Merk vs. IndyDDR: Waiting for a Merk-acle

[Amp Divorax]

Merk Muscles-Hardbody

Merk McLargeHuge

(Sorry, I just got done watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFHlJ2voJHY and I'm thinking of new nicknames for buff Merk.)

[Merk]

Didn't play yesterday since the majority of my time at home was spent unloading and moving some boxes but tonight I will definitely play.

I'll probably whore out Cafe to see if I can learn the turns and shit on it. I feel like that chart doesn't need any weird double-stepping if you do it right.

[Ho]

I didn't play last night either. I rented a bunch of movies on Xbox during their Black Friday weekend special because they were only 10 cents each. But they expire at the end of this week, so I've been watching them the past few nights this week.

That being said, I watched Pixels last night. It was not at all as bad as I was expecting it to be. In fact, I was rather entertained.

Anyway, I'll try to get some games in tonight. I certainly didn't figure out how to turn Cafe when I played it last, but I managed to brute force my way through it.

[Merk]

Played a couple of sets yesterday, played a lot of harder singles charts since I'm more familiar with them and know which charts are tough and which ones aren't. Did some doubles though!

Cafe: 17 greats, 3 misses

The ending weirdness isn't too bad and on my second attempt yesterday I only had to do a little double stepping. All in all a pretty good chart!

Would you like to move on to DDR Max? 5th mix is great and all but I'd like to change it up a bit and tackle some of the shit in Max since that's when the difficulty ramped up.

[Ho]

Admit it, you miss speed mods.

If you want hard, we can't leave 5th Mix without doing Boom Boom Dollar KOG G3 Mix...or Xanadu...or there's a few more that I think are particular challenging. And I definitely won't let us leave 5th Mix without doing Moonlight Shadow just because it's awesome and I want to figure out the goofy foot patterns again.

But after that, yeah we can go to MAX. But there's really only like 5 reasons to play MAX, aren't there?
Bye Bye Baby Balloon
(Fuck) Flash in the Night
Follow Me
Ghosts
Telephone Operator

I believe those are the songs that are unique to MAX (don't appear in any other mix). I don't think I'm missing any others.

[Ho]

Chad has reminded me that Telephone Operator is in Extreme. I think it dropped out in MAX2 and then came back for Extreme. So I guess there's only 4 reasons to play MAX.

[Merk]

Alright we can leave 5th in - what do you want to play next? I'm gonna play throughout the weekend.

[Ho]

I think it's your turn to pick. I would be fine if you wanted to pick more than one song.

Do you have any interest in hitting all the 5th Mix exclusives?

[Merk]

Yeah that's fine, I'm willing to do multiple songs a week if that's okay since I'm going to dedicate myself to playing a LOT more now. Plus it'll help things move along faster.

Have we done Against All Odds? I recall that one being more streamy and lot different than its singles counterpart. If we haven't done that one then let's do it!

[Ho]

I'm good with it. Did you want to pick any more?

[Ho]

I think these are the 5th Mix exclusives:
17才
Against All Odds
Be Together
Dancing All Alone
Moonlight Shadow
Movin On
My Generation
Never Ending Story
No Limit
おどるポンポコリン
Right Now
Swing It
Test My Best
The Twist
Tribal Dance
Afronova Primeval
Paranoia Eternal
Remember You
Radical Faith
The Cube

And, of course, the Long Versions:
Hot Limit
Oops! I Did It Again
B4U glorious style
Dynamite Rave (Long ver.)

I think this list is correct, but let me know if I'm missing any or if any of these showed up again later.

But these could give us plenty to play for the next week or two, if you want. Basically, knock out whatever we can't play in another mix like we did with 3rd (don't forget to play those, too!).

[MonMotha]

Don't forget to drink your Ritalin!

[Ho]

Eight tequilas to feel up my lice.

[Merk]

I think this weekend I'll focus on Against All Odds and My Generation.

Brian how are you liking your Aria? Does it play nice with your Fitbit?

[Ho]

Aria is good. The weight seems more precise and more accurate than my previous scale.

Setup was a bit of a nightmare. I forget the details now, but I think I had to use a different device to set it up. IIRC, I tried many times on one device (phone) and it wouldn't work and had to use a different device. But it worked straight away on the second device and I haven't had any problem since.

The % Body Fat can be WTF from time-to-time. I have no idea how accurate it is in general, but sometimes it will throw out a number that is outrageously different (usually higher) than my previous reading. Like, I doubt I jumped from 18% to 30% body fat in a day. But most of the time it seems pretty consistent, so it's probably fine.

I'm not sure how it's supposed to play nice or not with the Fitbit. I mean, it's readings show up on my Fitbit dashboard. Isn't that all it's supposed to do?

Speaking of which, the sync can be a little finicky. Sometimes it will refuse to sync, I'll move the scale about 4", and then it will. That's probably a wifi oddity, but it seems a little weird that 4" would make the difference--especially since no other wifi device in my house has any trouble anywhere and my house simply isn't that big.

Battery life has been pretty good. I think I've changed the batteries once since I've had it, and that's been...10 months now?

If you're looking for a review, I guess I'd give it a 7 out of 10: overall good with a few intermittent hiccups.