself, and I write reviews for Push Square which I still cross-post here. I try to write a variety of content, from blog posts and unboxings, to reviews and listicles. I know I fail at this a lot, but it is something I’m actively working on.

Looking through old posts, it’s really interesting to track how my interests have changed. Of course, the biggest change has been me becoming interested in anime and manga, but you can almost chart this through my posts; a real divergence from TV and film, and a sudden appearance in mentions about anime and manga. I’ve obviously loved videogames all my life, but you can almost see me double down on this throughout the 9 years this blog has existed.

Reading through is really amusing to see how I’ve changed in some places. I cared enough about the How I Met Your Mother finale to write a whole blog post about it, but now I couldn’t tell you the last piece of live action TV that really affected me. It’s just the way interests and habits change, I guess, but it is a little hard to believe the same person as I am now wrote those earlier posts!

So, here’s to more posts! I’ll do my best to get a content together and finally have something that resembles a content schedule on this thing! Thanks for your support!

2020 challenges, Challenges

2020 Challenges: April Recap

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I’ve spent the entirety of April in lockdown, had a birthday, and the only people I’ve seen in person are my parents and my nan (and on the occassion I’m allowed to open the door, I get a brief glimpse of a deliveryman!). Life is pretty weird at the moment.

Watch 40 anime

April end total: 14

Things really ramped up in April, as predicted, with the end of the seasonal shows I had been watching. I’ve been a little slow at watching anime since, focussing a lot of time on gaming instead, so I’m not sure how well I’ll do at adding to this total this month!

The shows I finished were: Haikyuu!! season 4, My Hero Academia season 4, ARP Backstage Pass, In/Spectre, number 24, Darwin’s Game, and Toilet-bound Hanako-kun. I’m in the process of getting some reviews written for these shows, so keep an eye out!

Watch 40 movies in the cinema

April end total: 5

Obviously I still can’t leave the house, so I’m stuck at 5 movies for this. The longer that lockdown goes on, the less likely it is that I’ll be achieving this challenge by the end of the year.

Platinum 20 games

April end total: 1

At the end of April, my total was still 1. I’ve been playing a lot of games since though, so come my May end update, things will be veeeery different.

Read 15 books

April end total: 2

It’s weird to think how reading habits change. 10 years ago, I’d have read 15 books in a month, now I’m not even reading one a month. It’s so hard to find the time to read when all my hobbies are so time consuming. Things have improved on the reading front lately, and I’m starting to find it easier to set it aside time to read, so things should be improving here!

Finish 100 best movies

April end total: 2

Finish Naruto

April end total: 3 episodes

30 Days Of, 30 Days Of: Anime

30 Days Of: Anime, Day 30

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Day 30: Which anime has your heart?

There are a lot of anime that I love, but the one that will always be special to me is undoubtedly Haikyuu!!, which is probably evident from how many times it appeared during this challenge.

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I’ve mentioned before that it took me a few attempts to get into it, and I’m so glad I gave it those chances. I’ve met some really good friends through Haikyuu!!, and I can’t wait to see where it goes in the future.

This question wraps up the 30 Days Of: Anime (which took way longer than 30 days, but what are you gonna do?). I’ll leave it a little longer before I do the next 30 Days Of challenge, as I need to find one and I think I need a little break from it.

30 Days Of, 30 Days Of: Anime

30 Days Of: Anime, Day 29

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Day 29: Your favourite character

I asked some friends how they would describe the type of characters I usually pick as my favourite. Some answers I got were psychotic, villains, unstable, misunderstood, dark, and mysterious. I would probably agree with these descriptors on a whole. I do think villains tend to be more interesting characters, and have more interesting stories, and certainly a lot of my favourite characters are villains or have villanous tendencies.

Having said all of that, my absolute favourite character from anything is Haikyuu!!‘s Bokuto Koutarou, who could not be further from any of those words if he tried.

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What I really love about Bokuto is that despite pretty much being a side character, and not really having too much screen time, is that he really makes an impact, not least of all because of his loud personality. Bokuto really demands attention any time he’s on screen, whether that’s because he’s yelling, or because he’s smashing a service ace.

Bokuto has so many facets to his personality and so many emotions which are often displayed across his expressive. His ’emo-mode’ shows off a vulnerable side, and proves that things aren’t even easy when you have as much talent and skill as him. Bokuto is brought out of his depressive states but his excellent support network bring him out of it, showing that we’re nothing without our friends.

Bokuto’s boundless energy makes him a joy to watch, and I love him very much.

30 Days Of, 30 Days Of: Anime

30 Days Of: Anime, Day 28

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Day 28: Do you share your anime interests with anyone?

Whilst my anime watching habits and love of anime have far surpassed those of the person who introduced me to it, I have got many friends who also love anime as much as I do. A lot of these friends I met through cosplay and conventions, which is always a really good way of meeting someone with similar interests!

Mostly, I share my anime interests with Chelsie! We watch a lot of the same shows and recommend things to each other, and went on a holiday last year so we could go to an anime film festival (Scotland Loves Anime), as well as a weekend trip to a summer festival/convention called Tokonatsu (which we called anime camp!).

30 Days Of, 30 Days Of: Anime, Uncategorized

30 Days Of: Anime, Day 27

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Day 27: Recommend an anime that most people would not have seen

It’s hard for me to tell what a lot of people haven’t seen as I follow a lot of anime fans on Twitter and there always seems to be a buzz about most shows.

I didn’t see many people watching Banana Fish when that was on, so I’d definitely recommend that to people. It’s hard to say what it’s about without giving too much away but it’s essentially about a Japanese photographer, Okumura Eiji, who travels to New York as an intern to assist with a piece about a young gang boss, Ash Lynx. The show then follows the story of Ash and Eiji as they get caught up with various gang and mafia activity. It has its funny moments, but they’re pretty few and far between, and it can be quite harrowing at times with some dark subject matter thrown in. There are tonnes of really well-written characters, from Ash and Eiji themselves, to the supporting cast and the main antagonists. There’s a reason it’s one of my favourite shows, so I would definitely recommend it to anyone.

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I’ll also mention here Oresuki, as it’s another show I didn’t see many people talking about when it aired, but one that I also really enjoyed. It probably couldn’t be further from Banana Fish if it tried. I don’t even know where to begin explaining the plot, but it’s essentially about a boy, Joro, and his life at school and relationships with his classmates and how they develop. Pretty broad, but Oresuki is genuinely one of the funniest shows I’ve ever seen, with one particular running gag that is absolutely hilarious.

oresuki

30 Days Of, 30 Days Of: Anime

30 Days Of: Anime, Days 25 and 26

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Day 25: Character you are most like

Up until fairly recently, I would have said Yamaguchi from Haikyuu!! for the answer to this question, but then I watched Love Stage, and the similarities between me and Sena Izumi are quite obvious. So obvious, in fact, that Chelsie made this comparison chart to show the similarities:

Izumi and I would both much rather stay in, and we’re both obsessed with anime and manga. We also both love Ryouma!

Day 26: A scene that made you cry

Here’s the thing… I cry a lot. Like, way too much. I’m very easily brought to tears, it turns out. If I listed even a fraction of scenes that made me cry, I’d be here all day. I’ll go for the scene that made me cry the most, which is easily the library scene in Banana Fish. I’ll say no more, and just leave you with the second OP, which is a banger.

30 Days Of, 30 Days Of: Anime

30 Days Of: Anime, Days 23 and 24

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Day 23: Favourite Studio Ghibli

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I’ve shared my Howl’s Moving Castle cosplay before, but I’m damn well going to do it again. Howl’s is my favourite Ghibli movie and definitely the one I’ve rewatched the most. I also really love Ponyo!

 

 

 

Day 24: Ever been bullied for liking anime?

I think if I had been into anime when I was younger then I think I probably would have been bullied for watching it – the school I went to was an all-girls school, and if you had a hobby or interest that was outside of the traditional ‘girl hobbies’ then they tended to make fun of you, see also: me liking video games. As it is, I got into anime after my uni years, so I’m well past the stage where people bully you for interests (or so I’d hope), and also past the stage of caring. My non-anime friends and my family do rib me for liking anime a bit, but it’s all just good-natured fun and I’ve never felt upset or anything by it.