Fuiyoh! E.R.I.A.B. from T.G.W.A.E!

 Check out the whole thing here -

https://www.the-girl-who-ate-everything.com/keto-egg-roll-in-a-bowl/

But here's the basics.

Ingredients

• (optional) 1 Shallot, chopped
  

• 1 lb ground beef,

• 1 teaspoon minced garlic

• 14 ounces coleslaw mix or shredded cabbage
  

• 1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce

• 1 teaspoon ground ginger

• 2 teaspoons sriracha

• 1 whole egg

• 1 tablespoon sesame oil

• 2 tablespoons sliced green onions

Instructions

•  (Optional) Put a little bit of oil in the bottom of the wok and start cooking the shallot for a minute before you add the pork or beef.
  

• In a large skillet Where's your Wok?, brown the pork or beef until no longer pink. Add the garlic and sauté for 30 seconds. Add the cabbage/coleslaw, soy sauce, ginger, and sauté until desired tenderness. You can add a little water if you need more liquid to sauté the coleslaw down.

• Make a well in the center of the skillet and add the egg. Scramble until done over low heat.

• Stir in sriracha. Drizzle with sesame oil and sprinkle with green onions. Add additional soy sauce and sriracha if desired.

   

   

Mac & Cheese, no anecdotes

 

Macaroni:

• ▢ 16 oz macaroni (elbow pasta)

• ▢ 4 tbsp (30g) unsalted butter (or 4 tsp oil, but why?)
  

Topping:

• ▢ 1-1/3 cup Panko breadcrumbs

• ▢ 4 tbsp (30g) unsalted butter , melted

• ▢ 1/2 tsp salt

Sauce:

• ▢ 8 tbsp (120g) unsalted butter

• ▢ 2/3 cup flour , plain / all purpose

• ▢ 6 cups milk , warmed (low or full fat)

• ▢ 4 cups freshly shredded cheese, Gruyere best (followed by Cheddar and Colby)

• ▢ 2 cups freshly shredded mozzarella cheese , or more other cheese of choice

• ▢ 1-1/2 tsp salt

Seasonings (optional):

• ▢ 2 tsp garlic powder

• ▢ 1 tsp onion powder

• ▢ 1 tsp mustard powder

Instructions

Pasta:

• Cook pasta: Bring a large pot of water to the boil. Add macaroni and cook per packet directions MINUS 1 minute.

• Toss in butter: Drain, return pasta to pot, add butter and toss until melted. Set aside to cool while making the Sauce 

Topping:

• Mix together Topping. Set aside.

Sauce:

• Preheat oven to 350°F.

• Make roux: In a large saucepan or in an ovenproof skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Add flour and cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute.

• Add milk: Add about 1 cup of the milk and mix to dissolve the paste into the milk. Then add remaining milk and mix until lump free (use whisk if required).

• Add Seasonings: Mix in salt and Seasonings if using.

• Thicken sauce: Cook, stirring/whisking regularly, for 5 – 8 minutes until thickened to a cream consistency. When the sauce coats the back of a wooden spoon, you should be able to draw a path with your finger.

• Add cheese: Remove from stove, add cheese and stir – cheese doesn't need to melt.

• Check salt: Adjust salt to taste (if you use recommended cheeses, you won't need more).

Assembling:

• Assemble: Pour Sauce into pot with Macaroni. Stir quickly, then pour back into a 9x13 baking dish. Sprinkle with breadcrumb topping and diced jalapenos.
  

• Bake for at least 25 minutes or until top is light golden. Don't bake too long otherwise you'll bake away the Sauce!

• Serve: Serve immediately!

I hate the G perm the most, I can prove it.

Note: This a rather cube-oriented post, and will be better if you have a cube with you, and will be a lot better if you're fully familiar with Singmaster notation.

Warning: These algorithms are only useful for academic purposes and will probably just slow you down in the long run. Learn the lesson, not the algorithms.

I still don't do CFOP that well, and if you're just learning it now, you should have fewer bad habits than me because you have the benefit of years of refinement of the method even before you ever saw any algorithms.

I was rather skeptical about the CFOP method when I first encountered it, because I didn't think that most people would be able to memorize algorithms for 80ish last layer cases (57 orientation cases, or OLLs and 21 permutation cases, or PLLs) in addition to some specialized F2L (first two layer) cases. But, I was using a method that needs less than 20 algorithms and had just barely caught up to the speed of its creator only years later. In the meantime, CFOP times kept going down. I later figured out that there were potentially a decent number of mirror image cases that kept the number of cases manageable.

I also realized that when I had used a layer by layer method, I had the decided disadvantage of having learned one (Nourse) that left the solved layer up instead of one that leaves the solved layer down (Taylor). While I saw the move efficiency of putting the middle layer edges in with the first layer corners, I still had been working with the bad habit of not turning the cube over until I finished the first two layers.

When I finally accepted that I should start learning some PLL's, the two major resources I was looking at was speedcubing.com, and Jessica Fridrich's page. I probably started with the U perm, because I figured out that R2US'U2SUR2  is just the same as the U2M'U2M edge 3-cycle with some setup moves. I was OK with left-handed and right-handed versions of that easily enough. I may have learned the T perm next, and was so glad that it was symmetrical and I didn't have to learn a second version of it. Strangely, the version of the T perm that I learned is the inverse of one of the algorithms on the speedcubing.com page (but hey - it's symmetrical so it's also functionally its own inverse), so I'm not sure how I got to that version of the algorithm. But, I digress - and it's going to look like I'm doing it some more but bear with me. If you want to play along, this would be a good time to grab a cube.

For the N perm, I took the easy-to-memorize route, and went with  

LU'RU2L'UR' LU'RU2L'UR' U 

because the first segment and the second segment are the same thing. This was the first of the PLLs that I learned that had a diagonal swap, do I had to use this a lot when I was still doing 4 look last layer.

So if you start with a solved cube, and do the first segment of that move, you get the fr and bl F2L pairs swapped, and you get two U-layer corner-edge pairs swapped, like the J perm. Doing the second segment resolves the two F2L pairs, and swaps the second set of U layer corner-edge pars, creating the N perm.

I also figured out that if you inserted a U' or a U move in the middle of the N perm above, cancelling part of the U layer swap from the first segment to the second, you got a J perm. I later learned a better algorithm for one of the J perms, but I still use the method above for the other.

So, in my weird bag of cube tricks, I knew that there was another way to fix the 2 F2L pairs that were undone by the first part of the N perm. Start with a solved cube again.

LU'RU2L'UR'  y  L'R'U2LR gets you something that looks like... Could it be? The G perm! So now, I just had to reverse engineer it. (Put down your cube momentarily.)

The G perm isn't really all the way symmetrical the way we would like, and it's not its own inverse. Therefore, you need four versions of the move. Left-handed, right-handed, left inverse, and right inverse.

The version of the G perm that the above example solves is with headlights on the front, and a bar on the back with the ub and the ubr pieces. The mirror image is still headlights on the front and the bar between ub and ubl. For a long while, this was as far as I was, as I had not bothered to write down the move and properly figure out the inverse.

Headlights on the back, bar on the right between ur and ufr, which is what you might have if you did the above bold move from a solved cube, (OK pick up the cube again...) is solved with

L'R'U2LR y' LU'RU2L'UR'.

And you should be back to a solved cube.

Now you could try the other two, the mirror images. Like before, one will undo the other.

R'UL'U2RU'L y' RLU2L'R', 

and LRU2L'R' y R'UL'U2RU'L.

So, while I can't recommend these algorithms to anyone other than just for academic interest or just basic insight into the algorithm building process, I hope that someone can use this to actually make some better algorithms.

Just a little more dissection of the 22.95 solve, this time LSE.

 I apparently could not wait to do more typing about the 22.95 Minh Thai solve.  Scroll down to the previous post if you're not caught up here.

LSE refers to Last Six Edges. Four of them are in one of the slice layers, and then you have one edge each on the two other layers. Technically, this term didn't exist until the Roux method was proposed, but that's exactly where you find yourself in Minh Thai's method once you have completed three edges each on two opposite sides.

If you look at the last part of the reconstruction from last time, you have this:

u R' E' R E2 R E R' // LSE 
R2 E E' r2 E M2 E' // centers

If you would like to skip ahead to this part of the solve, perform this on a solved cube: 

z’ D2 U2 F' D2 F' U2 F' L2 F' R2 F' R2 F' L' R' U' L' R F D' from standard solved white top/green front. 

So, looking at the moves that are labeled as "LSE", but from the standpoint of Minh's solution guide, I see that breaks down as follows:

u // Aligns upper and lower layers

R' E' R // Puts upper edge in lower target position From Stage III, part 2 (pg 48) "If both (edges) are somewhere in the horizontal middle layer, it will be easy to flip either one of them into the other one's target position."

E2 // puts lower edge in position to be matched with upper Setup move to do Case #2

R E R' // inserts both edges similar to stage III, part 2 case 2.

At this point, all we have is a Dot Case, and there is no edge orientation to do. So, this is a big skip at this point. Perhaps that's why there's the (E - E' ) in the centers because he's excited, or maybe he's just checking to make sure one of the edges in the back isn't flipped first before he fixes the centers. If he had edge orientation to complete, that would have been between 9 and 14 more moves, at least half of which would have been slice moves. Unlike modern cubes, slices can be quite an effort on 80's cubes. So, without that, you get to skip straight to edge permutation, and while it's the worst one, it's not that bad.

So again, we learned that this solve had relatively simple components, a little luck, and was not a  byproduct of a large available algorithm set.

Because Social Media isn't Verbose, and CLL isn't as common in 1982.

 People have complained to me on more than one occasion that I am verbose. As far as I know, this is a completely undesirable trait most of the time. However, I am always found wanting more information and specificity when I ask about things, so I have attempted to learn how to (mostly) politely interrogate people so that I get the sort of answers that I'm looking for.

When I'm the person giving the answers, it's terrible, but mostly because I have given more answer than the other party wanted, and even sometimes to questions that the other party only wanted a meaningless superficial answer to. I have been told on more than one occasion that I talk too much or overexplain, and even once have been told in response that "people aren't going to read my @#$%^$%$$% novel" when I typed out a thorough answer to something.

Every once in a while, I see something that's a tiny bit underexplained, and it bugs me, but I usually have enough sense to not cause problems. What follows is a byproduct of me now fixing something that was a little bit under-explained (or oversimplified, you pick) and I finally bothered to sort it out myself.

So the first Rubik's cube official record was Minh Thai's 22.95. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJTZhgrbgt8&t=325s

And, thanks to reddit users /u/qqwref and /u/BrestCubing, a lot of important solves have been reconstructed - including this one - and we'll get to that.  Most of the modern solves are done with a method that everyone is more familiar with, what used to be called Fridrich and is now referred to as CFOP. But, Minh's solve is done with his own method, and it's even well documented. ("The Winning Solution", ISBN 0-440-09795-9, 1982.) 

Minh's book was a step ahead of many things that were available at the time because he had individual orientation algorithms for the second set of corners, when nearly every other solution book had some sort of incremental method for orienting the second set of corners. It was one of the first published cube books to explicitly detail and demonstrate the idea that if you had more algorithms at your disposal you could solve faster.  Interestingly enough, there were also a handful of extra algorithms in the examples that started to make me consider the idea that Minh had actually been able to orient and permute second layer corners in a single algorithm.

So, that leads me to the reconstruction. Michael Gottlieb's (qqwref) reconstruction is as follows:

U L2 D' B2 U' R2 B2 F2 D' F2 L2 R2 F R2 D L2 R2 B' L' D' R F' 


x2 y // inspection 
D' R u D R' y' D' R D R' // FL corners + 1 edge 
y D r' E' L // FL center + 2nd edge 
z2 U y l D R' z' R' x z' r' R2 U2 z D R2 D2 // CLL 
R' l' z M D2 M' // FL 3rd edge 
z2 y R z' M z R' // LL 1st edge 
z' r' L' z D R' E R // LL 2nd edge 
U' u' R E' R' // LL 3rd edge 
u R' E' R E2 R E R' // LSE 
R2 E E' r2 E M2 E' // centers

 

This is typical of modern reconstructions. The scramble is shown first, starting from a solved cube with white on top and green on front, moves are shown in standard Singmaster notation, including cube rotations, and double slashes at the end of a line to give a place to put comments.  So, at the end of line four there, it says "CLL". The implication there is that Minh solved both permutation and orientation in a single algorithm. However, that's not the case. Also, it's largely overlooked because it's typically more move-efficient to orient first before permuting. So, here's my marked-up version of the reconstruction. I added notes in one color and comments in another so I could keep track. The Stage/Section references are from Minh's solution guide.

 

U L2 D' B2 U' R2 B2 F2 D' F2 L2 R2 F R2 D L2 R2 B' L' D' R F'

x2 y // inspection  yellow top, red front 

D' R u D R' (y' D') R D R' // FL corners + 1 edge ends with orange corners on top but still yellow top red front 

(y D) r' E' L // FL center + 2nd edge ends with orange on front, red corners need diagonal swap 

 z2 U y l D R' z' R' x z' r' // corners in correct cycle, orange on bottom 

This is equivalent to the permutation algorithm in Stage 2, Section 1, C3, (LFUF’U’L’) with cube rotations and wide moves.  This is permutation only, so I wouldn’t exactly count this as CLL. 

 R2 U2 z D R2 D2 // CLL corners oriented, orange on left  

This is equivalent to the orientation algorithm in Stage 2, Section 2, T7, (R2 F2 R F2 R2) with one cube rotation. 

R' l' z M D2 M' // FL 3rd edge 

z2 y R z' M z R' // LL 1st edge 

z' r' L' z D R' E R // LL 2nd edge 

U' u' R E' R' // LL 3rd edge keyhole piece is at ‘dr’ for the LL edges 

u R' E' R E2 R E R' // LSE 

R2 E E' r2 E M2 E' // centers

Taking another look at this reconstruction solidified two things for me - one, the confirmation that he wasn't doing full CLL, and second, that he rarely performs any sort of F or F' moves despite how often they appear in his solution guide. I had already gotten a sense of that from some other video of him, but it was nice to have the confirmation from a good reconstruction.

So, that's not to say that _nobody_ was doing CLL in the 80's, it just wasn't Minh Thai. Mark Waterman has a well-documented (on the web, at least) corners first solution that has a CLL step.

The next time we take a swing at this, I will have to look at the "LSE" step.

Yes, I still cube. Sometimes I type, too.

So I found out in the last month or so that I'm no longer in the top 100 in Florida on 3x3x3, the standard regular Rubik's cube. Also, I didn't get to sign up for a competition in June that I kind of wanted to go to because I was being distracted by life. But, competitions aren't really my everyday focus at this point. I think that I have more to say when I'm showing someone about cubing, and making it more accessible to them from an intellectual standpoint.

I managed to make it out to one of our local Mexican food places with the wife just the other night. We hadn't been out to dinner in a while, and I thought maybe I could do better than Taco Bell. They make guacamole right at the table. When he asked us if we wanted mild, medium, or spicy, we're joking about whether or not he means authentic medium or chardonnay-drinking-housewives-listening-to-Coldplay medium. We're seated outside, and it's warm enough out that we're enjoying the fact that we have both Mexican Coca-Cola and water to drink because we're sweating just sitting there. Some random guy showed up around the same time as our guacamole technician with a large Labrador and just wants to have it sit with someone while he goes in and gets alcoholic beverages. The people next to us who were just finishing seem to have enough room near them to accommodate the dog, and our guacamole tech commented about how the dog is being good. I turn my attention to the cube I have on the table for a moment, and since I was looking down I saw a person walking a dog on the other side of us, and predictably the Labrador was no longer just sitting there, but charted an intercept course to find the other dog. The Labrador reappeared, and then went to have a word with some people at the other tables about what it was that they were having for dinner. One of the servers had enough sense to bring the dog some water, and it sat back in its original spot, but now the people sitting there were really looking to go at this point - both because of the dog awkwardness and because they had been finished with their food for a bit already. Thankfully the gentleman whose dog it was reappeared, and talked with everyone again. He even asked how old our guacamole tech was, and said how proud he is of him for being a 16-year old with a job.

We went on to enjoy our guacamole and chips, ordered some tacos, and the couple watching the dog can now leave, and the servers went about the business of rearranging two tables so that a somewhat larger group could sit there. The group of six was an older man, and his wife, and a collection of  twenty-something children and perhaps a girlfriend. or My wife and I enjoyed our meal, talked about how customer service is supposed to work, and talked about how we are both readjusting to how our jobs have changed over the last couple of months. It isn't until the check was done and we're about to leave, that the one person sitting in the group of six that can see (the presumed father of the family) that I have a cube at the table mentioned it to the person that's closest to me but has his back to me. So, I brought the cube over, and the father mentions that the person closes to me, a bearded college-age person, could solve it.

At this point, my focus went to the college age person. I asked him how long it takes him to solve it, and what method he uses. Since he does something that's between a beginner's method and what we now refer to as CFOP, and takes around a minute and a half, I showed him the 80's corners first method that I do. I talked through most of it, and I probably wasn't that fast. He was intrigued, but he wasn't exactly impressed that I could tell. I was concerned that I had flubbed my demonstration, but was ready for followup questions. I did not get to do followup questions, because the young woman diagonally opposite him at the table immediately reached for the cube to scramble it again. Perhaps I had impressed her more, or she had seen it less. I try to nonchalantly stand around while she's scrambling it and not watch her scramble it, but I'm still trying to stand close enough to listen to make sure that nobody's hand-twisting corners or popping the cube apart. Thankfully there were no shenanigans. So now, I usually for a second demo try to do CFOP, and show how it's different because of looking for more than one piece at a time during the first two layers. This solve went noticeably faster, even despite me talking through it. The young woman got to watch the solve up close this time, and the bearded young man was more impressed this time. Then, while I'm still standing at the far corner, I do a silly cube trick just as comic relief. All it is you do R2 U2 R2 U2 R2 U2 to a solved cube, and you will see that you have two pairs of edges swapped. If you grip the cube properly, and only are touching the unsolved edges, you can perform that same move again without letting go of the cube and so it goes from unsolved to solved and it seems like your hands are exactly where they started (but they aren't). She even had me do the silly cube trick again so she could video it. (No, I don't know where it ended up yet.) So as I'm walking back around the table, I turn the cube a few times in my and ask the bearded young man if he had heard of Steven Brundage, which he had. I showed him the scrambled cube in my hand, explained a little bit about what it was that Steven Brundage does, and using the cover of the high back chair next to him, I then was able to fix the cube quickly and produce it for the group solved again. So, now, I didn't have to worry if he was impressed or not because I think he definitely was by then. We definitely had to go at that point, because I can't really take questions after doing the Brundage trick.

I also got to do a little bit of a demo for my corner gas station/vape shop/convenience store the next day, and I think I learned from the night before not to end with the tricks, but I also had enough time to show off a Roux solve. So that one went 80's - CFOP - Roux - What is an Inverse?. I told them that there would be a quiz next time, but I think that's an idle threat unless they start selling cubes there.

This is what I like to do, though. I really enjoy doing these small demos for people. Honestly, I hope that the fact that I've been doing it is why I'm not in the top 100 in Florida any more. I hope that enough new people have gotten into cubing as a byproduct of people like me making it more accessible that the pool of people competing has grown in size.

In other cubing news, I finally purchased a Rubik's Tactile Cube which means I can now finally say that I've solved a cube without looking at it. I was very happy with the choice of shapes on the opposite sides. I was also very happy that even though it's the modern Rubik's mechanism that's harder to pop, it was set up just loose enough that it was a delight to turn the first time out of the package.

A new reflection on The Nature of Difficulty.

Having recently played the new Devil May Cry game from Capcom, and watching my older child play the even newer Sekiro:Shadows Die Twice by From Software made me think about the nature of difficulty in games, its purpose, and the types of difficulty that we encounter. Devil May Cry may not be that hard to play - but it may be hard to play well, and Sekiro is difficult to play at all.

When I think about what I enjoy in a game, typically what I like is a game that is easy to get into but allows for many levels of skill and improvement. I think that is the essential formula of most of the widely popular original arcade games. Pac-Man and Centipede are great examples of this. The things that we are required to do are clear and obvious to us, and are simple to perform. If we as players are able to keep up with the game as it slowly increases in difficulty, then we are able to succeed in the game. It does not start so difficult as to discourage play (hey - they're trying to get you to put a quarter it, aren't they) and gets more difficult at a reasonable pace.

This can also be done in a game by having a wide range of available game mechanics or a more open path of progression, although this method is more popular for home console games than arcade games. The game can allow a player to proceed at their own pace, and still be able to proceed through the game using simple techniques, but also allow for higher scores and rewards by being able to adapt to more sophisticated techniques.  Katamari Damacy is a great example of this. One can get through the levels easily enough, but as one becomes more familiar with the level layout and figures out better and better ways to complete a level, the possible score that one can finish a level with increases a lot, and is indicative of one's mastery of the level. The newest Legend of Zelda game, Breath of the Wild is another good example - if you are really skillful, you can take on challenges sooner, but if you want to take your time and gain resources to do levels in an easier fashion, that's good too. The most common way for an adventure game to get more difficult is for the enemies to increase in health in comparison to the character, and to be able to dispense more damage to your character. Most of the time you can also offset part of this by gaining rewards that at increase player health, improve weapons, add armor, etc. The 'stylish action' games like Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, and Metal Gear Rising Revengance all do these sorts of things, and then also make sure that the enemies have more additional and more complicated attack mechanics as the game progresses. Bayonetta takes this even one step further by removing the tactical advantage of the dodge mechanic on the hardest game difficulty. (Normally, dodging at the last possible second would activate "Witch Time" mode where all of the enemies would be slowed down.)

Some games are simple and straightforward but their difficulty only comes from consistency of performance. This is a thing that carries over from some real sports - golf, bowling, and darts are all exactly like this. The objectives are clear and obvious, and not so difficult as to be impossible, but perhaps they're not going to go easy every time. In the video game realm, racing games are the most likely candidates for this formula. Some "Runner" games, which might as well be side-scrolling racing games, operate similarly.

However, this is often not enough for some gamers, or even some designers. Often, a game wanting to be more challenging takes a number of different routes in being more challenging. An obvious way to be more challenging is to just be rather difficult from the beginning, either internally or externally. In the old days of the arcade, Defender (and its sequel Stargate) were rather challenging on both fronts. Not only did they use one of the most difficult joystick-and-button interfaces ever constructed, but the game was inherently difficult, could go into a mode drastically more difficult if the player failed certain conditions, and using the Hyperspace button too often to attempt to escape a sticky situation could randomly cost the player a life. The early Resident Evil games used tank controls and a fixed camera perspective as an interface-based way to make the game difficult, and this became all too obvious once Resident Evil 4 started using an over the shoulder camera, and then the version on the Wii allowed players to use the Wiimote to target enemies on the screen directly. It went very quickly from being a slowly paced game full of jump scares to a more action-based game because making the controls easier drastically lowered the initial difficulty and made the game more accessible. The From Software games - Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro - have fantastic, responsive controls and are just purely difficult, offered as a challenge to only the best players and as an antidote to the usual array of bored teenagers complaining that they beat a game in a weekend. Other games in that challenge level include the Ninja Gaiden games, Super Star Wars SNES, Battletoads, or some of the shmup games by Cave .

Another way to be internally difficult is to present the player with challenges that they have no way to predict the first time, and then force incremental memorization of sections of the game as a result. This is probably my personal least favorite way of a game being difficult, and good examples of this are the original laserdisc arcade games Dragon's Lair and Space Ace.

Another interesting mechanic that can be used to create difficulty in a game is to create expectations about how tasks should be accomplished, and then use that expectation and intentionally subvert it. This can backfire if used too often, as the player will just resort to being more cautious even when it isn't warranted and slow down the narrative pace of the game. The Evil Within comes to mind as a good example of this, but probably most horror games do this to one degree or another as it is a common horror trope.


Part of the reason that I am writing about this is that I am still trying to finish The Evil Within, and contrasting it to my initial experience with the first Devil May Cry game.

The first Devil May Cry game was built from a failed attempt at making a fourth Resident Evil game. I got stuck on a fairly early level in Devil May Cry, after amazingly making it through earlier parts of the game that I thought were harder. The control scheme was not typical for American games*, (DMC used the Triangle button for jump which is more typical of Japanese games) and I could not pass the first close-quarters battle with the aptly named Death Scissors. I tried starting the game over, spending more time failing secret missions on purpose so I could continue to collect Red Orbs to level up Dante's moves, and still could not pass it. As a result, I would stop playing the game for months at a time, play other things, and hope I could come back to Devil May Cry and make sense of it. As it turned out, I just needed to refine my technique and find which specific attacks were effective and which were not. Once I passed that particular level, the rest of the game proceeded normally enough. *(Re-releases of the game included a control system that more closely matched the subsequent games, and also allowed for changed in the control scheme if desired.) This is markedly different from the current Devil May Cry game - DMCV, where the game isn't so difficult that you will miss out on the story, but the difficulty comes in getting good scores at regular difficulty and then playing the higher difficulty levels.

With The Evil Within, the game is much more generous with mid-level checkpoints that it automatically saves. The Evil Within was the first game that Shinji Mikami worked on with Tango Gameworks, and much more of a 'survival' horror game than the later action-based Resident Evil games. Thanks to the checkpoints, I play a tiny bit of the game at a time. Early in the game, you can see quite a number of stylistic similarities to Resident Evil 4, the last Resdient Evil game that Shinji Mikami worked on. I also think that some of the conventions that the game intentionally subverts are from Resident Evil 4 - as if it's a little bit of a 'gotcha' to people that are playing this because of his work on previous games. Unlike Devil May Cry 1, I haven't abandoned the game entirely for months at a time. I just work on slowly inching through the game.

I just hope that the game's story is worth my effort. It seems funny now to say that, since narrative was not as an important feature of early games.