Winter and 2026 so far
Hello everyone! It has been a while since I managed a personal post of this nature. We had a lovely small Christmas with Naboo. And, he even got to meet up with his brother Phil in person, finally!
Naboo’s brother Phil was completely free of cancer at his check-up! Naboo still hasn’t had his final check-up, I think Will is nervous to book it. There have been a couple of things we’ve been worried about, but I’m hoping it’s all going to turn out fine.
Because my posts are often photo-heavy, I’m experimenting with using galleries to make them take up less vertical room. One should be able to click and enlarge individual pictures if needed, although I’m not sure how well that will work on mobile screens, and some images seem to be weirdly cut-off unless you open them in a new tab and I’m like, why can’t anything just work simply. Anyway, here are some pics from our holiday period.
I finally got my remaining yearly summary things (unless there are any I forgot).
And finally, it’s time for the gaming chat.
Tomb Raider (2013)
Everyone probably knows about my deep love for the original 1996 Lara Croft. Despite this, I don’t dislike the survivor trilogy. I just think it could’ve been a totally different game. They could have invented a new heroine. She could’ve been the original Lara’s daughter if they still wanted to tie it all to Tomb Raider. But I still enjoy playing it. I finally got to these ones on stream as part of my Tomb Raider series.
Rise of the Tomb Raider
The second of this trilogy is probably my favourite of these three games. The Byzantine aesthetic is pretty nice, and sometimes it’s nice to just load up a save and go for a deer hunt in the geothermal valley. I’m currently trying to 100% the pickups off-stream. But I was also meant to be doing that in AOD, and, whoops.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
I actually hadn’t played SOTTR before getting to it on stream. I forget why I didn’t do it when I was last playing the other two. It’s a nice game although, it does trip itself up in a few places. Why on earth did they swap so many of the buttons around? I had a nightmare of a time figuring out why my swimming was going so wrong. And so many of the outfits can’t be worn at some locations in the game. It seems completely random and bizarre. I love to change outfits in videogames. And this game is like, that one you like? NOPE, UNAVAILABLE. Also, if I never hear Lara yelling Jonaaaaaaaaah again, it’ll be too soon.
The Yaaxil are also absolutely horrifying. Will I try to go back for all the documents and relics off-stream? I hope so.
Dune: Awakening
I had to do some base adjustments to make room for the guild carrier ornithopter. Vily has packed-up the guild HQ for now so she doesn’t have to worry about keeping up with the power and the taxes. In related news actually, it seems that the game has now done away with taxes. Which is good as far as I’m concerned, because coming up with $4000 every 2 weeks or so is a pain if you haven’t had time for the game.
But yes, that left the big ol’ carrier needing somewhere to live. I managed to solve it by moving my upper floor down by one square and therefore increasing the room in the top shielded section. It did somehow count the carrier as “sheltered in base” before I did that, but, it looked like ass.
I also expanded the floor of the top part out a bit for more room. I could get more room out of the rest of my base if I wasn’t using those angled walls, but I think they look so nice.
Cure – A Hospital Simulator
This is a game about running an Emergency Room (or A&E as we say in England), during a zombie apocalypse. I really do think it’s more of an independent Urgent Care (or “walk-in centre” as we would say in England, although ours aren’t as nice and usually don’t have beds and can’t give you IV drips), than an actual hospital because uh, everything is just one room.
It’s an early-access game, so there are a few bugs and things aren’t always fleshed-out. I wish we knew a little more about the actual zombies, it seems to all start with a meteor shower? And it would be nice if the 6 TVs in the room actually played something on their screens lol. Having said that, I haven’t played the most recent update, so maybe some of these things are solved by now.
Elevator
This was an interesting demo I played where, you quite literally just ride up in an elevator and stop at various floors. The floors are sometimes just a room you don’t have to go in, which might have something quite odd in it. Or, maybe someone from that floor will join you in the lift. Sometimes, you have to venture out of the lift to try and fix something (I was not successful lol).
Alas, the emotional support fire extinguisher I stole from somewhere got yeeted out of existence at some point.
Fallout 76
I’ve actually finished with the current season, so I’ll take a bit of a break from Fallout for now. I need to try and remember what the hell I was working towards in Dune lol. And I do need to catch February’s axolotl. But aside from that, I’m all done for a while.
And it’s time to put in some recent YouTube. I feel like I’m forgetting something else but right now I don’t know what it is.
- Winter and 2026 so far - February 18, 2026
- Influential performers: Kevin Peter Hall - February 17, 2026
- Influential performers: Takako Fuji - February 3, 2026