Valdis Story

AggroChat #28 – Server Nightmares and Spycraft

Last night we recorded another episode of the AggroChat podcast, which is something that was a bit up in the air a few weeks back.  Because of all of the excitement going on with Extra Life streams and Team Alliance of Awesome… I had wondered at one point if we should just skip the week.  Thankfully we had plenty of stuff to talk about and the normal cast of characters were all in attendance.  Last night we were joined by Ashgar, Kodra, Rae and Tam as we discuss all sorts of stuff going on.  It was a weird lead up for me, since I was out and about all day long, and didn’t really have much time to catch up on the news until right before we started recording.

We talked about the latest round of FFXIV announcements coming out of the London Fanfest.  Unfortunately the announcement that we got in Vegas of the Job information coming in London… was a bit of a tease.  We also talk about what we are looking forward to Tuesday when the 2.4 patch lands.  I talk about my experiences with Rift Nightmare Tide launch and the fairly catastrophic server rollback that caused me to loose essentially one entire days worth of playtime and a bunch of other stuff that came with that.  Tam and Kodra talk about their experiences playing Civilization Beyond Earth as a co-operative team.  Finally Rae fills us in on some of the craziness that is happening in the post season League.  It seems like there is a ton of “horse trading” going on as players are swapping teams left and right.

Extra Life Results

I have to say I am really damned proud of Team Alliance of Awesome.  We opted to do the 25 hour marathon relay style where each of us would pass the baton to the next leg of the stream.  I personally chose to take the 11pm EST to 3am EST slot thinking I could just stay up after we record the podcast and push through it.  I did however take a nap in preparation but I have to thank all of the folks that showed up during the middle of the night to cheer me on.  You guys kept me awake and responsive.  During that last hour after Pazz logged out of voice chat I got more than a tiny bit quiet.  All told we had 9 total participants and as you can see from the image on the right side we raised $1728 for the Extra Life charity.  So I want to thank everyone that participated by taking a leg of the stream, and everyone who tuned in to cheer us on.  It was an awesome experience and I am hoping next year we can maybe even make it bigger somehow.  I know as we neared go time folks came out of the woodwork wanting to participate but we had already assigned all of the slots.

One of the things that I thought was awesome was just how varied the group was in what all they streamed.  Sure there were a few games that got duplicated but there was a ton of variety from Single Player to MMOs to even Classic Console games.  There seemed to be a little bit for everyone.  I know Ashgar even managed to completely beat the Kirby game he was playing during his stream, which is pretty awesome.  I originally planned on playing The Secret World, Trove, FFXIV and Destiny… but I ended up mixing that up a bit.  I started off rolling a brand new Illuminati character in The Secret World, but having not played in awhile I did not make it terribly far into the game before I hit the hour threshold where I had intended to swap games.  After that I popped into FFXIV and threw myself at the Mercy of the Duty Roulette, healing an Ifrit and a Tam-Tara Deep Croft run.  After another hour had passed I flipped over to Rift and spent the rest of the night working my way through Goboro Reef in the Nightmare Tide content.  After two hours of play I managed to finally get back to roughly the same place I was before the server rollback the other day.

The folks I am immensely proud of though are the individuals who took it upon themselves to do the entire 25 hour stream.  For me I found four hours late at night a challenge, but I know Braxwolf, Stargrace and Liore all took it upon themselves to do the entire stream.  So seriously raise your hands and give all the folks that managed to complete the full 25 hour marathon a huge round of applause.  This is an awesome cause and it was great to actually be part of it this year.  Like I said before I am hoping to maybe do a better job of assigning slots and getting as many folks participating as we can next year around.  For the most part I believe the covered all 25 hours of the marathon, and some streams ran a bit long but it was awesome to have multiple folks streaming at the same time.  I really like the team construct in Hitbox, and I just wish Twitch would extend that functionality to mere mortals instead of having it walled up behind being a partner.  I will never have the kind of numbers needed to become a partner in any site…  but it is awesome to still be able to have a team of friends streaming.  You can watch my entire 4 1/2 hours of streaming in the embedded video above.

Valdis Story

This morning I am cheating a bit with my Steampowered Sunday game, in part because I started playing this last week.  I have gotten in the habit of picking up almost every Humble Bundle package that comes out, because I know sooner or later I will want to play one of the games in it.  Ashgar actually tipped me off to this game, because of the horribly long name I mostly ignored it when I noticed it in the bundle.  However he thought I would definitely be interested in it as it is a Metroidvania of a sort.  More so than a Metroidvania, it is very much a game in the feel of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night… and if you have been around my blog for very long you will recognize that as most likely my favorite game.  I own copies on the PSP, Vita, PS3 and even still have my original Playstation disc around here even though I don’t actually have a functional PSX any longer.

You have a series of characters to choose but initially your only options are Wyatt a emo haired youth with a big sword (see cloud) or Reina a female monk that is labeled for “advanced” players.  I of course went for the guy with the big sword…  because slashing things with a big sword is fun.  At some point I plan on going back through and trying out Reina, especially since during Wyatts play through of the game you encounter her early on… and she seems like a badass.  The storyline of the game is a little odd.  You are in a world where heaven and hell have both come to the material plain to duke it out for the surface.  As one of the last remaining humans you seem to have the ability to use the attacks of either side.  There is a lot of this that I don’t quite understand yet, but the devils are reddish hue and the angels tend to have blue color palettes.

The story doesn’t really matter much to me to be honest.  Why I am playing this game is that mechanically it is really fun.  You wander about and collect new abilities that open up new areas to explore just like the traditional Metroidvania style.  For example one of the first abilities you get is a wall jump, allowing you to explore new areas and reach places that you haven’t been before.  Today during my stream I managed to find a new ability that allowed me to erect a pillar of ice, allowing me to jump on it to reach areas I couldn’t before.  If you are used to Metroidvanias none of this will seem out of the ordinary.  There is a basic crafting system that allows you to upgrade your gear in towns, and that aspect actually reminds me a bit of Simon’s Quest the second Castlevania game.

This is the sort of game that you either really like Metroidvania games or you dislike them.   You can check out my entire stream from this morning above.  I play the area between two towns and end up fighting two bosses… both of which I barely made it through.  The boss fights are fairly tough in part because often times the environment conspires against you.  The first boss I made it through I literally have no clue quite how I did it.  In part I feel like I just lucked into that one.  The second boss was difficult because the floor was icy, and the wind would blow you to the side making it super hard to stay on the platforms and time the jumps to avoid the ice beams.  In any case it is worth a look.  The game is pretty much $15 wherever you go for it and available DRM free through the developer or on Steam.  Good game, and I play on playing it some more… I just wish I had it on the Vita to be honest.  This seems like the perfect type of game to play before falling asleep.