Another article about watches. I'm too poor to buy them, but I can at least still talk to you about them. Why an article specifically about women's watches? Well, although it has gotten better, especially in recent years, the watch enthusiast crowd is a sausage fest and most watch releases are not geared towards a womanly clientèle. This article is my modest contribution to improve that first point, and study the second. I think watches are really cool and I want other people who might be interested, no matter their gender, to appreciate them as well. Included as a bonus at the end of this article is a little section about what watch I would see the people of café wearing, purely based on vibes. A thing to consider for this article is that I am mostly talking about “enthusiast” watches. Watches that are more geared towards people who care about watches, their materials and their movements – anyone that lies on the watch nerd spectrum.

_{making this image was painful}

a very, very, very brief history of women's watches

As one can expect, in the west women were excluded from the watch club early on, as the early watches were only pocket watches. Those were expensive and reserved for the elite, and elite women's garments were pocketless. Therefore women aristocrats, starting in the early 1800s, commissioned smaller watches that could be affixed to broches, necklaces and bracelets. We got the very first wristwatch, which is exclusively what we mean now when talking about watches, thanks to Queen Caroline Bonaparte Murat of Naples. It was a french made watch, built by Breguet in 1812.

_{the original was lost, this is the contemporary version, still by Breguet (the brand not the dude this time)}

The following ones were were also commissioned by women. Still, wrist watches were extremely costly and completely out of the grasp of the average woman, only being worn by the tippity top of the aristocracy. Not gonna lie, there's not a ton of info about the everyday woman's watches in history, during my research articles either talked about men or watches, but not women. It seems like then most of the women watches were confined strictly to the jewellery domain, and therefore unattainable for the majority. During WWI wristwatches started gaining popularity, and after the Great War we start seeing more varied designs — but there is no info specifically about women. Watches did get much simpler and “function over form” during WW2, but the production was not aimed towards women. And it is still not aimed towards women.

Sexism and gatekeeping did play a part in this, even as recently as the beginning of the century. Reading an article, I came across this IWC ad from November 2000, which I'm sure some chud somewhere thinks is awesome:

It reads “is nothing sacred? You'd think that a mechanical chronograph with a drag hand (maximum indicator) to measure intermediate elapsed time or a second timing cycle would be enough to put her off . No such luck. That's why we specifically made the Portuguese Chrono-(illegible) with a wider wrist — just in case she gets any ideas. Ref. 3712. £4895. Also available in 18 carat pink gold. IWC. Since 1868. And for as long as there are men.“

Although that line about pink gold is unintentionally very funny and ironic, if major watch brands were brazen enough to use this sexist garbage in their advertising in the 2000s, one can only imagine what the industry was like before in terms of sexism and gatekeeping.

I have my own theories about why it was like that: First, on the sexism part; women were not seen as needing a precise, tool-oriented timepiece — why would women need to tell time? They are just subservient creatures to their husbands, definitely not valuable and autonomous elements of society. Second, on the gatekeeping part; as pocket watches (distinctly male-oriented), disappeared to the profit of wristwatches in the early 1900s (then distinctly woman-oriented), the marketing tried to shy as far away from the jewellery label to capture men, make them feel secure about wearing watches and reaffirm their fragile masculinity. On the other hand, to help this, they triple-downed on the jewellery aspect of watches for women. You then had your men watches, which were rugged, technical and tool-oriented, and then your women's watches which were artful, precious and jewellery.

This also lead to the current general disinterest of women in watches; making watches artificially more of a man's thing and not catering to women would drive them away from watches. This whole talk about men and women's watch begs the question: what makes a watch a woman's watch?

what makes a watch a woman's watch?

The only differences that matter as far as watches are concerned, between men and women, are anatomical. On average a woman's wrist measures between 5.5” and 6.2” and a man's between 6.5” and 7.2”. That will influence the fit of a watch. But then, fit matters only as far as comfort and personal taste. So basically, anatomical differences are not relevant when it comes to determining if a watch is a “woman's” watch or not. And the rest of the differences are only due to social constructs.

_{this definitely fits}

Therefore, my postmodernist ass' take is that the concept of a woman's watch makes no sense. Just wear what you want and enjoy. Problem solved, there is no issue with watch brands not catering to women because there is no such thing as a woman's watch! Obviously there is still an issue here, if there is nothing that women want to wear and enjoy wearing, then the problem is not solved. This is why brands need to also cater to women's wants and needs, just like they do men. There are plenty of “jewellery” watches, but the offering for accessible regular watches is lacking for women. The 'regular' watch caters to men, and excludes women.

why cater to women?

Before we dive into how brands have chosen to cater to women, it would serve to establish why it's important to cater to women, and not just men. It's simply not cool to exclude women is the first major reason, and the main reason that watch manufacturers should consider. However, the main reason watch manufacturers would actually consider is the second major one: if you exclude half of the population from your consumer base, you are leaving money on the table. Nobody will be surprised to learn that the watch market has been suffering for the last few years. Firstly because people have less money to spend on useless luxury goods, which watches are, but also because US tariffs are increasing the price of watches in one the the biggest luxury goods consumer market in the world, decreasing the demand even further. Swiss watches are ubiquitous when talking about luxury watches, and at the moment of writing, the US tariffs for Switzerland are 39%. This is also a double whammy because watch brands want to keep semi-consistent pricing around the globe, and will therefore also increase prices all around, not just in the US, making it harder for you and me — who don't live in the US — to buy watches (fuck the USA and their stupid-ass government).

shortcomings with the current catering to women

One of the main ways women are excluded from the watch world is with dimensions in my opinion. Looking at the ad I showed in the previous section, IWC used sizing to gatekeep their watches from women “That's why we specifically made the Portuguese Chrono-(illegible) with a wider wrist — just in case she gets any ideas.“

_{refresher on watch dimensions}

Currently, the enthusiast watch market is mostly composed of watches meant for medium to large men's wrists. There has been a very recent push by enthusiast to have more 39-40mm diameter offerings (a couple mm makes a difference, I swear), but it is still on the larger side, and that's even without factoring the lug-to-lug dimensions, thickness, lug width... To put it plainly here is a lack of good offerings accommodating smaller wrist from regular brands; some women will like to wear watches that look small on their wrist, others watches that fit just right, and finally some watches that look oversized — there should be good watches available to all of them.

There are challenges with making good, smaller watches however. One of those is with the movements. If you remember, the movement is the engine of the watch. Miniaturising anything is a challenge, and it is no different for movements. But while it is an engineering challenge to make smaller movement, not only do we have the technology, but it was done before. Watches from decades ago were smaller than their contemporary counterparts and they were not all just quartz movements, which are easier to make small. It is possible to make small mechanical movements, as all watches before the Quartz Crisis (beginning in 1969, having a cool-ass name and being a topic for another article) were on the smaller side and still mechanical, simply because quartz movements were not available before then. But brands are just not putting the effort into making smaller movements.

I'm not just talking out of my ass, let's take a concrete example with the brand Breitling. Breitling recently refreshed their Super Ocean Heritage line-up, which is their historical diver's watch model. With this refresh came 4 different sizes, and more excitingly their newly unveiled B31 movement. This movement is particularly appealing because it is Breitling's new and first three hand “in-house” _{(not really but it's not the point of this article)} movement. And it's great that it's what's powering those new watch models. Well that is, for all sizes except the smallest one, which incidentally would be the one preferred by bearers of smaller wrists, which uses a third party movement.

And then, Breitling is not doing too bad; for the smaller Super Ocean Heritage model, the colours are good, it still looks on par with the bigger models, and the movement is far from being bad. The way some other brands go about making smaller watches leaves way more to be desired. I'm talking about the infamous “pink it, shrink it, quartz it”. The lazy 'womanification' of a watch goes as follows: take a male model, make it smaller (do not take any element of design into consideration, just miniaturise it), put a random quartz movement in there because no decent cheap pre-made mechanical movement will fit the case, change the dial colour to be more girly, add diamonds, stones... and you're done. That is very lazy and also shitty and tacky.

I don't want to be all doom and gloom, it is looking up for the people in the itty bitty wrist committee. The 'pink it and shrink it' model is becoming more of a thing of the past for the established watch brands. One can hope that in a couple of decades, we'll just have good offerings for every wrist size (if the brands have not all gone under). In the meantime, let's look at some brands that people think are doing good when it comes to catering to women, and what they do.

so what do we do about it? (or What some brands that have good women's offering are doing)

The image above is from one of Cartier's most popular watch, the Cartier Tank — do you notice something? They have a bunch of sizes for that model, and they still look identical. They don't have the big sizes being males models looking clean, and the small size women's being bedazzled, and pink. Their designs are very similar, they look good on men and women alike, and they have size options ranging from mini to extra large — with small, medium and large in between (pictured above). And that's not just for the Tank, but for most of their collections. On the movement front, they do use quartz, but it's usually for the whole line up, and with watches that are that small and not always round, like the Cartier Tanks mini, quartz is just the best option. It's cartier's own quartz movements, so they're not just putting any random shitty movement that fits. And that's why they're the goats. _{(Also quartz does not mean bad by any means, but it's a topic for another article)}

Let's move down to more reasonable prices and look at Casio. Casio's claim to fame are their digital watches. And while they only come in one size, they usually boast very restrained dimensions that look good on both small and medium wrists. Bigger wrists are also eating good with Casio's giant chunky g-shocks. Their designs are good, and what I would qualify as indémodable, their watches are very affordable, useful and will last you a lifetime. And that's why they're the goats.

Another brand that I have read a lot of women appreciate is Rolex. We are moving way up in price. Despite what one may think about Rolex currently, they are generally doing good by women. They have popular models in a variety of small sizes — not just a couple of medium to big sizes and a single small size for women. They have 41-36-34-31-28mm diameter sizes usually, which gives many option for people who have smaller wrists. The designs are also almost identical, no matter the size of a particular model, just look at the image above. Their popular lines are also customizable: you like bedazzled? Select the diamond incrusted bezel and the diamond indices dial. Hate it? You can also choose a plain dial and bezel. They have good movements in their smaller watches, that they make in-house just like their bigger movements. They have good models for women, but unfortunately some of their most popular models like the submariner, the GMT Master and the Daytona are only available in one size, and that size only fits medium to large wrists.

From this small selection of brands that are doing good by women, there's a couple things that are apparent. First, there are size options for smaller wrist. Second, they just have good design, it's stuff that is appealing for everyone, not just people who love stereotypically “girly” stuff. Lastly, the technical aspect of the watch is not disregarded; the movements of the small models are good, it's not just some random thing thrown in at the last minute. In general those watch brands care about their womanly clientèle and put effort in their “women models” or into making their more unisex general models accessible for people with small wrists. But does all this effort pay off? Well, Rolex is the #1 best selling luxury watch brand, Cartier just overtook Omega as the #2 and Casio, after reading their Q4 2025 report _{(note japan's fiscal year starts in April, so Q4 is Jan-Mar)} is doing solid.

conclusion:

In this article, we've established that the categorisation of a watch as a “woman's watch” is purely due to social constructs and therefore woman's watches aren't a thing. However, we've also seen that there is not a lot of watches that women would want to wear, primarily due to them being gatekept from attractive models with sizing, and being served inferior models — whether from a technical or design standpoint — in the only sizes that fits them. To confirm this, we've looked at some brands that women seem to appreciate. We find that those brands provide attractive designs in a wide range of sizes. Now if you've read this article, you might be under the impression that I just want traditionally more male models (boring steel watches) to fit women, and that I think that would fix the issue; I don't. I want to make clear that I think there should be all kinds of designs in all kinds of different sizes. If a man wants to wear some cool bedazzled watch that is almost more the realm of hardcore jewellery than watch, like the Bvlgari Serpenti Secret Watch, I think there should be options for him. Similarly, if a woman wants to wear some more sterile pseudo-military watch, like the Micromilspec Milgraph, she shouldn't be sized out. In my ideal watch world, there would be many options for anybody wanting anything.

_{BVLGARI Serpenti Secret Watch and Micromilspec Milgraph}

We still have a long way to go, but I think big brands are slowly moving towards more inclusive sizing. The microbrands are really driving the chance in some respect, but they are more niche. There's some other work that to be done as well and, in my opinion that needs to be done, it's the only way for watch brands not to die. Particularly, if you allow me to digress [1000 words rant redacted, we'll keep it for another article]. Let's just leave it at that. See you in a next one.

Disclaimer: I'm just a regular dude with no special insight whatsoever into the watch world, don't take anything here too seriously. Those are just the divagations of a watch nerd.

Thank you for reading my logorrhea Eddie – Award winning author

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bonus section: watch for people

Alrighty, the part that most of you are waiting for, the bonus watch assignment. I hope none of you have scrolled all the way down to this section without reading the full article 🙂. I trolled you a bit with the first picture of the article, and if you hadn't noticed, it's all horrendous watches. Also, don't hold it against me if you aren't on the list — it's either that I don't see you wearing a watch, or I haven't been inspired by any watch and thought “that screams [insert name]“. My own wife is not on this list. It really isn't that deep. Ok, let's get started:

• Nick: Hamilton Khaki Field “Murph” 38mm. I just see him wearing this, it's a simple and classic piece, that is not boring. Easy to style.

• Noah: Seiko Prospex SPB121 “Alpinist”. The green dial is reminiscent of his Muggies outfit – and the smooth steel bezel of his head. The watch may be a hair too thick for him but the other dimensions should be perfect.

• Kaitlyn: Jaeger Le Coutre Reverso Tribute Small Seconds Q397843J. I'm gonna cheat a bit with this one on two aspects. Firstly, although the watch comes with a green strap, I would see Kaitlyn wearing it with a brown strap like in the picture below. Secondly, I think the watch might be a tad big, so this will be an imaginary version of the watch that is smaller and comes with a brown strap. Brown strap and green dial will also make it so both Kaitlyn and Noah's watches have similar colour scheme, which I'm sure they can appreciate.

• Edna: Tank Must de Cartier – Small Model. A classic, refined and elegant piece for a dignified corporate girlie. I think Cartier's blue accent would fit Edna's vibe very well.

• Elisa: Tissot PRX 25mm. I genuinely don't know why but I see Elisa rocking this. I saw it in the flesh metal at the airport, and it's what immediately jumped at me. I think it might suit Elisa better if the dial had a subtle waffle pattern, like the bigger models, instead of the sunray finish.

• Bennet: Grand Seiko SLGW003 “White Birch”. Classic old timey feel without having to deal with the hassle of a vintage watch. It not being automatic and needing to be wound is a plus for the tactile feel of it. The cherry on top is that when rewinding the watch, it looks like a wood pecker is pecking at the gear (90% of the reason why I chose this watch for Bennet).

• Dan: SpaceOne Jumping Hour. Spaceship, Dan — the connection is evident. The choice of colour was a bit less, and I was hesitating on either blue or the iridescent colour below. I think this is it though. Apart from the design, the non-standard way the time is displayed on the watch does match his persona.

• Shrey: Fifty Fathoms Automatique – 5007 1130 B52B. I was gonna pick an apple watch for Shrey, but ever since I saw him with his massive Swarovski Diver, I knew I had to choose an equally imposing watch. One of my personal favourite design wise, the Fifty Fathom has a ton of history and heritage. This new version comes-in at a more restrained 38mm in diameter, which I think would suit Shrey best. (no heartbeat technology unfortunately)

• Vivian: Frédérique Constant Manchette. Another pick purely based on vibes. When that watch was unveiled recently, I just thought it was pretty cool and that it would suit Vivian.

The End

Welcome back ladies and germs, to the Humble Purge. For those who need a reminder, the Humble Purge is a project I undertook last year, where I set out to play most of the unplayed games in my steam library, i.e. my backlog. I already wrote two articles about it, the first advertising the project, and the second reporting on it after completion. In total I devoted about 758h to it last year and played 110 games, which is quite a lot. Too many to tell you about in my articles (even in the indigestible second one that is an unnecessary 7300+ word), which is why I planned to release a couple articles devoted to the games played during this Purge. This first one is an Awards Article. Coasting off the popularity of the best awards show in the world, The Muggies (I started writing this a while ago 🙃), I thought I would talk about some games that were the best or the worst in some aspect.

Some things to remember from my backlog: I categorised everything, rated games on how excited I was to play them — I called that hype and rated it out of ten — and then gave games a score out of ten once I was done with them. I played games for a minimum of an hour.

We've already talked about the overall bests in my second article, so we'll have more fun categories here. Let's start with one such award that I alluded to in my second article:

Top of the Bell Curve Award 🔔

Sniper Elite 4 by Rebellion

Sniper elite, released in 2017 is a game where you play as a sniper (no way) and kill nazis (yippee). The game is divided into missions, with different maps and objectives for each. You can go stealth or guns blazing, although the latter option is definitely not how the game is intended to be played. And when you play how it's supposed to be played — scouting the map for enemies, for entrance points to your objective, laying down traps and waiting for sounds to cover your gun shots — it's really fun. It looks good, the gameplay loop is great, the movement and gunplay are improved from the third, the maps are well designed and fun to explore. They didn't spam enemies, which would have made the game tedious, and the AI is semi-competent once they have been alerted. While not alerted though, the AI has the IQ of a lukewarm oyster. The difficulty is well balanced in my opinion, and I would recommend the “Sniper Elite” one. It removes the aim assist, has gravity and wind affecting the bullets as well as less forgiving AI which make it challenging, but is generous with the autosaves and not frustrating at all. Making any shot without assistance, taking into account the wind, gravity, movement of the enemy and noise, is very rewarding. One of the great feature it has is online coop, which although I didn't partake, would have no doubt made the experience really fun. I played this for 15.5h and gave it a 9/10 in the end.

Now why did it win the Top of the Bell Curve Award (aka most average award)? Well, it's simply because, as detailed in my second article, the most common first letter for games I played in my backlog was an S, the average year for games in the backlog was 2017, on average the games had a steam score of 89% and metacritics of rating of 79, and the most common genre was the all-encompassing “Action” genre.

Sniper Elite not only fits the best amongst the games in this backlog (start with an 'S', was released in 2017, has a steam score of 91% and metacritics rating of 78 AND is an action game) but the best fit amongst all of the games that released in 2017.

Wet Firecracker Award 💦🧨

Doom 3 by Id Software

I think doom is cool. I read how Doom came to be in Masters of Doom by David Kushner, and it was really interesting to read about how visionary and technologically advanced it was, on top of having a humongous cultural impact. When the Doom reboot came out in 2016, it soon became one of my favourite shooters. Seeing that Doom 3 was in my backlog, I was naturally very excited to play it, an gave it a hype of 9/10. Doom 3 came out in 2005, eleven years after its last mainline predecessor and it is fair to say that it is a completely different game altogether. In my review, it garnered a 2/10.

Doom 3 really disappointed me. I was expecting Doom, but I got something more akin to no-great Dead Space 1. Played it for an hour and never looked back. I won't spend too long on this because I want to spread joy and positivity all around me (I'm just that kinda guy), but I really did not have fun playing Doom 3.

Why is it the wet firecracker of the backlog? Well, just like a wet firecracker, I expected it to be a banger 🧨💥, but it just flopped 🧨💦.

Gold Nugget Award 🪨🪙

Molek Syntez by Zachtronics

During my backlog, I discovered that I really like puzzle games. I completely get that they are not for everyone, but they are very satisfying to me, even if they often forgo a lot of aspects of video games that most people care about. On average, puzzle games in the backlog got a score 8/10 where the average for all games was closer to a 6.8/10. I did not know that I liked puzzle games though, and I originally only gave Molek Syntez, which came out in 2019, a hype of 5/10. What a little treat it was though. The purpose of the game is to fabricate various chemical compounds, using other molecules. Not all of your building-block molecules are 100% what you need thought, and you will need to transform them to suit your needs, before assembling them into your final product. You program little arms that can do various action and only move a certain way around your lab bench. It's really fun and it can be as easy or challenging as you make it out to be. You can brute force it and have 24 instructions per arm, using all the arms available, and need millions of cycle to create your product, or limit yourself to using as little instructions/arms as possible and optimising everything. Once you're done programming, you can hit play and see the arms making your target molecules (or not if you messed up). It's really fun, you have to take into account the usual rules that you've probably learned about in chemistry class, but it's pretty simple overall.

I played Molek Syntez at the beginning of my backlog for a total of 12.5h. I will a 100% get back into it to finish the extra puzzles, but at the time I felt like finishing the campaign was good enough for the project. I had a lot of fun though, and if you like puzzles and chemistry, you will like it too. (Actually maybe even if you hate chemistry as I do)

Gold nugget 🪨🪙 awards if for the game that I didn't think I would like, but ended up being one of my favourite.

Dogged Game Award 🐶

Guacamelee! 2 by Drinkbox Studios

While completing my backlog, within 10 minutes of playing a game, I would know if I was going to play it until I roll the credits, or just play it for a while, or only play it for an hour. I have never been more wrong than during my time with Guacamelee! 2. At first I thought I would only play it for an hour. After the hour had passed I kept playing it, but knew for sure I wouldn't play it for the ~9h required to clear the campaign. Then I rolled the credits. It's not as if I was only starting to get the hang of the backlog, as I played this in May as my 63rd game, roughly 57% through all the games. This little mexican game was just tenacious, it was dogged, and didn't let me put it down until I was done with it and it was done with me. It's a basic action platformer, and a very very soft metroidvania if you want to unlock everything. There is barely any backtracking involved if you just wanna finish the main campaign. After the corruption of the hero Salvador by his own mask, the “Mexiverse” is in peril. You play as a retired luchador, out for a last mission, to prevent the corrupted Salvador and his three assistants from collecting the three sacred relics (a tortilla chip, a molcajete and an avocado if my memory serves me right). Along your travels, you recover your former wrestling moves, and those are also used as ways to move around, allowing you to reach previously unattainable platforms/clearing obstacles. You can also transform into a chicken.

The platforming is very decent, and not super super tricky. You can switch between the world of the living and the dead which makes for some interesting platforming challenges sometimes. Some combats interrupt your progression, a nice occasion to test you new moves, but it's never frustrating as less than 2 waves of enemies have to be faced each time. Everything is a tad janky and unpolished, but it still works and adds charm to the game. The lore is pretty goofy, but it doesn't take itself too seriously so it's fine. The music is pretty catchy and a nice companion during the campaign. It's a good game overall, and wins the Dogged 🐶 game Award.

❓ Award

Paratopic by Arbitrary Metric

I was gonna start by saying that Paratopic is a game developed by Arbitrary Metric which came out in 2018, but it doesn't feel right to say that. It obviously is a game, but it is so far removed from any typical game that it feels like a disservice to call it that. It is a surrealist game, and I'll just leave my original review describe it:

wtf? Incredible artstyle, great sound design. Weird ass story, the way it is laid out is peculiar to say the least. The timeline is not linear and we jump from one character to another from past to future and vice versa without any transition. Very much a “just experience the game” game. Kinda feels like a weird dream/nightmare. I like trippy stuff and artsy movies and games; I liked this game.

That is very much a “video game as an art form” game. Its extended version will come out “soon” and I will play it for sure. For now, the game earns the ❓award.

Cranium 🧠 Award

Duskers by Misfits Attic

Duskers from 2016 is a game where you command vacuum cleaners. Ok it's actually drones, but they all look like roombas. It's also sort of a horror game. The main goal of the game is to traverse the galaxy, by salvaging abandoned ships along the way to fuel you. You can also find some scraps, pieces of technology and even other drones in there. When you arrive at a ship, you choose where to dock you vessel, and then you have to send your drones out. You'll have to power the ship that you are boarding, but you can only power certain sections at a time. You cannot operate anything that isn't powered. You have to manage access to room, with doors. Now you could just open every door you see and explore, however, there's usually a reason the ships are abandoned. Alien infestation, rogue drone, traps, radiation, vacuum... there is danger lurking in the shadows. The kicker — everything is only interactable via console commands on your end. Want to open/close a door? type “open/close [door name]“. Want to have a drone move to a room? type “navigate [name of drone] [name of room]“. There are two views, the main one being top down, where you cannot see anything specific, but have a global view of everything. The second is going into a drone directly, where you can see what it sees in front of it, and can also move it with wasd. You do lose the ability to see everything else though. Everything is slow and tense. Try typing anything in the console under pressure when shits hits the fan; it's very stressful. You have to plan carefully, but most of the time, still have to act without proper information. And I haven't even touched on most of the gameplay for this game.

So, what is the Cranium 🧠 award? Well it is simply the award for the most innovative and original gameplay. Sure console commands have been done before, but the combination of the two views, the gameplay loop, the tone of the game... it just mixes to become the most innovative thing I have played last year.

Wrench in the Works Award 🔧

Sekiro by FromSoftware

Sekiro is goated, and gameplay wise I think the best game not only in the soulslike genre but in the “dude/gal wielding a sword” genre in general. The combat is precise, calculated, balanced — it's perfect. The level design is great and the movement mechanics are dialled in. The setting is amazing, the enemies are well designed and the boss fights are *chef's kiss*. If you were to tell me that Sekiro is an objectively better game than Darks Souls III, my favourite game ever (also developed by FromSoftware) I would probably agree with you. It's easily one of the greatest game of all times.

Now let me take that thing out of my mouth and explain the Wrench in the Works 🔧 award: it's basically an award for something that detracted me from completing my backlog. For instance a game I had played before but replayed during the Humble Purge, and took time away from actually completing the project, like Sekiro. I replayed it after Spencer and Vivian mentioned they were going through it, and I just had to do a quick playthrough (which means completing the whole game with all the optional things). It was only around 40h though, which is equivalent in terms of time to... 32 of the games I played for the shortest time during the backlog. Oh well, I don't regret it, it was time well spent.

Conclusion

Well, we've talked about quite a few games, euhh like 7, but one isn't from the backlog so 6, which is 5% of the backlog. At this rhythm of an article per year, in 20 years we'll have talked about them all. I'm not planning on talking about them all, and only when inspiration strikes you can hope to get another Humble Purge Article. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this one, and as always:

Thank you for reading my logorrhea Eddie – Award winning author

Honey, it's time for your yearly training article! We continue the chronicles of my training journey. Let's quickly recap everything, from the two previous articles, and try to make a little timeline:

Recap

As a teen I did a bit of working out, but my gym was literally 1h+ away by bus, or 20min by car, and I had no car and never anyone to take me so I didn't go super often. In uni, I was super busy the first year, but around St. Patty's in 2018 is when I started going to the gym regularly. This went even better in second year, as on top of the gym being an 10 min walk away from my house, the course load had diminished a bit. Late 2018, I started getting into powerlifting, and around April 2019 into arm-wrestling, joining the Kingston Krushers. Later that summer, I also did a bit of cheerleading with @Oncle, joining the Queen's varsity cheer team, until the beginning of the fall semester. Nothing notable happened in third year is what I wish I could say, but covid hit and I was forced to forego the gym in March 2020. After trying (and failing) to do stuff at home, I just stopped working out, and after a short depressive episode that lasted until 2022 I also stopped eating properly as well, and lost all my gains. This bring us to my first article from November 2023, Training Again. There, I detail how I started going to the gym again, in June 2023, and that I started bodybuilding, leaving behind the other disciplines I once practiced. I also laid my plan to bulk heavily, a bulk that I started in October 2023. Training Again was more of a little intro to what I was about to do. That article was followed by Training again Update in April 2024, which was the result of what I did in Training Again. You can learn in it that my bulk was successful, that I went from weighing 69kg to 81kg in 22 weeks, and had started a cut in March 2024. I also relate my then current training regiment, and the recent muscle tear in my back which prevented me from lifting heavy until March of that year. It's been more than a year, and I still have to update the chronicles on what happened since.

Here's a little timeline:

_{All in all, I only got ~3.5 years of solid training under my belt, and 2 years of consistent training is my longest training streak. I mean to break that.}

April 2024 to June 2025

The cut I had started in the previous article was fine, even if I had to end it early because it was taking a very heavy toll on my energy levels and my mental health. Nothing serious, but even after a not so busy day at work, I would be exhausted, and mentally, I was just not at my peak. I got very sloppy at the end and didn't really write anything down, so I'm going based of memory. I shed off a bunch of weight and probably settled at around 74-75kg. The first row of abs was visible, and my love handles had halved, so I think I was pretty successful. I did get super busy and wasn't that consistent with the gym starting June 2024. During that same year, I was also trying to finish my backlog, which is recounted in my articles: Clearing the Backlog: Humble Purge Part II & Cleared the Backlog?: Humble Purge Part II. October is when I really fell-off the gym, and probably went 5 times between then and June 2025. Although the backlog project ended in December, I started a second job in the new year so I didn't have that much more time. I also didn't really eat much because I wasn't training, so I went back down to 72kg.

That is the bottom of the valley though, and it only went up from there. In June 2025, I moved to a new house which I don't pay rent for, and which has a garage. The garage also houses a lot of my in-laws' restaurant's stuff, but I managed to clear a bit of space for a home gym. With the money I would have had to spend on rent, I built a simple home gym and started re-training again in June 2025.

Aside on the home Gym

I am working with limited space, so my home gym is just a half-rack that was on sale at costco, a powerbar that was on sale, an ez-bar that was on sale, a bench that was on sal— you know what just assume everything was on sale from this point on because it was— all from bells of steel, some adjustable dumbbells, some elastic bands, and 345lb of plates from northern fitness. The only things I was mindful about when picking all the equipment was obviously the price but also not buying anything from american companies.
It ain't much but it's honest work. My brother-in-law also got a treadmill in there, and there was punching bag in a corner of the garage already. Anyways, that's all that's available to me, so I have to do my exercise selection accordingly.

July – August 2025

In July I was mostly just getting back in the bath, getting the muscle memory, cardio and a bit of strength back. I also started using a workout logging app, Hevy, which makes it much easier to track my programs and progress. At the end of that month, I went back home to France for my mom's 60th, and trained with my brother a bit, who coincidentally also just built a home gym. A quick side note on my brother's insane workouts; he only trains for 3 exercises: squat, bench and deadlift. He only trains 2 exercises per workout and in a low rep-range, because he's going for strength. And because he's lifting heavy, he's also taking very long rests between sets. While I was there, he was doing 3 sets of 3-5 reps for each exercise. This is how you arrive at the mind-boggling total of 18 reps in one hour of training on the lower end. I joined him for two of his workout and I must admit, it was pretty fun. It also gave me my first brush with strength since I started retraining, and it was a welcomed one. Nothing fancy, on deadlifts I was able to do 115kg 3x3, squats 70kg 5x4 and bench 65kg 5x3. But at least it was clear now that the muscle tear in my back had fully healed, without any long lasting effect. (Other notable things about my brother: his garage only comprises a squat rack and two motorcycle, and he is doing the carnivore diet)

In August I kept getting back into the swing of things until the middle of the month, where I committed to bodybuilding and following my own program, at least until the end of the year (I didn't follow through on this, more on that later).

August – October 2025: Birth of the New Model

Now that I was refamiliarised with training, I was able to see what I wanted and set myself goal. My new program would have as a focus core, legs, chest and biceps. Core for much needed stability during heavier lifts. Legs because I enjoy training them, and because since my weight loss my pants fit too loosely. Biceps because I enjoy training them, and chest because it is small and weak. You can't have a plan that prioritises everything, as it would set you up for failure, so the rest: upper back, lats, triceps, shoulders, calves, forearms would have be on the back burner for me.

Learning from my previous programs that had 5-6 exercises per workouts, I knew I wanted to keep them short, and therefore would only train 4 exercises per sessions. I would also only have 4 workouts per week, making it easier to move things around if I needed to. The current scientific literature seems to indicate that around 6 set per muscle group per workout is optimal, with each muscle groups worked 2-3 times per week, and a minimum of 4 sets per muscles group per week to keep them growing, and as much as high 10s, low 20s if you are prioritising them. That's basically what I did and reached this split:

In the end, counting sets for secondary muscles as well (for instance a set of bench press will count as a full set for chest, and half a set for triceps and front delts) we get the following number of sets per muscle groups per week:

Quads: 9 | Hams: 10.5 | Glutes: 12 | Hip Flex: 9 | Erect: 9 | Upper Back: 6 | Lats: 6 | Traps: 7.5 | Biceps: 9 | Triceps: 6 | Front Delt: 12 | Side Delt: 6 | Rear Delt: 4.5 | Chest: 10.5 | Abs: 12 |

My priorities are being hit with 9-12 sets per week, and the others with ~6 sets per week.

For the progression, I kept it pretty simple either changing the reps or weight periodically. If during a workout, I feel like 8-12 reps of an exercise is starting to not get me to failure (not being able to fully complete the last rep of a set), I'll increase the weight. It's fine if I after adding weight I have to lower the reps, I'll just then progress by changing the reps at that higher weight. If I'm on the lower end of my rep range for an exercise, I'll increase the number of reps over time until I get to around 6-8 for compounds or 12-15 for accessories, and then increase the weight. Then the cycle begins anew.

I started this program on Aug 20th and everything was fine. I logged all my workout on Hevy. I made a lot of progress on weights and overall strength. I also got some size back. One thing that I underestimated however is how taxing only using free weights (i.e. only using barbells and dumbbells for my workouts as opposed to also having machines and cables) was gonna be. I was not blessed with big joints in my upper body, and my wrist, elbows and shoulders were starting to not feel awesome every time. My lower back was also kinda taking a beating. This is why instead of waiting for the end of the year to change program, I decided to cook up a new one sooner. The last session with the program above was Oct 15th, after 8 weeks. It's a bit on the shorter side, but I gotta look out for myself. Because of life and stuff, I averaged between 3-4 sessions a week instead of the full 4 ones during that time. What came after is perfection.

November onwards: Winter BAKI Training Arc

Although everybody knows you're not supposed to do it, I had to for this winter arc. Not looking at the science or at what's optimal, we were going completely based on primal vibes and lizard brain. November denotes the beginning of the ultra-busy and stressful period at work, so I wanted something nice and fun. Same setup, 4 sessions per week. This whole program is centered around two main session, with two other sessions to hit other areas of my body, to maintain my size. Those two main workouts are just 3 pairs of supersetted exercise.

A superset is two or more exercises that you do at the same time. For instance if you superset curls and squats, you would do one set of curl, immediately followed by a set of squat, and then you rest. After you start over with curls, then squats, then rest.

Anyways, let's look at what I cooked up:

Session 1: Biceps, Triceps, Shoulders _{exercises grouped together with colours are supersetted, and the numbers are the number of sets}

Session 2: Legs, Abs

Session 3: Biceps, Triceps, Shoulders

Session 4: Back, Abs

This is a super fun program to run, and not taxing or exhausting at all, even with only free weights. I go as hard as I can each session, but because I'm hitting smaller muscles, I recover super fast and I can workout three days in a row without issues if I want. My arms and shoulders are gonna get massive come March, which is probably when I'll move back to a more conventional program. I gotta be honest, having such a stupid but fun program is huge with motivation. As I get busier and busier it's hard to find the will to workout sometimes, so being able to look forward to go “caveman lift rock to make arms big” is helping.

Dieting: Bodyweight Yo-yo

Something that goes hand in hand with training is diet. Your diet supports your training, so I had to make a couple of changes from my freeform eating. Let's go back to August 2025: when I started retraining, I still had a bit of love handles and obscured abs. For this new retraining, I wanted to start on a fresh slate, and therefore decided to get rid of a bit of fat. But I didn't want to do a classic cut, because as I described above, it didn't really fit my lifestyle and wouldn't be viable in the long run. It also would hamper my early progress. So I settled on mainlosing, the opposite of maingaining.

Maintaining is not gaining weight and not losing weight, maingaining is gaining weight — or buking — really really slowly, and main-losing is losing weight — or cutting — really really slowly. Main-losing is not a word or a concept in current gym culture, but it should be as it only makes sense, so I'm coining the term here.

I was eating around 1900-2000cals per day and trying to get around 1.4g of protein per day per kg of body mass, or about 100g. I recorded everything this time around:

I didn't want to be cutting for too long, only until my abs were visible and love handles mostly dealt with. I started at 72.3kg and slowly made my way down to 69.6kg over 4 weeks, with the cut ending on Sept 14th.

Now that the cut was done, it was time for a bulk, which goes hand in hand with the winter arc. Bulking has always been an issue for me, so I enlisted the help of Macrofactor, an app that allows you to track everything you eat, your weight and macros, as well as telling you how much you should eat for whatever weight goal you have. My goal would be to get back to 75kg, but I didn't want to just gain all my fat back, so I would be maingaining, which if you remember the above, is gaining weight really slowly. Well I think I was fairly successful as I only gained one kilogram in two month:

The dark purple line is my measured weight, the weight on the scale I enter every morning, and the light purple line is my extrapolated “real” weight according to the app. At least with macrofactor I don't have to bother making graphs

Conclusion and to the future

Well, that's it folks. This time around, with a home gym, it is harder for me to fall off training again, but I still gotta be careful. If I do fall off again though, I'll just get back up and have at it again. Again, again. I have many things to look forward to in the near future however: my in-laws will remove a bunch of their stuff from the garage and my gym will triple in size. I can't wait to have a ton of space to work with, and choosing what other training implements to get, and how to arrange everything. The priority will be a decent rowing machine, and maybe a cable machine/rack cable attachment. I'm doing fine with what I have though, so I'm in no hurry to get anything else. Another thing I'm looking forward to is to be back at a higher weight, and have bigger muscles. Not sure if I'll reach 75kg by the next article, or if I won't keep going higher. Guess my 2026 article will tell you all you need to know then.

Here's to a hundred more yearly training article.

Thank you for reading my logorrhea Eddie – Award winning author

Une fois n'est pas coutume, I thought I would do a little review of the movies I watched this month. I usually only watch 1 movie a month and its review lands direct to DVD on the café, but contrary to my habit, I've watched quite a few in August/September. I've been striving to read, watch or experience works more critically as of late, and reviewing stuff helps me do that. Since there were so many movies though, I didn't really plan on reviewing anything, so the reviews will be short.

Mickey 17 (2025)

I watched this in the plane coming back from France in August, above Canada. I actually did have a little review I was planning to do so this will be a more consequent review compared to the ones below. What a strange movie. It is very incompetent in many regards — there are so many plot points and little intrigues that are brought up and either abandoned, have no impact whatsoever or directly contradict everything in the movie. Minor spoilers ahead.

The love triangle is introduced early and completely abandoned after a little bit. It literally went nowhere and didn't add anything to the plot. Kai, whose whole point was to be the second love interest, completely disappears from the movie after it's abandoned and is useless. All the restrictions on the spaceship, which I though would be a great thing to explore, are completely ignored — the sex ban is so useless it makes no sense to have mentioned it. The calorie ban, is extremely underused and is forgotten about early on in the movie. The oxycimosomething drug plot also goes nowhere and is forgotten about, after taking quite a bit of runtime. The characters are pretty inconsistent as well. I am SO TIRED of antagonists being just trump caricatures, it's so overdone, it's lazy, it's unbearable. Just stop, we've all had enough, I beg you, please craft an interesting character. Other than that, it looks like Robbie P had fun, and it's enjoyable to see him just doing his thing. The movie overall is pretty inoffensive, but the way it just fills the runtime with useless and random things is very disconcerting. You get invested in a storyline, concept or another, and there are zero payoffs. I'm not mad to have seen it, but it was just barely ok.

The Accountant (2016)

I saw about two-thirds of The Accountant.

Shin Godzilla (2016)

Shin Godzilla is finally coming in 4k and for the occasion, Shin Godzilla came back to the theatre (only in the US and Canada). It being my favourite Godzilla movie, and one of my favourite movie period, I could not not see it. I dragged my lovely wife Tetyana along for the experience.

This theatrical version has about 20m of added scenes, which actually provided so much context and completely change the pacing and feel of the movie. Whereas it felt a bit choppy and hyper active before, with the viewer needing to pay attention or take the risk of not knowing what was going on, this now offers a much more comfortable viewing experience. It also reframes the US in an ever so slightly better light and worse light at the same time, where the original cut was very critical, and is also a bit more hopeful in it's vision of mankind. The political satire is still sharp, and some added scenes really make it clear what the issue discussed is. The rest is unchanged; the music is goated, the cinematography amazing, especially when it comes to colour and the portrayal of Godzilla as a god incarnate rather than a big lizard, the plot is good and the acting also great.

Really, this theatrical cut had me go from “I know it's probably not everyone's favourite, it's a bit of a weird one at times” to “nah Shin Godzilla being absolute cinema is not just a valid opinion, it is the right opinion”.

Knives out (2019)

I had heard a lot about this movie but never got around to see it. It was enjoyable. The establishing shots insisted upon themselves at the beginning, but once we're in the swing of things, the cinematography is not distracting. I had a good time. The acting is good, the plot's good, nothing is spectacular, but it all comes together to make a good movie. The only thing that ticked me off was Benoît Blanc's accent (actually the second thing that ticked me off, the first one being them pronouncing the C at the end of Blanc). He sounds like Robert Downey jr. in Tropic Thunder. It really took me out of it at first. But again, overall I had a good time watching the movie.

Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001)

The café's number one godzilla fan reporting back. Oh you don't believe me? Here's some hard evidence:

I assume the matter is settled now.

Anyways, out of all the Godzilla movies, Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (or GMK for short) was at the top 2 of my list, right below Shin Godzilla. One small issue though, the last time I saw it was easily 10 years ago. And while I had seen it many, many times, I had only seen it once with subtitles, the other times were undubbed japanese. Reader should also take into account that my english was not great 10 years ago, and since there were no french subtitles on my copy of it, I had to endure english and understood almost nothing. All of this to say that although I really liked to movie at the time, I had a very different experience of the movie than one might have.

I have put off updating my top Godzilla movie list since Godzilla Minus One (2023) came out, but I knew I would have to rewatch it at some point. I really didn't know if GMK would hold up to scrutiny now. I was really apprehensive about having to knock it down the list, or worst, now think that it's not a good movie.

I am extremely happy to report that the movie still slaps. The plot's good, the visual effects are good, the acting's good, the music is great, the pacing and battles are all amazing as well. The suits, puppets and stuff just don't age. Early CGI looks really rough nowadays, but good old rubber still looks awesome. The design of the monsters, the movement, the miniatures exploding.. everything is awesome. It remains securely in my top 2 of Godzilla movies. There are a bunch of stuff I hadn't caught on during my previous viewing (in which I could literally understand almost none of the dialogue). While thematically it's mostly focused on its critique of the refusal from Japan to own up and recognise its past action, there are still little nuggets of humour, and it even allows itself some feminist remarks. Wasn't expecting that in a 2001 japanese movie. It's also nice to have the main protagonist be a woman, which is the exception rather than the rule in Godzilla movies. I though the father daughter relationship, although not super deeply explored, was cute.

Nosferatu (2024)

I have been meaning to catch Nosferatu at the theatre, but I missed it, so while it was on my list for a while I didn't get around to seeing it for a while. Kinda wish I didn't miss it.

I thought the actress for Ellen gave a pretty weak performance, especially at the beginning. The dude who plays Friedrich looks also a bit out of his depth, but it also looks like he's doing his best most of the time so I can't blame him. Other than those, the acting is stellar, especially Thomas and Orlok. I loved the part of the movie that takes place during the journey and in the castle. The cinematography was so interesting and dream-like. I really like the design of Count Orlok, who looks like a Cossack, which makes more sense than an Eastern European count looking like a snazzy italian. I also like the more occult focus compared to it's source material (Dracula). One thing that held the movie back especially during that portion of the movie is the framerate. It's the first time it's been that noticeable to me that 24fps is just not adapted for a movie. The camera is restless during the journey+castle segment, but the low framerate makes any panning/ zooming shot — which is like two-thirds the shots of that part — look choppy and blurry. I know that it can feel weird for audiences to see stuff at higher framerates, but it's only because of habit. It is time we move on from the traditional restrictive 24fps format.

There is a very significant drop in the pacing between the castle part and Wisburg. I do not fault the movie, because the novel is even worse, with the pace plummeting after Arthur leaves the Castle. All things considered, the writers and director did the best with what they had to adapt. The thing that I thought was a bit lazily done was the “German” setting, which just feels super british. People speak victorian english with a british accent, people dress britishly, there really isn't anything distinctive from the London that Dracula is set in. And no, a random “Meine Herren” thrown by Willem Dafoe is not enough. I liked the ending though. The play on shadows during the movie was also nice, if a bit underused. I had a good time, especially in the beginning.

Glass Onion (2022)

I was gonna watch another godzilla movie, but I thought I would maybe refrain and keep it for later

I had a great time with Glass Onion. It's an improvement on some aspects of the first movie. Pacing is much better, and despite it being a 2h20, I did not see the time go. The portrayal of Benoît Blanc as a detective is also better, and we see him actually doing some deducing, without relying on puking gimmicks or coincidences like in the first movie. He's more active and I also liked that he had an accomplice. The offset parallel story telling was also a very nice addition, and added much depth to the movie. SPOILER It was also one of the first time I was genuinely surprised that a character that was shot didn't die SPOILER. I really liked that BB's investigation was initially thwarted off because the murderer was actually a fucking idiot. The dynamics of the people in it, relating to Miles, were not as intricate as Knives Out, but the less straight forward plot makes up for it. The ending was a bit meh but overall it was good.

Daniel Craigs was drippy as hell, and I found it so funny that he sneakily draws attention to his various Omega watches in every movie (he's an Omega watch brand ambassador).

Alien Romulus (2024)

Another movie allegory of sexual assault, we're on a roll this month.

Kind of a mix bag. I am not super into alien, but I appreciate the whole HR Geiger design element of it. I liked the more youthful side of the movie, with the cast being made of mostly youngsters and all of them randos (at least to me, but I don't really watch movies). The acting was generally good, with the ND (Andy) one being a really good performance. The pacing is solid, but it slows down a tad two-thirds of the way through to make a lot of room for what I can only only assume is nostalgia-bait. There's those introductions of stuff and shots that really focus on things and linger unnaturally on them. I'm not a big alien fan so it was lost on me, but it still felt weird. The worst I think is the CGI android, which is apparently the android from the first alien. Absolute dystopia to just bring back actors from the dead, I don't care if their kids or grandkids signed off on it, it's just awful. It also looked pretty bad. SPOILER I wasn't expecting to see another human-xenomorph hybrid so soon (or ever) I must admit SPOILER.

There is a big issue with the movie through, it's that everything happens in the span of 37min or something. And yet in that time a xenomorph has time to be implanted in a human, and grow to maturity, with half of the movie remaining. It's even worse with the SPOILER human alien hybrid, which literally goes from small baby to 8ft monstrosity in 3min in the movie SPOILER.

The movie looks great though and was pretty refreshing on the alien take, but only for half of it. I overall had a good time. Ma man really likes his grain.

Are you happy Liam?

I think watches are cool, and in this brief article, I'll tell you about them.

1 – the watch

Everybody knows what a watch is, but do they know how they work? Maybe, anyways:

anatomy

A watch is composed of parts, here they are:

front and back of a watch

movement

The movement is the engine of the watch. It can run on many types of fuel like batteries, solar, movement, or winding.

When it's operated by a battery or solar it's a quartz movement, when it's winding (a spring inside the movement) it's mechanical. Automatic means it's self-winding by a rotor. Some people use mechanical and automatic interchangeably.

complications

A complication in a watch is anything that is extra on top of telling time and is part of the movement. Different markings on the bezel don't count. The most common complications are a chronograph, a date and/or day window. Less common are moon phases, month window, power reserve indicator, world timer and alarms. Those are self-explanatory.

Others like small seconds needs explaining. Basically, the seconds hand has its own tiny sub-dial and rotates in it. You also have more fun complications like GMT — it's an extra hand that tells you the hour of another time zone. Coupled with a rotating bezel, watches with a GMT complication can keep track of 3 time zones at the same time. It's pretty cool. It's my favourite complication right now. There are others, but those are the main ones. There are also different types of each, you can have various flavours of chronographs for example.

design – types of watches

There are many designs for watches, but a lot of them fit the same broad vibe. There is overlap of course. Anyways, here are the main ones, I think:

Diver watches – it's for divers. They're usually bulky, water-resistant for 100s of meters, durable, highly legible and glow in the dark. I like them a lot:

Dress watches – it's for special occasions. Despite the name it also works with suits. They're usually slimmer, simpler, the dials can be more colourful and intricate but overall the watch is going for an understated vibe:

Racing watches – it's for timecels. They usually have a chronograph, small seconds and a tachymètre. The tachymètre is a marking on the bezel allowing you to tell how fast things are going when used with the chronograph:

Pilot watches – you guessed it. They're either highly legible or completely schizo, no in-between:

Field watches – They're for the “field”. More nebulous, basically they're very simple, highly legible and durable. They usually have 24h markings and sometimes a compass bezel:

Novelty – anything goes:

design – uh, other stuff

It's design again. Watches have different shapes, but round is obviously the most common. They also have different sizes, with men's watches being in general bigger than women's. The apparent size of a watch is mostly dictated by the case diameter, and the lug to lug distance (how tall the watch is). But also, thickness can be important.

For the main body of the watch, many materials can be used. For the case, plastic, stainless steel, gold and titanium are common. There are different grades for each material. Other materials are used too, more rarely.

If the bracelet/strap is metal, the material usually follows the case material. Otherwise you can have metal, rubber, textile, leather... bracelets/straps. Honestly, there is a lot of personalisation available with them. There's different clasp mechanisms for each, but they're not exclusive to any material. There are different styles for each as well, like metal has oyster and jubilee bracelets:

Recently, I've been rocking with the nato strap (and I hope it's been rocking with me too.)

For the “crystal”, obviously we don't want to use glass, because it would shatter instantly. Acrylic glass (plexiglass), mineral glass and sapphire glass are most often used. Out of those three, acrylic is the least scratch-resistant, and sapphire the most. But then sapphire is the least shock absorbent out of the three. There's trade-offs for each. This leads us to general care tips.

general care tips

Here are some general care tips:

• modern watches are not super fragile, you don't need to baby them. Obviously don't bang'em hard or drop them from heights. Just don't be careless

• if you're changing the time, date, or winding your watch, take it off your wrist first

• don't change the time/press pushers while you're in the pool or the ocean. the sea is also a no-no

• don't over-wind your watch, if you can't turn the thing anymore, it means you should stop. duh

• there's precise moving metal pieces in watches, they don't like strong magnets

• try not to change the day/date around midnight, it could be strenuous(big word) for the movement. If you have to, do it before 10pm and after 2am.

2 – watch world

There's a whole world around watches, they don't appear out of thin air.

the brands

Just like with everything a couple of brands own everything, but you also have a couple independents that are holding strong:

Don't get too wrapped up in brands, if the watch is good quality and the price is right, it doesn't matter what's written on the dial. Actually, I guess slave labour is not cool so maybe look into the brand a bit.

the people

Since watches can be expensive, it can attract the worst crowd. There are lots of snobs and influencers, therefore the gatekeeping and manufactured hype/hate are there too. There's also a ton of rich people that think that because they can afford expensive watches it makes them connoisseurs. They're wrong.

3 – watches and me

watches and me I guess

When I was a kid I had no money, but I had a dinosaur watch, which is infinitely cooler. In middle/high school I got my parents to buy me a cheap steel watch. In university, I had negative money, but I watched some watch content. My dad who was also a watch enthusiast gifted me watches for some birthdays. (he's still alive but he got a rolex now). Youtube recommended me some watch videos recently and I got back into it. Now I have money, but I also have bills. However I started a second job. I was gonna put all that new money into watches, but my cat got constipated and the vet's expensive.

constipated cat

changing batteries

Most of the watches I own I've had for 5+years. Some even for 10. Almost all are quartz (i.e. they need batteries). Watch batteries die in about 4-5 years depending on the watch. I went to a clock place in late 2021 and I had them all changed, but I guess they gave me shit batteries cause they all died in 2023. At one point I had no functioning watch in my collection.

When I got back into watches this year, I decided I should probably have functioning ones. I wanted to change the batteries myself, cause it's way cheaper.

Opening them up was annoying, but usually once opened it was fine. There is multiple possible mechanism to open/close a watch case. You can have screws, have a screw-in back, or just pressed-on. They can all be kinda tricky. Anyways, now I have working watches.

i had to put something here, I guess

why I think watches are cool

There are so many reasons why watches are cool. What's even cooler, is that the answer to why watches are cool depends on who you ask. There are so many flavours of coolness. Watches are such tiny things and yet have such depth that you have people nerding-out about different aspects. Some are movement nerds, some are design nerds, others are manufacturing nerd, watch history nerd, brand history nerds...

But this is my exposé so I guess you are stuck with what I think makes watches cool.

The fact that watches are made to last not only years, but even decades, in a world where everything's life cycle is getting shorter and shorter, is really cool. Just to think that the watch I'm wearing today could be passed down to my great-grand kids is so cool.

The tech is also really cool, how we use all those teeny-tiny gears and parts, and a simple spring, to make a functioning mini-clock that can even rewind itself is incredible. Some complications like perpetual calendar — where the day, date, month are displayed and never need adjusting (yes, even for leap years) — are also so impressive and cool.

Then they look good. There are so many designs, some classic, some more out there, but a lot of them look cool. You can style it with your clothes, you can have the watch standing out from your outfit — even looking at them on their own is great. From dial, case, bracelet... there is a lot to appreciate visually, and it's cool.

Jacques Cousteau and his trusty black-dialed Doxa

Finally, it's cool to think about watches in the past, as indispensable tools. Before everyone had a tiny computer in their pockets, you could only tell time with a watch, a clock or counting the bells from the church. It is hard to carry a clock around (and even harder to carry a church) so if you were out and about, a watch was your only way of telling time. But at the same time, for some professions, being able to tell time was a life or death thing. You have a secret operation that depends on coordination with your team; better synchronise your watches. You're a pilot an only have fuel for another 40min; you better know when that is. You're a diver and have to decompress for 10min before you're allowed to surface; you need to be able to tell the time if you don't wanna get the bends. Thinking about watches as tools in the olden days is really fascinating. (and cool)

conclusion – random advice

Here are my parting words of wisdom:

• at the end of the day you have to embrace the dings and scratches
• maybe don't buy a ton of cheaper watches instead of a few cool more expensive ones that you will always wear
• remember that watches are meant to last you a lifetime; buy them responsibly. do you see yourself liking that watch in 5, 10, 20 or 50 years?
• ebay is your worst enemy. yes vintage watches are cool and sometime affordable, but do you really need 20?
• be careful with what you like, and what suits you. it doesn't always match up
• getting into watches is a personal journey, don't listen to people. including me. and all of the above

_{“cool” counter:21 most illustrations were shamelessly stolen from the web}

[Warning there are some tiny graphs here, you might want to read this article on a computer]

Recap

Quick recap for those who don't want to read/reread my previous article:

Humble Bundle was a subscription service that would give you a ton of games every month. I was subscribed for 26 months and acquired a lot of games through it. I would usually play a couple and then leave the rest to rot. In my steam library, comprising 435 games, I had 172 games I had never played. There was only one way I could get rid of those unplayed games; by playing them. At first, on a joint youtube channel with a bunch of friends — The Raddest Channel — I posted videos of me playing those games. But it just took too much effort, and I only played 15 games in the span of a year, not even giving some of them a fair chance. This was the Humble Purge: Act I.

Last year, after seeing two videos from Daryl Talks Games, where he details how he conquered his backlog, I set out to play all those games sitting untouched in my library. I gave myself a year to play 110 of them, the rest just being too poorly rated or of too little interest to me. I would give each game a fair chance, and play them for at least an hour before I could call quits. If I didn't enjoy the game after that, I wouldn't force myself and just let it go. I began, on December 3rd 2023. I would report my progress in a google sheet, with reviews for the games I played, how hyped I was to play them, and some other info. This was Humble Purge Act II.

In this article, I am to report my findings. Did I succeed? What was it like? Were there hardships? Am I fed up with video games forever? All will be answered below.

Setbacks

Let's first talk about the major setbacks that hindered this project. Can't have a good project without some setbacks. Since this project is extremely time intensive, and not much else, all the setbacks below just took some time away from playing the games in my backlog. In no particular order:

1: Marco

Ever since I moved away from Kingston, my best friend Marco and I took the habit of playing video games together a couple of times a week, sometimes every day of the week. It could be coop, multiplayer, it didn't really matter. We either played the games seriously, or used it as an excuse to catch up or hang out. I was not gonna stop playing video games with my best friend just for this project, even if they weren't the ones in my backlog. Sometimes we replayed games, spent 50h on a new game... I decided to add the new games I played with him, all from after Dec 2023, in my backlog — more about that in “My experience”.

_{Marco and me at my wedding (I am the one being carried)}

2: Trackmania

None of you will remember the Trackmania videos I uploaded to the Raddest Channel, but in those, I went through the campaign maps and got all the gold medals. For those unaware, Trackmania is a sorta arcady racing game, in the way that it is like you are controlling hot wheels. Everything is deterministic and the races can be quite spectacular, which makes the game particularly well suited for e-sport. This is how I originally discovered the franchise, through ZeratoR, a french streamer hosting often the biggest Trackmania events in Europe/the world. The newest instalment of the game made a resurgence on the intrawebs this summer and I got sucked into it. I just love this game, it is so addictive. I can easily play the same track for half an hour just to improve my time by 0.1s. I got really into it for the first three months, devoting almost 70h during that span. Fair to say it did impact this backlog a bit.

3: Got too busy at work

They had the audacity to make me work at work. I still can't believe it. I girlbossed a bit too close to the sun and I am now mostly responsible for a whole section of my department. This means that while at the beginning of the year I had time to play some games at work, it soon became impossible to do so, unless during periods of intense downtime, which became non-existent for me. Baring August, from April to the end of November, I could not play anything at work.

My experience:

The very beginning of the crusade against my backlog is described in the first article. I was very confident and eager to take on this project. I also didn't put too much pressure on myself, but since I was motivated and had so many games to choose from, I made great progress nonetheless. I mean, look at that commitment: 111h in December alone, I was on fire! To be fair, towards the middle of December it gets super, super slow at work, and I literally have nothing to do. Since I was only beginning to touch the backlog, I had so many games that were suitable for work that I just spent an hour or two a day playing while at the office. The same was true until about the last third of January, when work started to pick back up a bit. February is also a pretty quiet month, so the trend of me being able to play a lot continues. March is when it gets busy at work, and it shows. The graph is not 100% accurate, as I didn't log my playtime per game per month — I'm not a maniac. I just counted the playtime for a game for the month I started it. This generally works since I only played most games for a couple of days to around a week, but some I played over months/they overlap months, causing inaccuracies. I wanted to make the data analysis simple, so the only two games I've actually divided up per month are: Slay the Spire (the second time I played it, for an extra 34h, was between Aug/Sept) and Trackmania, that I've played for now 88h from June to November — counting it in one month would create a huge outlier. Anyways, as I was saying, my busyness at work is shown in the graph, with intensity ramping up from March to July, leading to August when I finally got a reprieve from work, followed by a vacation.

Before going any further, let's talk about the process, which was pretty straightforward. From my list, I would choose any game that catches my eye. Sometimes I would also check how long it was, and some other times I didn't care. Choosing games was more vibes-based rather than calculated. Usually, before the game had even started, I would have an idea of whether I would see it to the end, give up, or quit it after the required hour. Even if I wanted to play certain games initially, I had an intrinsic understanding of what I liked, and despite the vibes directing me to a specific game, if the gameplay didn't look like something I would enjoy, I would abandon them without remorse. I was wrong a couple of times, and the games that I misjudged were the source of my biggest disappointment — or the very opposite. In any case, there were still some games that required me to play them to be able to sort them in a category. Now apart from a couple of exceptions, after the first hour, it was clear which games I was gonna drop right away and which ones I would play until the end. When I got it wrong this time, it was usually because the games became ass nearing the end, and I therefore dropped them since I wasn't having fun anymore, when I thought I would finish the game for sure. There might be an article in the future about the biggest surprises, good and bad, of this Humble Purge (you best believe I'll milk this project for as many articles as I can). No matter my opinion of them, I would play the games seriously for an hour, without distraction, and just try to have fun. I wanted to maximise fun, so I didn't bother playing on the hardest difficulties or giving myself real challenges. Unless the game was more fun on higher difficulties — which happens — I was usually cruising on normal. Some games would enthrall me and I would play them for hours on end, others were more of a slow burner. A few even, despite my will to play them, could only be stomached for a half hour at a time. And then some were just complete ass, and I couldn't wait for that mandatory hour to be over. When I was done with a game, I would immediately write the review “à chaud” as we say in french (meaning off the cuff/in the heat of the moment). I had some trouble writing really meaningful reviews at first, but I got better as time went on. I think having written the reviews without having had the time to digest games was the right call, as they were more genuine this way. Because of this, we get some interesting quotes like:

“[...]Although kinda funny the first time I listened to it [the background music], pair an already overused lick with the repetitiveness of the music and you will want to kill yourself.[...]“

from my review of Wizards of Legend, which you will be surprised to learn was rated 8/10 despite the previous comment. Since I find it hard to be verbose about something good and am very eloquent about things I find bad, my style of review is usually “[one or two positive things followed by a very lengthy paragraph about everything wrong about the game] 9/10”

Let's come back to our chronological retelling of the project. I had just gotten some time off in August after an intense period of work, and I had put much energy into playing some games during this break. Around the beginning of September, I grew a tad tired and gave myself a break: two weeks or so of minimal gaming. That's where it started to go downhill. Coming back from my break, mid-September, I realised how many games I still had to play, and how little time I had left. My deadline was not the end of the year, but December 3rd. I basically had only two months to finish everything, and I still had about 25 games to go through. I had to start hustling. In the last two weeks of September, I played 8 games, for a total of 25.5h. And those were also not the games I was the most excited about, which I had already completed at the beginning of the backlog. And since my backlog was 110 games, finishing a game amounted to less than 1% of progress. This amount of time spent on those games, with this lack of meaningful progress, on top of a full-time job, the gym, other responsibilities... I got a mini burn-out from this and I was slowly losing hope in the project and myself. I even started to question the feasibility of it, or if I should just quit now; I had played about 85 games after all.

So I went back to the source, the videos that had inspired me to begin this project. Surely they would give me the strength to push through... They didn't. That's because those videos are a cautionary tale. It is impossible to finish your backlog, and putting a time limit on it is stupid. This is the message of Daryl Talks Games' second video. Although his backlog and mine are a bit different, the lesson should have stuck, but it just flew right over my head. I must have been blinded by confidence and enthusiasm when I first watched them. Watching those videos now after experiencing a backlog purge hits completely differently. I had misunderstood his videos completely, but no more. Taking in this lesson, I decided to start axing some games, and adding others. The games I know I would enjoy and want to 100% did not need to be on this list. Also added the games I played with Marco, because I did discover and play those games this year.

_{Thumbnail from Daryl Talks Games' videos, which inspired this project}

At first, the backlog allowed me to give up on games I didn't enjoy guilt free. But at about 85% completion of the project, the approaching deadline had the opposite effect, where I would feel guilty for spending too much time on a game, which is absolutely not the point of this Humble Purge. The point of this Humble Purge was to give the games I had in my library a chance and play cool games I didn't think I would like. Maybe also feel less guilty about the state of my gaming library.

With this new goal in mind, I continued my quest with renewed enthusiasm. If I didn't finish, it didn't matter. I could extend it to the end of the year; no one would hold me accountable anyways. I could also just remove some extra games, again, no one would hold me accountable. After my little reorganisation, the final number of games in the purge was still 110, the one I added from Marco balancing perfectly the ones I had removed. We were now in the middle of the first week of October. I only had to play 11 games over a bit less than 8 weeks (12 weeks if I extended it to the end of the year). Still challenging, but nothing too hard.

_{backlog spreadsheet around October}

The next week of October went fine, and I got through a couple of games. I then got the busiest and most stressful three weeks of the year and couldn't really play anything. It was a really fun cocktail of personal issues, travel, work, bank issues... Well, at least I can say I'm glad I sorted the whole “existential crisis over the backlog” out before that period. I would have 100% called it quits otherwise. In any case, just like any intense period, it came to pass. We were now in November, and I only had 6 games remaining. Granted, they were almost all 12h+ games, but even with only 3 weeks or so left in the project, I felt good. Again, I could add all the weeks of December to it anyways. I was so confident (and impatient) that I even started writing this and coding up the graphs (love you matplotlib <3). I was just enjoying my time with the project, which is exactly what I wanted.

After so much infortune, my luck finally turned and I got sick, right before the Remembrance Day weekend, giving me me a 5-day weekend to finish some games. This was a blessing (apart from the being sick part) and I managed to reduce my backlog to 2 games. And we were barely halfway through November. A couple of days later I crossed off the penultimate game, actually finishing it. I took a few days off to start working on this article, play other stuff, read, touch grass, live life... I then embarked on my last game, which was supposed to be 30h, 52h with side content. That last game was Assassin's Creed Origins, which was ass. After valiantly suffering through it for 5h30, I abandoned it and was done with the backlog. This was kind of anti-climactic, I would have loved to finish the backlog on a banger, where I sit in front of the credits after beating the game thinking “damn...”. But no, the last game was just boring slop, and I ended the backlog on a random Sunday afternoon. It reminded me of finishing my degree during covid.

Final tally: 110 games played, 758h devoted to the project, starting on December 3rd 2023 and ending Nov 17th 2024, after exactly 350 days.

_{Red line is games to play to stay on track. I replayed Sekiro (I blame Spencer and Vivian) and played a ton of Trackmania (I blame myself) in July hence the little drop}

The Data

The Games

First, let's get to know the data. I'm not sure why I didn't write this part in my first article, but it is a blessing in hindsight, as I swapped out some games and added others in the end. I won't bore you with too many stats, but still, prepare to be bored. I hope you like graphs.

Let's start with game genre; there were many different genres in this backlog, and even trying to make the categories as broad as possible, a fifth of all games were not able to fit in any major categories. Genres such as: investigation, tower defence, fighting games, racing games, dating sim, city builder... each represented at most <4% of the backlog. We can look at the spread of categories below:

If I was to concoct the most average game out of all the ones I have played, it would be a game starting with an S, that came out in 2017, is an action game, has a steam note of 89% and a metacritic score of 79. It would take someone 12.5h to finish the main story and 22h to finish it with all the side content. Believe it or not — out of all the games that came out in 2017 — this matches Sniper Elite 4 the best, which I played, so I guess it wins the “most average game of this backlog” award. In general, I played games from 2002-2024, with a steam rating from 64-99%, and a metacritic score from 60-97. To finish their main stories, the games took between 30min-60h and if I wanted to do the side content on top, it could go from 30min-114h. While most game's side content only added a couple of hours, some doubled or even septupled the duration of a game, which is insane. We can see such examples in the graph below, which shows the time to completion in orange, and the time to also do the side content in blue for each game. One bar is one game:

In total, if I had actually played all these games to completion, it would have taken me 1445h (or two months and 5h nonstop) and 2511h (or 3 months 14 days and 5h nonstop) if I had done the side content too! We've talked about how much time I devoted to the project above, but we'll talk about the time devoted to each game later. The time needed to finish a game — according to HowLongToBeat — did vary a lot, and we can see the distribution below.

As we can see, thankfully, most of the games I had to play were less than 10h long, and even with side content barely made it past 15h. I'm not gonna dwell on this graph for too long; it is not that relevant, as this is not the time it took for me to play the games, only the time they were supposed to take. Other than this, the hype and initial ratings of games were already discussed in the first article; whether or not a game was in the backlog depended on them. Let's jump to the results to see how many games I actually finished, and how much time I spent on games in general.

The Results

Since it would have taken me 1445h to finish every game, and I completed the backlog after 758h, it is reasonable to assume that I did not finish every game. The states of games' completion were:

• Finished which means I finished the campaign, and maybe played the side content too
• Abandoned, which means I played for a couple of hours, maybe did some side content, and stopped playing
• 1h-ed, which means I only played the game for the minimum 1h before abandoning it. This also counts games that were played for 1.5h granted this represented less than 50% of the campaign's duration. Games which campaign could and were completed in an hour are of course counted in the Finished category.
• NA (Not Applicable) means that there is no campaign or story to be completed

As we can see, I still finished almost 44% of the games in this backlog, which amounts to 48 games and is no small feat if I do say so myself (and I do). This is the largest category here, by almost 15%. On the other side of the spectrum, there is only 23 games — or about 21% of the backlog — that I played only for the minimum required duration. It is to be noted that the NA games that I only played for 1h are only counted here, and therefore the NA slice of the pie should be counted as either abandoned or finished (whatever the definition of finished might be). Speaking of Abandoned, they only represent the second-largest part of the pie, 29% or 32 games. Those games could have too frustrating to finish, maybe the story became bad, maybe a new mechanic breaks the gameplay... In any case, they were good enough for me to play more than the required amount, but not good enough for me to see them through the end. I am especially proud of those first two stats, since having a backlog where I only play 1 hour of each game and then go on to the next would have been a shame. I was serious about this and finished almost half of all the games — if we discount the ones that were NA. I took the time to enjoy the games in this backlog, and we will see below how much time games took me:

Look at those graphs, the first being so detailed it's almost useless, and the second one so broad it also almost useless, yet both are saying the same thing. The worst of both worlds — true perfection. The top graph shows how many games were played for each playtime, in increments of 30min. For instance, we can see that 8 games had a total playtime of 6h. There is a major peak at 1h and some minor ones at 6h, 10h and 18h. The second graph shows percentage of games per playtime ranges. Almost all games — 95.5%— were played for 1h to 19h. As one might expect, the majority of the games were played between 1-3.5h. Still, almost half of all games were played for more than 4h and a quarter for 7h or more. Those graph show that I did take my time on the games that deserved it, as I had planned for this project. I will say it again: at the end of the day, the goal was just to play through the game I already own, and have fun with it. If only there was a way to quantify how much I enjoyed myself... oh yeah, more graphs baby:

After so many graphs, finally a nice Gaussian distribution. Here, we are shown how many games I rated a specific grade. As we can see, the games in this backlog were rated pretty highly. Again, that is to be expected as this backlog is composed of 110 games picked out from the cream of the crop of the 172 games I own and have never played. Now, this means nothing if I don't explain what my rating consists in.

• 0/10 would be a game that I could not derive any fun from
• 2/10 there is very little interesting and very little fun
• 5/10 is slop and adequate but no more in any category/has one category really holding it back
• 10/10 fulfills all of my expectation for various criteria, and also is a ton of fun
• 11/10 exceeds all expectation, messiah of the backlog

The ratings were only integers, with a couple of exceptions for games that were better than a 10, but not quite an 11. Also, Prey got a non-round rating. These are of course not objective ratings, but *my* ratings, which are heavily influenced by my tastes. If you are somehow deluding yourself into thinking those ratings might actually hold some weight other than the ranking of my taste, and need convincing that my rating scale is bad, please consider that I gave Mass Effect 2 and Dead Space 2 a 4/10 and Batman Arkham City a 5/10 while the Frog Detective Trilogy gets 10/10s across the board. The ratings are also not really internally consistent. Deal with it.

I was not a harsh critique in general, and my ratings are globally generous. While I might have gone off on some games in their review section, I'm sure they deserved it. Maybe I was set off by how wrong my expectations were. We'll see that right now with the next graph, comparing my “hype” to play the games, which I recorded before playing the games, with the ratings I gave after playing them:

Those graphs are the result of doing a simple subtraction between the hype and the rating. Any positive value means that I found the game to be better than I though, a negative value is the opposite. We see that a difference of 0, i.e. the hype being the same as the rating, is prevalent here by quite a huge margin. This is probably due to the anchoring effect — when it was time to grade the games, I probably looked at the hype and thought the number I previously gave the game made sense. The first graph shows that there is a skew towards the positive, which is great as this indicates that in general, I enjoyed the games better than I thought I would. This was a reoccurring theme during this backlog, and I originally thought I was a bit picky when it came to video games, but no. There are just some bangers out there that I just hadn't tried out.

Can't really tell a lot from the second graph, but I made it because it looks cool; each bar, either blue or red, represents a game. The average hype was a 6.53/10 and the average rating a 6.92/10. To recap, 31 games were below expectations, 29 met them, and 51 surpassed them. Of the games that exceeded expectation, some have cracked the top 3. We will take a look at them next.

Top 3 Best Games :

I've played so many games, it would be a shame not to talk about any here; this project was about them, after all. I will keep it to a short list, and only include good games, as I want to bring some positivity into this article. I also remember good games way better than the bad ones; those have been erased from my memory. In this article, which is already long enough, we'll only take a look at the top 5% of games.

Honourable Mentions

First, let's start with some honorable mentions, which are at the top end of my 10/10, in no particular order:

MOLEK-SYNTEZ a great puzzle game about fabricating molecules. It's not only about succeeding, but also efficiency and economy of movement.

SLAY THE SPIRE hands down the best rogue-like I've played. The card system works so well and there is just the right amount of content and challenge.

SUNDERED soft metroidvania that took me by surprise. It is peaceful and claustrophobic, beautiful and depressing. Visuals are incredible (and hand drawn!) and the atmosphere is truly unique.

STILL THERE not exactly a point and click (thank god) and not exactly a puzzle game. The story and twist are what caught me off-guard, because they're so great. Just the right length.

The Top 3

Those games are not at the top end of my 10/10 scale — they have exceeded it. They are the 11/10.

3 – Celeste

Celeste, developed by Maddy Makes Games, is a game that has been heavily hyped on the internets, and I was worried it would not live up to its name. I shouldn't have been, because despite my high expectations this game still managed to surprise me with how good it is. I am not an avid enjoyed of platformers, I don't dislike them either, but this one hits just right. The controls are very responsive, and the gameplay mechanics dialed in. It was a true pleasure to navigate the levels, and it was impossible to get frustrated — especially since the game autosaves each panel and the respawn is fast — and that's coming from the guy who died about 1530 times in his playthrough. The level design compliments the controls and game mechanics perfectly. I really liked how there was a new gameplay mechanic for each chapter, but that didn't carry on to the others. There was no need to remember many things at once, just the basics and the specific gameplay gimmick of the chapter. It also kept things fresh. The design theme changed with each chapter, adding to the novelty. But these are not just disjointed chapters, there is a global story which is intertwined in the platforming and progresses with each chapter. The story is great — with some originality and gravitas — the characters are endearing and the progression of the protagonist is interesting.

Coming back to the design, the graphics are great and all the little effects, particle effects... are a welcome addition that only made the experience better. But honestly what steals the show here is the music, it is just incredible, I loved it. Moving through the panels, with this ambience, the music, it was just awesome, the vibes were always immaculate. The game is also the perfect length, and with it being divided up in distinct chapters, I never got tired of playing.

Would I recommend this game to anyone? Pretty much. Unless your hand/eye coordination is atrocious, you should be able to enjoy this game. It is the most accessible one of this top 3, despite its difficulty being the second highest here. I'm not saying it is not challenging, it definitely is, but it is a challenge you can surely overcome.

2- Disco Elysium

Speaking of video games not being accessible, we have Disco Elysium from the now infamous ZA/UM. If you really don't like politics, sociology, philosophy and big-words in general, this game is not for you. If you don't like reading, this game is not for you. If you don't like classic RPGs without combat, this game is not for you. Otherwise, it's awesome. Liem strongly recommended this game to me, so I waited until I was on vacation to play it, to have time to be fully immersed.

While the gameplay is good, it is really the writing and the visuals that upstage everything. I already spoke about the visuals in my September Readings when I talked about the artbook of this game. I will expand about the writing and story here, if you want to read about and see the visuals, checkout the reading report. The world and story go hand in hand, and it's great. The world and universe are truly unique, and it sucks in a realistic way. Its inhabitants react to you in a believable manner, and you can actually influence things. There are many choices to be made here, and even the most inconsequential ones will have a dialog option associated to them down the line. While your character is a bit coo-coo and it makes sense for player to choose his opinions, the NPCs have their own dialog, consistent with their character experiences and beliefs. The characters are all great, especially your partner Kim Kitsuragi. Each one of the facets of your identity is also a character, and they are all unique and have very “colourful” personalities to say the least. The way you interact with the world is also through them, which makes the gameplay really interesting. That's the part that I like the most, the interaction between our character and himself and our character and Kim. While you as the player have no idea of what's going on most of the time, Kim is there to provide useful info and feedback, but he never holds your hand (if only...). Kim is the best sidekick I have ever seen in a video game, and actually feels like a companion rather than an NPC. Your identities are also here to give you feedback, that is tainted by what they are — for instance drama's observation might be a little more exciting than reality — and whether you can trust them or not (which is kinda trusting yourself) is for you to decide. Other than the writing, the voice acting, which was mostly added in the free final cut version, is phenomenal. Everything adds to the atmosphere, which is superb.

​

Finally, the writing for your character, your thoughts, your own dialog is so well done, and there was more than one occasion where I was laughing like and idiot at my screen. The story is half an investigation, and half a personal journey, and is coherent and original. I try to keep all of my reviews as spoiler free as I can, so there is not much more that I can say, other than: play it for yourself.

1- Darkwood

With Darkwood, from indie studio Acid Wizard, being my number one pick out of all 110 games I played this year, I didn't know how to approach its review. There is absolutely nothing I can say that would even approach giving you an idea of how incredible this game is. I played it all the way at the beginning of the backlog, in January, but it is still to this day always on my mind. It just stuck to me and is that memorable. This was the 11.5/10 game of the backlog, meaning I didn't know games could be that good.

It originally didn't dawn on me how good this game is, because I abandoned it after 2h. The game is divided into a night and day cycle, you forage and progress the story during the day, and at night, you try to survive. Those nights are the most stressful things I have ever experienced in a video game, and I've played a bunch of horror games. No cheap tricks here, due to intentional gameplay limitations — it's top down, you cannot see outside your cone of vision and your vision is only focused on where your cursor is — you'll be tensed up the whole night from being so on guard. You are confined to your hideout during the night, a dilapidated house full of unfixable holes which can be plugged with furniture, but enemies will push it out of the way to get in. You cannot survive without light and of course light attract enemies; they will get in or at least try to. When? Who knows, but you better be on high alert for all 5min of the night because you have very little health, and your weapon will break at some point. There are random events making the whole thing even more difficult and stressful because it wouldn't be fun otherwise. You also have limited lives before game over, except on the easiest difficulty. The sound design and ambience in general is so well done; before getting desensitised I felt like I was on the verge of an aneurysm every night. This is the reason I initially abandoned it — it was good, but it was so tense I forgot to breathe, waiting for the morning light. Yet despite this, after sleeping on it, I decided to push on. And I'm glad I did.

I loved the ambience, from the game design, the story, characters, the graphics, the music, sound design... everything is so alien but coherent. It is just a different experience. The gameplay loop is well oiled, but it is the story and atmosphere that really bring this game together. The setting is so simple in a way but original. I love that it doesn't hold your hand, so at some points in the very disjointed story you just stumble by accident on some stuff, and the progression just feels so organic. I will not speak anymore about this game, the only true way to really experience how great it is is to play it.

Aparte

This last part, the Top 3, used to lead straight to the conclusion. I had finished writing all of this article. I had done the graphs, inserted them, created the gifs that needed to be created... The first draft was 100% complete, and apart from checking for spelling mistakes or grammar errors, I could have published it. I was about to get a final word count and do some advertising on the café before releasing it. Someone had other plans for me, and the article could not be finished, not before I touched on what someone had released:

MOTHERFU-

Unbeknownst to me, Daryl Talks Games was also secretly doing a backlog this year and released a video about it. My project came about as a direct inspiration from his first two videos, I therefore cannot end this article without mentioning his third backlog one. Let's preface this conversation by saying that his video is great, as usual, and I would encourage you to check his work out. I'm actually not mad he put out his video, and it was really fun seeing the parallels between our projects. I was trying to complete my backlog learning from his mistakes, but then he was also playing though his backlog, learning from his mistakes! I especially liked that his video was really focused on games rather than his progress this time, it was a nice change. It is also interesting to see that we have reached the same conclusion in the end (see my conclusion); the “backlog” needs to be a dynamic list of games you play, and not just a list of games you are planning on playing. _{he's just like me fr fr}

Conclusion

What did I get out of it

First, having a year-long project is sick. I can't remember the last time I had a project like that, or if I ever had one. Devoting hours to it and progressing despite the hurdles, actually sticking to it, feels great. I am proud of myself for completing this project, especially since it was completely autonomous. Now, completing the project brought me pride, but did completing this backlog bring me anything? Not really. Playing the games brought me much joy, but at the end of the day, actually finishing this backlog didn't feel like anything. There are more games that didn't make the cut to this backlog, would finishing them bring me the joy completing this backlog was supposed to bring me? Probably not. Putting my steam library in order is nice, but I did that all the way at the beginning of the project. It will sound corny as shit, but it was about the journey, not the destination.

In the end, this backlog was not the backlog; there will always be more games to be added to a fabled backlog, that can't ever kept up with, as it is ever growing.

But what I did get out of this backlog is a rekindled love for video games. There is genuinely so much good stuff out there. You often hear takes about how today's games are ass, and gaming has gone to the shitter, but this is simply not true. Just of the games that came out this year, there is a plethora of amazing games or DLCs. And you don't need to play games from this year, you are allowed to pick a game from previous years and enjoy it in the year of our lord 2024. And you can also play games that are not AAAs; the overwhelming majority of games that I rated 9 or higher were indie games. For every decent triple AAA, there are at least 2 indie bangers that came out the same year. My point is: do not limit yourself in what you're allowing yourself to play, and you'll see that maybe gaming is still fun.

I've played more games, and also have spent more time playing games, than I ever have this year and I love video games more than ever.

What's left? What's next?

Will I ever have time to do something like that again? Will there ever be a “Nail in the coffin: Humble Purge Act III”? I am now at a relatively chill time in my life: I have a decently paying regular full-time job, and am married. I'm not a dad, building a business, performing in a band, studying... I have more time on my hands now than I will probably have in the coming years. I would love to do the Humble Purge Act III in a couple of years, where I go through the games that didn't make the cut for this year's backlog, but will I have time?

I want to enjoy being done backlog, and am not ready to go head first into a big project like that again. I want to take some time for myself, I want to read more, I want to cook more, I want to go to the gym and start playing bass again. No big project for next year, I will just be writing articles about this project, to better digest it. There is so much I've only barely touched on here that would deserve its own articles.

In any case, I will start journaling all the games I play next year. In substance, it will have just the same info that I recorded in the backlog — hype, time to beat, rating, review etc — but for games I pick up on the fly rather than for a list of games set in stone. This might actually be the better alternative to having a backlog. I will probably release some articles for it, maybe monthly in addition to my Monthly Readings or just do a quarterly article; I have time to figure it out. In the meantime, I hope you have enjoyed reading about my project, and as always:

Thanks for reading my logorrhea, Eddie

Went to a concert yesterday. It was the first concert I had ever been to by my own volition (if you discount the frosh week concert). Tetyana and I went to see Океан Ельзи (Okean Elsy) a ukrainian band that is touring the US and Canada before going back to perform in Ukraine. When I was working at Tetyana's family restaurant, their songs were cycling the playlist quite often, and I liked them.

After driving for 45min, we arrived at the venue early, probably at around 7h30 when their set was only starting at 8. There were no opening bands, it was just them. We found a spot at the first elevated platform, avoiding the pit, but despite our early arrival, we weren't at the first row of that mini balcony. It was not an issue for me, despite my petite stature (I'm only 180cm after all [5'11'' for you weirdos]), and we managed to find a triangle opening for Tetyana to see the stage. Shortly after we arrived, the pre-show entertainment started: an auction of some band items and other memorabilia, which profit would go to the defence of Ukraine. If you have been living under a rock, Ukraine has been actively at war for 2 years, defending itself against the full scale invasion from russia. The band even had a flag from the famous Azov's third separate assault brigade (3-тя окрема штурмова бригада) on the auction. The auction ended at around 7h50. I was starting to shift on my feet, uncomfortable, as I had spent the whole day running around to set up the second-biggest event of the year at work.

Unfortunately, while the show was supposed to start at 8pm, the band only showed up at 8h30. During my wait, I was checking out the stage. It was pretty bare bone, with a couple of light on top of the rigging. On the stage, on the guitarist side, a plethora of guitars were exhibited: a fender telecaster, gibson sg, some acoustic guitars, more electric ones.... On the bassist side only two: a hofner violin bass and another identical hofner violin bass that he didn't touch for the entire set — based (prepared) minimalist. I, too, enjoy short scale bases. I know nothing about pianos or drums, so I will just say that there was an acoustic drum set and an electric piano on stage. Despite the distractions, I was still uncomfortable.

Without introductions, the band came out and started with their first and second songs. God damn, the lead singer sounds as good if not better live than in recordings. I had put in my ear plugs at that point — I already have tinnitus — but they still sounded great. The welcome speech followed, and to my surprise, the lead singer is speaking quite good english to the crowd which, you won't be shocked to learn, was 90% ukrainian. Then they did the unthinkable; they sang songs in english. They have released two albums recently, one in ukrainian, and one in english. It was the first time they did one in english, and the reasoning they gave was that they wanted ukraine and ukrainian culture to be heard of around the world by its own merit, and not as a side mention when talking about the war. I was a bit apprehensive, as in France, whenever an artist starts to sing in english from french, or starts to mix both, it's usually quite shit. Don't get me wrong, I am not talking about french bands that sing in english from the get-go, like my beloved Gojira, but the ones that see money and fame in singing in english and decide to transition. In any case, I was pleasantly surprised, as their english stuff was quite good. They sang Might Have Been a Dream, which I really liked, and is Tetyana's favorite song of their english album, which I haven't had the chance to listen to yet. I have listened to that song's studio counterpart in the car, and the live one was better. The studio version sounded too clean and the lead singer's english was better too — I liked his stronger accent and the more scuffed production of the live one more.

A quick transition later talking candidly about the war in Ukraine, and the band went back to ukrainian songs, with some of the audience singing — although timidly — the refrain of some. I, alas, could not take part in that as I do not really speak ukrainian and do not know the band's discography as well as I should. I could only clap and nod to the beat. The songs were good and their performance was solid. The lead singer performance is again really to be commended, he sounded incredibly good.

They sang some of their classics like я так хочу... (I do want it), не йди (Don't go), Tetyana's favorite без тебе мене нема (Without you there is no I). They were all great, but despite that the crowd and me were tired and there was not much engagement from our part. Which bring us to one of the other classics that they played, which I think they fumbled. It's без бою (Without a Fight), which starts slow and builds up to the refrain where the singer yells in a powerful voice — contrasting with the almost whisper of the start — “я не здамся без бою” (I will not give up without a fight). For their performance everything was the same as the recording if a bit modernised, and energised, adding to the build-up. Except when it was time for the cathartic yelling of the “я не здамся без бою”; the lead singer, instead of singing, turned his mic to the now very tired and lukewarm crowd which was probably not expecting it and kinda flunked it. And instead of learning his lesson, he did the same for the other two refrains. To the crowd's credit, they did wake up a bit after the second refrain, which they might have expected this time. But man, I would have loved to experience the song the way it is usually sung by the singer.

The show was great otherwise, and the song selection was a nice mix of classics, new stuff, english stuff, with a good balance of mellow to energetic stuff. The instrument performers were also good, the guitar was shredding an appropriate amount, the bass was playing in the pocket, and the drums were keeping time good (my lack of music expertise is showing). The mixing was very good, no issue of overpowering bass, too loud drums or too forward guitars. The voice was perfect and I have nothing but praise for their performance.

I would have loved if they also had played на небі (In the sky) and Обійми (Embrace) but I understand why they weren't in the setlist as — while they are beautiful songs — they might have put the crowd to sleep. Overall, it was a great concert, that could only have been made better if the band had started on time. It was a successful first concert, and I am looking forward to my second concert experience, coming up pretty soon in November, seeing Jaeger (go pre-save his album now).

An update to my previous article about starting going to the gym again after COVID. Below are disclosed the results of my bulk, my new training program, the start of my cut and the other things.

How the bulk went

The bulk is now over and I'm bigger (no way). I had to change my whole pants wardrobe not once, but twice. I also had to donate a bunch of my clothes away, but my lovely wife Tetyana is delighted to be able to buy me clothes, I'm sure. I gained some size here and there, Tetyana recorded some measurements — from when I started gaining weight, to a couple weeks after the start of my cut.

Body Part	June 2023	March 2024	Change
Neck	13.5”	14”	+0.5”
Chest	36”	40”	+4”
Waist	28.5”	32”	+3.5”
Hips	34”	34.5”	+0.5”
Butt	35.5”	40”	+4.5”
Thigh	20”	25”	+5”
Biceps	NA	14”	NA

That's some pretty decent growth, and the legs and butt saw the most of it. My chest also grew reasonably, but the figure here doesn't paint the full picture. Chest measurement also include all the upper back development, therefore any increase is to be taken with a grain of salt. Physique-wise, my chest looks more 3D and less flat. My back is alright, and I will probably have a back focus after I'm done growing my chest. My arms did see some pretty one sided development – my triceps grew the most. My side triceps now looks pretty dope. I wish I had recorded their size in June though.

As for the bulk, its details are accurately described in my previous article; I ate a lot, and also not that clean. Honestly for me it was more about proving to myself that I could grow after having so much trouble all these years. I succeeded, but the last three weeks of the bulk were the hardest: I was so tired of eating. Those three weeks saw no gain of mass, I just stagnated at 81-82kg.

Let's take a closer look at my weight gain, with something that everybody loves: graphs!

stonks

imperial measurement for you degenerates

As you can see, in that 22 weeks bulk, which started on October 28th 2023, I put on a whopping 13kg or ~28.7lb. But I didn't start recording my weight conscientiously until after a couple month, and my actual weight gain journey started in June of last year, when I was only about 62.5kg. Therefore this entire weight gain took me from 62.5kg to 81.5kg, a solid 19kg or ~42lb in about 9 months.

Aside on weight measurements

The methodology was simple: I weighed myself after coming home from work everyday at around 5pm. For missed days, I've just took the average of the adjacent values. The most important metric — and the one I paid the most attention to — was my weekly average. As you can see, my daily values kinda yoyoed all over the place, and the weekly ones give a better picture. This method of tracking weight is the one that I would recommend, whether you are trying to gain or lose weight.

I will now relate in excruciating details what this weight gain did to me, including the gross parts, readers beware (highlight to reveal):

I shapeshifted into a shitting mutant,

my system ceaselessly processing so many a nutriment,

I once went to the washroom once at work while on shift,

to now every two hours needing to shit.

I eschewed diarrhea, the stools were solid,

but the volume excreted gargantuan and the smell horrid.

The fating was incessant, intempestive, unrelenting, unremitting,

even, I was told, as I was slumbering.

My body had transformed into a perpetual fart mill,

my stomach and bowels churning through their infill,

and then producing the most nefarious of gas strike,

all from carbs, fats and proteins alike.

I did also gain some fat, as it is unavoidable as a natural lifter (i.e. steroids free). This gain is usually manageable, unless you do something stupid like gaining 19kg in 9 months 🙃. It was the first time in my life that I had not been skin and bones. The experience of even a small amount of fat is surprisingly pretty noticeable: Sitting down, I never had even the tiniest fold in my belly and I find them discomforting. However, it was also the first time my ass was comfortable to sit on, the added muscle and fat made it nice and cushiony. Bending over to pick something up, and feeling my skin clump up on itself was a peculiar feeling at first. What was also a first for me was that I could feel some part of me jiggling as I was moving about; very unsettling. Looks wise — it's ok. I do miss my abs, who were gone only a short few month after the start of the bulk. I am also not really in love with my love handles, as it breaks the shape of my silhouette, but I still look decent otherwise. Some pretty significant stretch marks have also appeared, but I don't really care for them, it is the price to pay to get a bigger booter.

It is customary amongst gym enthusiasts to follow a bulk with a cut: a weight loss phase trying to keep as much muscle as possible, and losing as much fat as possible. I also did start that.

How the cut is going

I am currently 6 weeks into my cut, and as hard as it is for me to gain weight, losing it is no issue. I've already lost six and a half pounds. You however don't want to lose weight too fast during a cut, because you could then loose some of you hard earned muscle. After some thorough research on the intrawebs, those seems to be the core tenets of a successful cut:

• Don't lose weight too fast; 1% per week at most seems to be conducive to proper muscle retention
• Try to eat ~0.8g of protein per pound of body weight (literature unclear on the specific number; lower values still yield good results)
• Stimulate your muscles more often per week; it should aid to prevent muscle break down
• Have a balanced diet; you still need fat for you body to function normally, as well as carbs.

There are a thousand more tricks, but those seems to be the main ones to get you where you wanna be. My goal was to lose 4kg in 8 weeks, but seeing how I've lost 3 in 4 weeks — and I still have love handles and obscured abs — I will try to get down to 74-75kg. That is a revised goal from losing 6-7kg. At first as a former very skinny guy, I was very reluctant to letting go of any weight I had managed to gain. But I am getting over my fear; if I have gained that weight, I can do it again. Furthermore, I don't really want to hang weight that happens to be purely fat. I might reassess the goal as I am getting closer to 74kg, but I don't want to get too shredded anyways; it is way too much effort. Speaking of effort, I changed my training a bit.

New program

Instead of going to the gym three times a week, and have four sessions workout plan, I now train four times a week still with four sessions. I do about the same amount of work, so my gym sessions are a bit shorter, with about 5 exercises each, comes down to ~1h10 usually. I've also cut down on the number of sets for each muscle group each session, as research suggest there is diminishing returns for anything past 6 sets. I've shifted my focus away from powerlifting, we will discuss of this later. I put a bigger emphasize on chest, and added some core work. Finally, I focused on exercises that were, according to the scientific literature, more effective, and simplified my training.

Training Session	Exercise	Sets x Reps	Weight (lb)	Rest	Notes
#1 Back, Chest, Shoulders, Triceps	Chest supported rows	3x8	40	1:45
1	Close grip bench	3x12	65	2:00
1	Lat Raise	3x8	60	1:30
1	Lat Pulldown	3x12	80	1:45
1	Incline Bench Press	3x10	95	1:45
#2 Back, Legs, Chest	Bulgarian Split Squats	4x10	15 kettle	1:45
2	Incline Bench	3x5	135	2:00
2	Leg Raise	4x10		1:30	Roman chair
2	Leg Curl	3x15	75	1:45
2	Bench	4x5	135	1:45
#3 Legs, Back, Shoulders	Military Press	4x5	90	2:00	Switch to push press after failure
3	Leg Press	3x12	140	2:00
3	Back extension	4x9		1:30	Unilateral
3	Lat Raise	3x8	60	1:30
3	Lunge	3x20 (10 each leg)	30 kettle uni	2:00
#4 Arms, Chest, Back	Cable Curl	4x13	140	SS	Superset with triceps
4	Triceps extension	4x15	180	1:30
4	Pullups	3-4x8	-70	1:30	Neutral grip
4	Bench (Strength)	5x3	155	2:30
4	Preacher Curls	3x8-10	bar+25	2:00	Myo-rep match, Ez bar
4	Leg Raise	4x10		1:30	Roman chair

This is what my training roughly looks like. This is not set in stones, and usually I will feel free to swap any exercise with another, or even swap muscle groups if I'm still too sore. That freedom does come at a cost though, I have been slacking on some exercises. The exercises I have been avoiding are bench press and pullups. Both have been moved aside to favour incline bench and chest supported rows. Once my cut is done, I will commence Operation Boobies: getting a 225lb bench, and solid arms. Chest, biceps and triceps will be my focus. I will maintain my back, and put legs on the back burner.

How training going

Telling you what I've been doing is fine, but how have I been doing? Well, going back the first training article, I followed the plan I laid out in it, and I made quick progress. A bit too quick. My 5x5 for deadlift went from 225 to 300lb, 155 to 195lb for squats and 115 to 135 for bench. But this last workout plan had way too many exercises and sets per sessions, and I didn't really do proper deloads (taking some time off off heavy work). Fatigue, not only in my muscles, but also in my connective tissues accumulated. Let me tell you this story...

[click play below before reading the rest] :

If I recall correctly it was right around Christmas week, the streets were quiet, more so than usual. Got to the gym tired, exhausted even, the usual you might say. The place is packed like an Irish bar on St Patty's. I still managed to find some spot in between some rough looking guys, probably the goons of some organisation or another. To save some time I though I could cut some corners on the warmup. I was toying with the idea like a fidget-spinner and I finally decided a bad warmup was better than none. As you can guess, this story doesn't have a happy ending. Happy endings are for children's book and shady massage parlours. I was supposed to do a 5x5 at 295lbs, but come on 300lbs is just one little 2.5lb one each side extra. And I felt like I deserved something extra. Took position and started lifting — or more like flying through — my warmups. 135, 225, 275 and voilà I was at my working weight; 300. But they didn't feel right. It was like handling a “stuffed carpet” — awkward, tiring and and although you expect it, still surprisingly heavy. I disregarded that, after all, I wasn't done with the workout until the workout was done with me. Started my first set at 300lb, it was heavy as hell, but I kept my back as tight as loyal henchman keeps his lips, and it went well. Had two minutes until my next set, just sipping on my flask, wishing it was scotch instead of water . Time came around to get back to work. Did one rep, then two, then three... Right as I was about to lower the fifth one, POP POP POP — SHRAK; I was shot in the back. I felt it, heard it too, but I didn't hear the shooter come or go. Damn, three times, whoever it was it wanted me dead. Too bad it takes more than that to put me down.

THE END

[you can stop the song now]

Nobody shot me and I instead tore something in my upper back. Could have been the rhomboid, I'm not sure and never got radios done as my doctor said to just rest. It didn't hurt at first, but I still felt something. When the next day came around, I tried to sit up from the bed and felt a sharp pain in my right upper back. Tried to breath in deep: Yaouch. Tried to round my upper back: Yaouch. This lasted one week, and then there was only pain if I did some work at the gym. So anything loading my upper back had to be removed. In the end, even after I was healed, I haven't reintroduced deadlift into my routine. Or squats. That's when I moved away from powerlifting to only bodybuilding. I have deadlifted since, light weights, but it feels meh. I'll keep strenghtening my upper back before going back to it. Heavy squats are fine, and will be reintroduced during Operation Boobies. Will probably wait on Operation Bootie to start deadlifting again.

I started training heavy again, in March, and apart from a sort of phantom tightness, my upper back feels fine.

Conclusion

I've had a pretty successful bulk I would say, and the cut is on it's way to be successful too. There is much I have learned about the two processes, but I still have many more things to discover. I now have also learned to properly deload, and with this valuable lesson in mind, I am sure Operation Boobies will be successful. I'll change my training plan, workout smarter and avoid injuries at all cost. All hinges on the result of my first cut though, as I don't want to start bulking again if I'm still too fat. Nevertheless, I am most excited about bulking again, and changing up my training, from my cut training, which is pretty boring. As promised in the last training article, here is the link, and the password is JuicyBooty576&(()$^$@).

We are continuing on our mission with another three-letter group: NTM. This time we trade the heat of the south of France to the heat from the part of Paris with the worst reputation, Seine-St-Dennis or le 93 (9-3). Formed by Kool Shen and JoeyStarr, this group is with IAM, one of the first to bring french rap to international light. Today, we will be looking at their fourth and last album:

Suprême NTM -1998

Same thing here, we will look at a couple of song, and I'll break the flow by introducing some french tidbits here and there. Let's start with the first song after the intro.

Back dans les bacs

Here we are introduced to Kool Shen and JoeyStarr's rapping. They are wildly different from one another, where Kool Shen is clear and calm, JoeyStarr is a bit more raw and aggressive. The latter sounds like he always has a ton of phlegm in his throat and play on that during the album. This song is basically them just hyping themselves up, and propping up the album and their rapping after being absent for 3 years. They are celebrating the release of their album which is “Back dans les bacs” (back in the “bacs”, “bacs” are containers where CDs are sold in France). They also explain why they rap and reaffirm their devotion to hip hop rather than money. As for the music, for the rhythm it's your usual big bass, snare, high hats and some kind of synth for the melody. It is as expected, repetitive, but they play with the layers to keep it interesting. We're off to a good start: it's energetic, fun, and the rapping, if less technical than IAM, still flows well.

Laisse pas traîner ton fils

As for “Petit Frère” from IAM, this song is about the banlieues in France. Where “Petit Frère” was addressed to the elder siblings of the little bros, this song is addressed to their parents. The tittle roughly translates to “Don't let your son down”, but the phrasing “laisser trainer” in french is something we would use for dirty laundry, in the sense “don't leave your dirty laundry on the ground”. They start by explaining that with the year 2000 coming, the youth of this generation wasn't given the same deal as their elders, and the world is more hostile towards them. There is no work available, the system is broken and not working in their favour. The young folks coming up in this climate are silenced and ignored. The only possible way out for them, in their own eyes, is the streets, which are dangerous for multiple reasons, explains Kool Shen. He exhorts parents to listen to their kids, and give them the love and attention they deserve. JoeyStarr has a more personal relationship to this topic, as he explains, with his father being abusive and pushing him away, onto the streets. His father was always saying horrible things to him, assaulting him, leading JoeyStarr to seek validation in the streets. But to stay in the good grace of the family you make on the streets, you need to prove yourself, and — as Kool Shen relates — you have to be ready to do anything to retain their approval. The rest of the song continues in this fashion, warning about the dangers of pushing your kids away while the streets welcomes them. As far as rapping is concerned, Kool Shen gets a bit more technical and poetic here, aligning alliterations, metaphors, comparisons... It flows well and is contrasted by JoeyStarr's style, which is definitely more raw — some would say sloppy —, and maybe more expressive. It is surely less technical and melodic, but works as a “pouring my heart out”. On the beat: the bass is tight, and although the progression is simple, it works. For the melody, this is also repetitive, but works well as it doesn't step on the toes of the voices. Speaking of voices, there are some welcomed female vocals during the refrain, which bring some refreshing notes of melancholy/despair. There isn't much else I can say about the instrumentals in this style of hip hop anyway; the voices are at the forefront and the music serves the voices. The music can't do anything too crazy.

Aparte: JoeyStarr – a piece of shit

You can't really sing about being raised on the streets and having a terrible father, leading to needing to be violent and kinda fucked up, and not be violent and kinda fucked up. But we mustn't forget that JoeyStarr's upbringing and the abuse from his father are an explanations for his behaviour; not an exoneration. His condemnation with Kool Shen was the first one he had (see in the next song), but from 1999 and onward, he kept backsliding into actual crimes: he beat up his girlfriend, an air hostess, a random bystander, his ex, he owned a non-sterilised pitbull which almost ate someone else's dog, dealt cocaine, weed and possessed multiple firearms (firearms are almost completely forbidden in France), beat up another girlfriend, owned a protected animal — a tiny monkey which he beat up too... To a certain extent I can understand the will to separate the art from the artist, but nah. If the crimes had just been getting into fights with the police, dealing drugs and idk robbery... sure. But assaulting his girlfriends, women in general, abusing animals and endangering other people's animals is absolutely unforgivable. He unfortunately has somehow acquired a semblance of forgiveness in France; he is invited to talk shows, awards ceremony, does movies, voice acting for major roles... And every time some journalist asks him about his crimes, especially the domestic violence, he spews some bullshit like “sure, I hit her, but you have to be two to dance the tango”, implying that whatever girlfriend was asking for it/deserved it. This shows that he is absolutely not apologetic for what he has done, and deserves no forgiveness nor sympathy.

On est encore là, Pt 1 & On est encore là, Pt 2 (We're still here)

In this song, which is sorta in two parts, we will talk about a then, and now, relevant and fun topic in french hip hop: censorship! A song in one of NTM's previous albums, had ruffled a couple of feathers in the police (there is a joke here that I need you to understand; in France, the police is referred to as chickens instead of pigs. Police->Chicken->Feather, get it?) and they had been trialed and convicted of “outrage à la police” or in english “offense to the police”. Six month of prison time (three unsuspended), 50 000 francs fine — old french money before the euro — or 17 000CAD today AND prohibition from performing for six months was their sentence. This is crazy for such a mild song. In “Police”, they say that cops are often racists, violent, drunk and mentally challenged. The gist of the song is about how prejudiced the police is, how officers don't suffer consequences for any wrongdoing, and how they are actually just working for anyone high enough in the socio/political hierarchy. Good things that's not the case today :) In any case, let's move away from NTM and look at France in general

Hip Hop and censorship in France

In the homeland, for audio/visual media, the censorship regulatory body is the Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (The Higher Audiovisual Council) or CSA. For as long as I can remember growing up, I always used to hear on the radio/TV about some artists getting in trouble with the CSA ever other week. To be entirely fair to the CSA, it is not complete censorship, stuff just can't be shown on TV or listened to on the radio (public or private). They also don't have any right to look at the content before it hits the TV or radio, they just act after the fact, based on reports. However, whether they ban something or not from the radio or TV is pretty arbitrary to say the least. In general, the enforcement of the laws is more than biased. Hip Hop artists get tackled all the time for what they say in songs, but racists saying shit on TV or the radio don't get flack. At the same time that NTM was convicted, the leader of the far right party in France said that “races were not all equal” (it is to note that using the word race for humans in France has a far stronger racist undertone than in english). The same person had also said that the Holocaust and gas chambers were just a minor detail in History and didn't get in trouble with the CSA or justice. The group we looked at in part one, IAM, also complained about this hypocrisy in “Dangereux” (also in the album I reviewed), where they said that everything that the journals, the TV and the radio were allowed to do and say was prohibited for them. One of the singer of IAM, Akhenaton was also summoned by a judge at one point for his lyrics.

Back to the song: after a really short intro, we are greeted with some hype. Big but non-intrusive bass, some nice strings, some piano in the background. Rhythmically cool and melodically interesting. Kool Shen starts rapping with communicative conviction. Obviously, he starts addressing the censorship of their song, and explains that if you're not already part of the established media, they will try to sink you. Nevertheless, he thanks those who listen, and those who despite the possible censorship continue to rap. After the refrain, JoeyStarr laments that they (the establishment) try to silence them, when him and Kool Shen are speaking for the people who can't. He wants to be allowed to speak, as it is the only thing he knows how to do to make things better. Kool Shen takes over and speaks about their condemnation, and the general hypocrisy, with other people saying much worse yet not getting in trouble. He also touches on the — then — recent surge in support for the far right across France, and says that it also affects the left, which becomes more and more right wing. To illustrate this, he points out one new law passed by the then “left wing” government, a law that restricts immigration further.

Let's judge the album as a whole: Length is good in this one, there are technically 16 songs, but there is an intro, outro an intermission and a song in two parts. This brings this album to 12 songs, which is more reasonable. Those make the album about 50 min long which is a good length, long enough to be able to get in the groove, but not too long that you wish the album ended already. It's a whole 20 min shorter than the previous album we looked at. Although I almost like this album on average more than the last one, it doesn't reach the heights of “L'école du micro d'argent” when it's good. One thing setting it back in my opinion is the mixing/mastering; the voices of JoeyStarr and Kool Shen do not cut well through the mix. It's not that they are drowned by the instrumentals, everything is clear and intelligible, but they just don't cut clearly above it. “C'est arrivé près d'chez toi” is a prime example of that, with the trebles spikes just way too loud compared to the voices. JoeyStarr's voice is also deeper than Kool Shen, but is mixed at the same level, and sometimes gets a bit drowned out by the bass. Speaking of JoeyStarr, he really is not on par with Kool Shen. His texts aren't as good, his rapping isn't as good, to top it off, he's an asshole. Despite those flaw, this album stills gets the second-highest seal of approval from me. I will however not buy it, not to support what I discussed in the aparte on JoeyStarr. I skip nothing here, every song is good, and when the album ends, I almost still want more. 17/20 Note: for those of you that find the french language off-putting but still want to experience NTM, they collaborated with Nas on a version of “Affirmative Action”.

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie

435

   that's the number of games I have in my steam library, and I haven't played a single second of 172 of those. About 40% of all the games I own. An unacceptable situation. How did it come to this?
Well, I didn't buy most of them, the vast majority comes from Humble Bundle. Now a shadow of itself, Humble Bundle was a subscription based service where you would receive anywhere from 9 to 12 games per month, for 15$. All those games combined usually had an MSRP well above 100$, and there was always a AAA or two in each bundle, alongside older/indie titles. The best part was that the proceeds went to charity, and each month they partnered up with a different one. For a “late” gamer like myself – I had no computer or game console before I was 13 – it was god sent. I was subscribed for 26 months, from 2018 to 2021 and acquired about 256 games through this subscription. While I played the ones I was interested in at the time, the others were just left to rot in my library. I would estimate the proportion of games played to games rotting to be 30/70. On top of that, FOMO lead me to not cancel my subscription, despite seeing games accumulating beyond reason. Couple that with the fact that each time you tried to cancel, you were given the option to pause your subscription for months at a time, and I let the problem grow more than I should have. So this is how I ended in this predicament. After cancelling my subscription, I tried to tackle the problem.

​ On March 24th 2021, right after cancelling my subscription for good, I released the trailer for a new series of videos I was to produce for the Raddest youtube channel. For the uninitiated, Raddest was a group of friends out of Queen's University — I was a late addition to the group, so I can't really speak to its history — that at one point during covid, created a youtube channel. People of Raddest could post on the channel, and to combat by own boredom, I made some pretty frequent contributions, releasing a couple videos a week at one point. I had multiple series going on at a time, and “Humble Purge” was to be one of them. In this series, I would choose one game from my backlog, introduce it and play it for ~20 min giving my opinions and first impressions. Thinking back, I was setting myself up for failure. I didn't have enough motivation to play all the games in my backlog for like an hour, but I thought it would be a good idea to play for at least 20 min, while doing commentary, while discovering the game, spending an hour editing and doing audio processing, an hour rendering, taking the time to come up with a title and make a thumbnail and then waiting for an hour for it to upload... Delusional. So it failed, and I only produced 15 episodes in total, in the span of about a year, because I lacked both time and motivation. And thus, the first humble purge, a noble crusade, came to an end, barely making a dent in my backlog.

This is not the end of the story; around November I came across a video from DarylTalksGames titled “A Misguided Guide to Finishing Your Gaming Backlog” and its sequel “How I Finished My Gaming Backlog”. Those videos are exactly what they sound like they are about. And they rekindled my will to slay my backlog. Those videos didn't just provide me with the will, but also the means to do so. In his first video, Daryl explains his initial methodology and goal. He catalogued all the games in his backlog in an excel sheet, with some relevant information like the genre, how long it would take to beat, and how hyped he was to play it. I did the same, but in a google sheet, cause I'm poor. Those have been useful to plan my second assault on my backlog, but to be honest, I almost learned more from his second video. In it he explains why he initially failed, and here are my main takeaways from it: 1. Only play the games you really want to play. I took this advice and cut down my backlog from 150 to 109 games. I can always come back to the rest of the list when I'm done with this first part. 2. You don't have to finish the games. This was a big one for me, I've been a bit of a completionist in the past, even if the games were tedious and it was becoming a chore to finish them. This helped be re-framed the project from: “There are games that I haven't touched in my library that I have to finish because they are in my library” to “There are games in my library that I haven't touched that I could potentially enjoy for a while”. I went from maximising productivity to maximising fun, and in the end this makes this project more sustainable. Therefore, I set the only rule for this challenge: play 1h minimum. If I still don't dig it after that, I can set the game aside without remorse.

My framework was laid out for me. The main thing I am using to keep track of my progress is this google sheet. The sheet is updated every time I start/finish a game, feel free to check it out. There, you will see four tabs, the first two are the ones we are taking into consideration for this project, the others are more for when I'm done. Namely, games I want to replay, and games I want to buy — i.e. a real backlog.

In any case, the first sheet is all the games that I own on either steam, origin, uplay, epic :vomit and other. During this challenge, this list can grow, but under one specific rule: I can't buy games. Since the beginning of this project in December 2023 I added ~6 games, that I got for free either on epic, steam or prime. With those added, I got a bunch of info from all the games, the most important being the type of game, the time to complete, rating from steam and metacritic, and my hype to play it /10. I was ready to move on to the culling. The second sheet is all the games I will actually play during this purge; the selection process was pretty simple. Of that first sheet, I would add any games that had a hype above 5/10. But it didn't end there. I would also add any games that had a hype of 5/10 and steam score above 85% or metacritic above 75. For the games at 4/10, they would have to have steam ratings above 90% or metacritic scores above 80. Lastly, no matter the rating, any game with a steam score above 95% or metacritic above 85 would instantly be retained. Regardless of what I want to play, I'm not willing to miss cult classics. I was ready to start playing. I would divide my play time into games I would play at home, and games I would be able to play at the office. The latter category had to fit some narrow criteria, namely: be able to run on a toaster, be completely SFW and not require any attention if I had to drop it to actually work. End of December/ beginning of January are periods with a lot of downtime at work, so I decided to capitalise on that and started the challenge on Dec 3rd.

I was, at first, overwhelmed with choices, but I had prepared for this eventuality, and had a randomised game selector pick something for me. Monster Prom. I started the game, played for a bit, wrote my review, gave my rating. Didn't take too long, and I grew confident in my ability to finish this project within a year. Slay the Spire was next.

Yaaaouch!!! I had played card games and rogue-likes, but this one just hit the spot. I spent two weeks on this game, I had fun and I regret nothing. Thankfully, so far this is the only game I have devoted that much time to. After this little hiccup, I was able to enjoy games at a good pace, and as I am writing these words I have completed 23 games, roughly 21% of my backlog. Provided I don't find too many Slay the Spires, I should be able to finish this by the end of the year.

This is the big project touted in my December reading, and the excuse I had for only reading one (1) small book. With the project on its way and its motivation and methodology explained, I would like to extend an invitation. Clean your backlog, whether it's games that are rotting in your library — like me —, or games you've had on a list for six years that you are definitely coming around to playing — like DarylTalksGames. You don't even need to do all the research that I did from my google sheet, I learned recently that there are websites that do it for you. To spice it up, we can set a deadline of one year. I intended to release this article in December or on January 1st at the latest, but I got lazy. In any case, you would have until February 2025 to clear your backlog. I would love to hear about the games you played, which one were pleasant surprises and which ones weren't so much. Regardless, I will make an update article in December 2024, whether I am successful or not. See you then!

Thank you for reading my logorrhea, Eddie