Good news and bad news

First, the good news: my progress with Twisted Metal: Black.

I’ve unlocked all 15 vehicles, obtained all but 2 trophies and unlocked all but 1 level. I have more things to say about the game as a whole.

Favorite vehicle(s): Roadkill and Spectre, which are easy to use and have strong Specials. Also Minion, for the above reasons and also being borderline absurdly powerful (once the final boss is rendered vulnerable, Minion’s Special will make mincemeat of it).

Least favorite vehicle(s): Manslaughter, which controls horribly, is painfully slow, and whose sheer size makes hitting enemies with anything that isn’t a homing missile considerably harder. At least it sports one of the highest Armor stats in the game.

Favorite level(s): Suburbs. It’s not always easy, but holy hell is it fun!

What haven’t I done yet? Unlock the Freeway level, which requires scoring 10 or higher on Snowy Roads in Endurance Mode - even with Minion, I struggle to reach 5. Obtain the “unlock Freeway, Prison Ship, and Mini Suburbs” and “win a Challenge Mode match on Hard” trophies.

I also downloaded the first two Twisted Metal games on my PlayStation 4, and played a little bit of them both. To me, they’re actually harder to pick up and play than Black because you can’t use the analog stick to accelerate and reverse (thankfully, you can use it to steer), and none of the control layouts use X for acceleration and Square for brake/reverse. But I did manage win a Challenge match in 2 the very first time I played the game.

What else has happened to me this year? I lost my job (that was for the best, don’t ask why).

Now for the bad news: an unholy combination of writer’s block and burnout hit me like a freight train while I was remastering the first Minion battle in Twisted Magic: Black and still hasn’t gone away.

I’ve known for a long time that my brain is physically unable to sit still; when it’s fully awake, it always has to be doing something. Writer’s block? Frustrating, but there are other things that I can do to occupy myself. Burnout? Torture.

I’m between a rock and a hard place. My ability to write stories has tanked, but the ideas won’t leave my head. I’ve considered cutting my losses and putting my stories up for adoption, but at the same time, part of me wants to stick it out and keep trying to make those ideas a reality.

Whatever happens, I have no intentions of leaving the site; at most, I’d just step away from writing and go back to just reading.