I previously wrote about my recent vacation in France, and discussed all the places we went and fun things we did. I made a few allusions to parts of the trip that were unpleasant, but I didn't elaborate. I wanted to focus on the enjoyable parts of the trip, and save the unpleasant parts for a follow-up post.

I've previously visited the U.K., Denmark, and Germany, where everyone spoke fluent English, and I never had any problems communicating with anyone. I was a little more worried about the language barrier on this trip, since the French have a bit of a reputation for not liking Americans. I was especially worried about our plans to travel outside of Paris, into more rural parts of the country, where I did not expect English to be as common.

This fear proved almost completely unfounded. Almost everyone in Paris spoke conversational English. In the few instances in which we interacted with non-English-speaking French persons (mostly in the country-side), my partner proved to be surprisingly capable of conversing with them. I had no idea that she spoke French (in addition to Spanish and some Japanese), but apparently, she had been studying French in the months leading up to the trip, and was able to hold conversation well enough.

The only thing worse than an airline seat...

The real misery began before the vacation even properly began, with the trans-Atlantic flight. Airlines seem to be going out of their way to do everything possible to make long flights as miserable as possible. It's like they're all in a race to the bottom. The last few times I flew overseas, it was over British Airlines or Hawaiian Airlines, which were both reasonably comfortable flights. This time, I flew a Delta flight partially operated by Air France, and I've also flown Frontier recently. The 7 1/2 hour flight across the Atlantic to Paris was almost as bad and uncomfortable as a domestic Spirit flight. I had a middle seat, with my knees pressing up against the seat in front of me the whole time, and my elbows scrunched into my sides so as not to be infringing on my neighbors' space.

It's as if plane seats have been scientifically designed to be as uncomfortable as possible for anybody who is of average size or larger.

To make matters worse, as soon as the plane took off from my layover in Detroit, I started developing a migraine. I've suffered from migraines my entire life, and they recently have been getting worse. So I had recently visited a neurologist to talk about my migraines, and he had prescribed me a new migraine medication called Sumatriptan. I had taken the Sumatriptan once prior, and it knocked out the migraine within 30 or 40 minutes, so I was hopeful that it would work again. In fact, I expected that it would work again, and didn't even bother to pack my old go-to medication: Excedrin Migraine.

A small bottle of Excedrin is an essential travel supply.

Well, the Sumatriptan did not work.

The only thing worse than an airline seat, is being stuck in an airline seat with a migraine. I spent the entire 7 1/2 hour flight across the Atlantic crunched in a middle seat, with a migraine, unable to sleep or relax, and unable to read or watch movies. I had even taken my gaming laptop with me, with the expectation of going on a 7-hour Civ bender during the flight. No such luck. I had to just sit there with my eyes closed and my head in my hands, counting down the minutes until the plane landed. Thankfully, once I got out of the airport and metro stations in Paris, and out into fresh air, the migraines started to recede on its own, and I was able to enjoy the rest of the day with just a dull headache.

I've since taken the Sumatriptan again, and it also did not work. So I guess it's back to taking Excedrin Migraine until my doctors can find something else that does work...

In any case, the experience was so miserable that I spent the extra money to choose my own seat for the flight back. I did not want a repeat, especially considering that the flight back was an 11-hour flight that landed in Seattle for a transfer to Vegas. I picked a seat on the aisle in the back row. This would allow me to stretch my feet into the aisle, and being in the back would give me immediate access to the restroom if I needed it (I didn't end up using the restroom during this flight, but you'll understand later in the blog why I wanted this).

I've finally been working at my current job for long enough that I have more than a month of paid time off. This affords me more time to be able to take extended holidays throughout the year without having to worry about saving time for sick days or to take time off around Thanksgiving or Christmas. After a few years of not taking any major vacations (other than short weekend road trips) due to having a baby at home, my partner and I finally decided that the toddler was old enough to be able to stay with his grandparents for more than just a weekend. So we finally treated ourselves (and our daughter) to a real vacation with another trip to Europe.

I spent a week on vacation in France
with my lovely partner and our daughter.

This time, we decided to go to France!

My partner actually spent almost 3 weeks abroad with our daughter. They went to the U.K. as well. I did not go with them to London, since I have already been there multiple times, and I didn't want both of us to be away from the toddler for too long. I decided to stay home while they were in the U.K.. My partner already had the experience of being a single mother and not being able to do things like travel because of having a baby, so I volunteered to stay behind so that she would have the opportunity to do the things that she wanted to do. Instead, I flew out to Paris to meet them during the 2nd week of their trip.

I'm going to write about the plane flight and my feelings about modern air travel in a separate post, since I want to reflect on the pleasant parts of the trip first.

2 Days in Paris

The first part of the trip (for me) was 2 nights in Paris. Overall, Paris reminded me a lot of San Francisco. The nice parts of the city are beautiful and a joy to walk around. The other parts are filthy, and full of homeless people. And these neighborhoods can literally be separated by a single block. It can be emotional whiplash going from the awe-inspiring sights like Notre Dame to the heartbreak of having to walk past block after block of homeless beggars (including children!) -- many of whom have given up on even trying to panhandle for cash.

Since they live in Europe, hopefully they at least still have access to health care. Right? Surely one of the benefits of having socialized healthcare is that people like this can at least have access to physical and mental health care. I hope that is the case. Regardless, there's not much that I can do about it, especially since I don't live in France and cannot vote in their elections. All I can do is vote in American elections, and to advocate for more public policies that promote the humane and dignified treatment of homeless people and those in poverty. Plenty of my tax dollars go towards bombing black and brown people in other countries, much to my disgust and frustration. If I'm going to be paying those taxes, then I'd much rather that they go towards services like shelters, food banks, healthcare, addiction treatment, and job training for the poor and homeless, many of whom are victims of circumstance and exploitation, and do not deserve to be in the situations they are in.

My partner likes medieval tapestries, and the Lady and the Unicorn is one of her favorites.

My partner and daughter did pretty much all of the usual Paris sight-seeing. They visited the Eiffel Tower and Palace of Versailles, which are both things that I would have liked to do, but which were lower on my priority list. Together, we went to the Musée de Cluny to see the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. This is one of my partner's favorite medieval artworks, and we have a copy of one of the tapestries hanging in our living room. We also spent a full afternoon at the Musée de l'Armée, which is loaded with medieval armor, swords, rifles, canons, uniforms, and weapons from medieval history, all the way through Napoleonic Wars, and both world wars -- not to mention Napoleon's Tomb. They even have Napoleon's horse, stuffed and preserved in a glass box.

I also learned from this museum that, apparently, "gun-swords" were a real thing. You win this round, Final Fantasy VIII...

The video games industry's obsession with remakes and remasters is pretty obnoxious. I feel like I'm stuck either playing no new games at all, or playing nothing but games that I played 20 years ago. Of all the remakes that have been made, Resident Evil 4 might be the most unnecessary. Resident Evil 4 is basically the game on which every modern over-the-shoulder shooter is based. The original Resident Evil 4 still plays like a modern game. On top of that, it's been remastered and ported to newer consoles, including having VR versions.

But I never played the VR version. In fact, I haven't played any of the VR versions for the new line of Resident Evil games. I keep hearing that they're some of the best VR experiences on the market today, but I didn't have a VR headset when 7 or Village released, and I just haven't gotten around to going back and replaying those games now that I have a headset. So I decided to give the VR version of RE4's remake a try, after a friend of mine was done with his disc.

So this review is going to be almost entirely a review of the VR version of the remake, since that's how I played the game.

Slower, and more methodical than I remember

I never liked Resident Evil 4. It's frantic, explicitly challenging gameplay full of "gotcha!" encounters, and its parodic tone never really gelled with me. Moreover, I've always blamed Resident Evil 4 for single-handedly killing the classic survival horror genre, which happens to be one of my favorite game genres. It took well over a decade for proper survival horror games to start coming back, but even so, they still aren't quite the same. The slow, methodical pace, and emphasis on resource-management and logistics has been minimized in favor of fast-paced shooter action and frequent checkpointing.

I went in expecting to be overwhelmed and frustrated, which was largely my experience in the original game. I expected that the frantic nature of the game, and all the running around would quickly make me dizzy or nauseous in VR. I honestly did not expect that I would get through the first few chapters before giving up due to the game being annoyingly difficult to the point that it would make me literally sick.

Areas that gave me a lot of trouble in the original game were much easier this time around.

Much to my surprise, that was not the case! I was really enjoying the opening hours of the game. I even starting to wonder why I ever hated Resident Evil 4 to begin with. The VR visuals look good. It was controlling well. I felt in control of the character, and perfectly able to handle the threats the game was throwing at me. It initially felt much easier than I remembered the original being. I breezed through parts of the early game that I remembered struggling with for hours in the original.

Today, I posted a pair of new videos for my Patrons. These videos discuss what I consider to be the best and worst parts of Bloober's Silent Hill 2 Remake. Both videos can be viewed by Patrons by visiting the following link: https://www.patreon.com/posts/best-and-worst-2-131192586.

The first video is about the best thing about the remake. It will be a Patreon exclusive for about a week. At that point, I will release it to the public, and the second video will remain a Patreon exclusive for a couple weeks before it goes available to the public. Once both videos are publicly available, I will update this post to embed both videos for all my readers to be able to watch. In fact, I might even embed them here a little bit early, for all my loyal readers. It will really depend on how busy I am over the next few weeks (I will be very busy).

Of course, if you already read my full written review on this blog, then you probably have a good idea of what each video's topic will be.

As always, thanks to all of my Patrons, past, present, and future. Your support has meant a great deal to me, and has helped me offset some of the costs of maintaining this blog and of creating my YouTube content. I wish you all the best.