Booking Dungeons

Final Fantasy Roadtrip

This week the Tokyo Game show is happening and we are starting to get a trickle of goodies out like the long awaited updated Final Fantasy XV trailer.  After watching it, I have to say this looks like it might be a Final Fantasy quite unlike the others.  My friend Kodra mentioned how unusual it was to see an automobile in the Final Fantasy setting, and I had not really thought about it until then but he is right.  It has almost been as though they have denied the existence of Automobiles in pretty much every setting other than Final Fantasy VII.  Even in the super futuristic VIII they had the requisite flying airships in the form of giant aircraft…  but they still lacked anything even resembling an automobile.  Let alone a crazy sedan with suicide doors like they are touring the countryside in for this game.

From the video this seems like the game is going to be more like Final Fantasy XII was in the form of a more “Action Combat” approach to the JRPG.  This has its fans and its critics, but I have to say one of my favorite Final Fantasy “cousins” was Vagrant Story that featured a very action combat game play style.  I even liked Final Fantasy XII for what I played of it, at some point I want to go back and finish the game.   What intrigues me the most about the game is the way it feels like the monsters are almost part disaster movie, like they are taking a road trip to survey the countryside like some sort of awkward rubberneckers.  I just hope I can control which ever character I choose, because man I am all about the big dude with the beard and the knock-off buster sword.

Castlevania Dark Souls Edition

Another game I have been looking forward to on the PS4 since this years E3 is the game Bloodborne.  At TGS they released a new trailer with some more tasty bits about the gameplay featuring what looks to be multiple classes for the player to choose from.  I’ve somehow almost entirely missed the Dark Souls madness, but I am looking forward to this game as it feels more firmly in my wheelhouse.  I love Castlevania, and I love  the dire battle against the things that go bump in the night feeling that this game has.  I just hope that the gameplay is every bit as fun as it looks like in the trailer.  For a game like this to work for me, the moment to moment gameplay has to feel amazing… and from what I have played of Dark Souls my problem tends too be the wonky feeling control scheme.

This is probably going to to be a title that I end up trying before actually picking it up.  I am sure this is blasphemy here but I actually thought Dragon’s Dogma felt much better than Dark Souls as far as moment to moment gameplay.  As such I am really hoping that the control scheme is more similar to Dogma.  In any case it is a grim dark game about slaughtering the undead and such, and that along makes me a happy camper.  We need more games where we roam the country side slaughtering baddies for fun and profit.  The only negative that I can see from the trailer is that like Order 1886 it looks a little bit “on rails” for my tastes.  In any case I am watching both of those titles closely.

Booking Dungeons

ffxiv 2014-09-19 06-45-54-737 Wednesday night we had tried to run Pharo Sirius for my friend Waren to complete this first Animus book and wound up failing miserably.  In my infinite wisdom I attempted to bring along two of our lowest geared players, one of which was the healer… and quite simply he didn’t have the mana to heal the place at just barely ilevel 48 the bare minimum.  Last night however we changed up the mix and brought in a very seasoned healer and cleared the dungeon with minimal effort.  That really became the theme of the night, cleaning up dungeons both myself and Warenwolf needed for our Animus books.  So in total we ran Pharo Sirius, Lost City of Amdapor, Tam-Tara Deepcroft and Stone Vigil.  For the last of these we managed to grab one of our up and coming healers that still needed experience and got her roughly a level in doing the place.

Essentially what we learned through the failure that was Wednesday, and the success that was Thursday is that pretty much you can only afford to have a single player in the mix that is significantly undergeared for the content.  There were other issues Wednesday night, like the fact that the player had not completed the level 50 quest and was missing both the piece of armor from it and more importantly the critical ability you get that for white mages is your full heal.  I cannot impress upon new players enough that the moment you ding 50…  go complete your last Job quest.  It always gives your class something that you will desperately need from that point onwards.  The game assumes you have these abilities, and will throw things at you that often times require them.

As far as leveling goes I managed to get my Paladin to 39, which let me equip a sweet new Grand Company weapon.  Since I got Zantetsuken waiting on me in the bank, I thought I would take this opportunity to glamour my weapon to look like the Blazefire Saber.  This might literally be the only time I get to use my spiffy gunblade from the Lightning Returns event…  since seriously there is no weapon in the game nearly as cool as Zantetsuken.  Additionally I have been banking the Hunt Seals needed to buy my Paladin a full set of gear the moment I ding 50.  I am not sure what exactly happened, but at this point I have definitely changed focus from leveling the White Mage to pushing up the Paladin.  I think more than anything it was my realization that I lacked a class to easily grind additional Atma bits on, now that I screwed up and got my Warrior Atma weapon first.  Atma grinding does two useful things for me…  firstly I get the chance at atma bits, but more importantly the steady flow of company seals keeps my ventures running.  Hopefully at some point this weekend I will have a brand new paladin ready to go.

#FFXIV #FFXV #Bloodborne

Destiny is Gorgeous

Squandering the Morning

My Great Capture Screen Shot 2014-09-09 06-09-24 This morning I have absolutely squandered my morning away, because today the servers for Destiny came up.  In truth the servers came up over the night, and there are already a large number of folks milling around in Tower that are level 10 or so.  This morning my overriding goal was to get a character created and get it to tower so I could eventually meet up with friends and play.  This formidable mug you are seeing represents the new version of me in Destiny.  At character creation you are given the choice between Human, some sort of translucent skinned humanoid, and robots.  Generally speaking I tend to heavily favor humans but there is a fatal flaw in the character creator…  no beards.  Since I can’t have a beard then I pretty much have to go robot.

All in all I am fine with this because I feel like a badass with the green glowing eyes.  I played robotic characters in City of Heroes and Champions Online, so I guess that fits my motif anyway.  I ended up rolling a Titan again, because I have to admit I like having the insane attack that slams the ground and knocks all of the enemies away.  Additionally I found I liked having a jet pack better than some form of a modified jump.  In theory the titan becomes more tanky over time, which also definitely fits my overriding goals in pretty much any game.  Similarly I know that there will already be a lot of Warlocks and Hunters among my friends, so I figure it is best to stick with what I know and enjoyed playing in alpha and beta.

Destiny Is Gorgeous

My Great Capture Screen Shot 2014-09-09 06-29-14 The thing I keep forgetting after large blocks of time being out of the game is just how damned gorgeous this game is.  I guess as a habitual member of the PC master race, I have a hard time realizing that the consoles have finally caught up.  Always in the past there was something wrong with the console images, either they were grainy or washed out or blurry.  They lacked the saturation and definition that I was so used to from playing on a PC.  The PS4 however playing destiny looks amazing, and I doubt it would perform any better on a PC, or at least not with the mid range video cards I generally purchase.  The big difference of course is that I am running around this landscape with the joystick rather than a keyboard and mouse.  This is the biggest adjustment for me, because I still don’t quite feel comfortable without the precision control to make headshots that a mouse gives me.

My Great Capture Screen Shot 2014-09-09 06-19-04 Thankfully Destiny has more than a fair amount of aim assist, and while I can’t really draw a bead and get head shots reliably, I can chew down encounters with body shots.  I managed to make it through the first tutorial level in pretty good time, and as I now idle in Tower to write this… random people keep landing and dancing with me.  I am not exactly sure when I will really get a chance to start this game properly.  I know we have plans for this evening, but I might pop in after that to at least run the first couple of missions.  This is one of those games that I don’t mind being behind the curve.  I am not really competing with anyone to get to max level first.  I feel like Destiny is going to fill the same role that Diablo 3 does.  Fun game that I can get into quickly, kill some stuff and pop back out without many hard feelings.  I like the big open world areas in Destiny for this, in that I can land and make my own objectives or simply run around looking for interesting stuff.

Beginning Coil

ffxiv 2014-09-08 21-07-18-237 The picture is completely unrelated here, but I look adorable like always in my White Mage outfit.  I mentioned earlier that we already had plans for tonight, and primarily that is because we have decided to start raiding Binding Coil, and this evening is the time that seemed to work the best for most people.  I honestly figure by the time evening rolls around Destiny will be completely unplayable, so I thought this might be a good idea to give us all something to focus on other than the inability to play with our new toy.  For some time we have been gearing up and wanting to start Binding Coil fresh as a guild.  I believe that mostly we will be going into this one completely fresh, in that none of us are really doing research ahead of tonight.  One of my biggest joys is figuring out content with my friends, and I think we will do just fine.

One of the most awesome footnotes about the community however is the reaction folks have had to us beginning Binding Coil.  Now this raid in one form or another has been out for a year, and they simply keep adding new turns to it.  So as I have talked to some fairly serious raiders about our guild starting the Coil fresh, I’ve received a completely unexpected reaction.  Were it World of Warcraft, I would have  gotten reactions like folks chiding us for being “Months Behind”.  Here I have gotten nothing but positive responses, talking about how they wished they could go back and see the Coil with fresh eyes again, and that we would enjoy ourselves.  This overwhelming sense of others wishing us well and being happy for us is extremely refreshing.  I am glad that this same strong community attitude extends to raiding as well as the dungeon content we have experienced.  Hopefully we will go in, clear the first turn and walk away with some awesome memories.

#FFXIV #Destiny

Cannot Be Tamed Questionnaire: Part 1

Packaged with a Bow

I am not sure if this was intended to draw out posts during Blaugust or not, but yesterday Jasyla over at Cannot Be Tamed posted a survey.  I seem to be able to rattle on every morning without much issue, but I am always thankful when a ready made post is handed to me so neatly.  In part my hope is that through my own blog post and Liore’s (who turned me onto this) we will get this one spread through out the Blaugust community and get Jasyla a bunch of responses.  I am really not sure how far I will make it into the survey in a single post, but we will see.

Cannot Be Tamed Gaming Questionnaire

You can see the full text of the survey here, but I will attempt to answer all of the questions

1. When did you start playing video games?

2260351657_5c4ea18a61_z I honestly do not remember a time when I was NOT playing video games.  I would have to say age three or four maybe?  The earliest memory I had of video games was that my parents owned a Sears and Roebuck Pong clone.  More than actually playing it… I remember the desire to play it.  Like from the moment it got hooked up to the television I wanted my hands on it.  Though being as young as I was, my parents were super reluctant to let me play.  It was finally my Uncle Billy who I think let me play for the first time, and I remember losing almost immediately.  The thing is it intrigued me so much that I kept wanting to try over and over.  That early experience pretty much imprinted my brain for video games permanently.

2. What is the first game you remember playing?

seaquest6 Well like I said in the above answer the first game I remember playing is Pong.  The first game I remember absolutely loving however was probably Ms Pacman.  My aunt was the first to get an Atari 2600 and all of us cousins played it nonstop over most of our formative years.  I ended up getting a second hand Atari system not too long after that.  The game I can remember playing the most of however was Seaquest a game where you rescued drivers from sharks in a little sub that could fire a weapon.  It was also the first game I can remember playing that didn’t have just a constant repetition of levels.  As you progressed through levels the colors would change and new enemies would be added, and we wove a complex storyline through these simple transitions.

3. PC or Console?

EverQuest-10 I am primarily a PC gamer, but it hasn’t always been that way.  In fact I have a ton of rare console systems stored away in my closet including an 3DO, a NeoGeo and a TurboDuo.  In fact during the years before I got hooked on MMOs I had a video game loft with all of my consoles hooked up and “on tap” through a complex series of A/B switches.   I have spent large swaths of my time shifting back and forth between them.  Prior to 1992 I was a hardcore console gamer and mostly an Super Nintendo JRPG fan.  Then we got a PC and I got hooked on Wolfenstein, Doom and Civilization.  As I went through college the 3D graphics changes were happening and I was all about playing everything in “GL”.  It was during this time that I played Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, Fallout, Quake, Baldur’s Gate and pretty much anything i could get my hands on.

When I got out of college however I had a massive console resurgence with the Sony Playstation, Dreamcast, and Saturn systems.  I didn’t really make the journey back into PC exclusivity until I got hopelessly mired in the original Everquest around the release of the Scars of Velious expansion pack.  It has been my love of the MMO that has kept me glued to the PC, and while I have dabbled with the PS2, PS3, Xbox 360 and PS4…  I still prefer the PC.  While until recently it was the MMOs that had kept me there, it is also the fact that I can modify my games freely.  Everytime I install a new back of mods in Fallout 3, it makes it a completely new experience for me and I go through another 50 to 100 hour play through running back through all the content with fresh eyes.  So when given the chance I will almost always gravitate back to the PC.

4. XBox, PlayStation, or Wii?

playstation-4-controller1 I started off my gaming life as a Nintendo Fanboy, but over the years their consoles have gotten less and less practical.  All I really want is for them to release a good solid console without a gimmick controller.  I don’t want new ways to play my games, I just want new content.  I am admittedly these days a Sony Playstation fan.  I have owned two different Xbox 360s, but it is really the value of the Playstation Plus subscription that keeps me attached to Sony.  Over the last few years they have come off as the good guy in the console wars, and Microsoft coming off as the part of the stodgy corporate power.  I realize that both are huge corporations hell bent on parting me from my money, but I feel less horrible about supporting Sony.  Right now I have the PS3, PS4 and Vita in my office and they are hooked up so I can livestream the PS3/PS4 so I guess my alignment is pretty clear.

5. What’s the best game you’ve ever played?

273154-castlevania-symphony-of-the-night-playstation-screenshot-in The game I constantly keep coming back to over the years is Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.  The game represents pretty much my perfectly crafted game.  For starters it is lovingly drawn 2D animation and not 3D.  It has an amazing soundtrack with awesome rock versions of the Castlevania classics.  I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the Castlevania franchise, despite how many false steps it has taken over the years.  I love the idea of hunting down Vampires, Werewolves, Ghouls, and all manner of things that go bump in the night.  Castlevania is one of the first games I purchased for myself on the original Nintendo.  I remember saving up my money and making a trip to Toys R Us to get it… and that was quite the pilgrimage considering the closest one was an hour away.  Symphony of the Night was pretty much the pinnacle of “metroidvania” for me.  It had roleplaying and leveling elements to keep me hooked, and an awesome world to explore and find all sorts of secrets.  I have repurchased this game at least four different times, on various platforms and I have it installed on my Vita at the moment.  When I am feeling horrible this is the game I boot up to take me back to a time when everything made sense.

6. What’s the worst game you’ve ever played?

et2600Screen2 I have played so many games since the days of the Atari 2600, but no game has ever absolutely confounded me as much as E.T. the Extraterrestrial.  This game is the game that began my fear of movie tie-ins regardless of what they might be.  I was still in elementary school when the movie came out, and absolutely loved it.  So when they released it on my favorite console system the Atari, I had to get it right?  There was nothing at all about this game that made any sense what so ever, and still to this day I cannot reason what the hell I am supposed to do.  You alternated between getting humped by men in trenchcoats, to picking up piles of poo on the ground that were supposed to be Reese’s Pieces… to falling into trenches for no apparent reason.  To make things even stranger…  sometimes the trenches had things that looked like record players… that gave you credit of some sort for collecting them.  But the most frustrating part was trying to get back out of the trenches, which involved extending your neck and levitating out…  but you had to do so in exactly the right spot or you fell back down again.  This was the first game to ever make me want to throw my controller across the room.  After all of these years I still get angry thinking about the disappointment I felt as a kid playing this game.  I have to say that the Ghostbusters Atari 2600 game redeemed movie ports somewhat, because I remember that game was really good.

Taking Longer than Expected

So at this point I am only 6 questions in…  and there are a total of 21.  This is going to take awhile, so hopefully you can bare with me as I answer a few questions each morning.  I simply have run out of time this morning so I have to cut this off here.  I blame the fact that I just had to look up images to go with each of the paragraphs.  In any case tune in tomorrow for the next set of questions, where I hopefully make it through more than six!

On Exclusivity and Microsoft

GamesCom Bombshell

rise-of-the-tomb-raider Yesterday was the first day of the GamesCom conference in Cologne Germany, and generally speaking during past conferences we have for the most part seen a repeat of what was just announced at E3 a few months before.  This year however we got quite the bomb shell dropped during the Microsoft press conference, in the form that they claim that Rise of the Tomb Raider is going to be an Xbox One exclusive title.  This of course caused a wave of outrage through the community in part because up until this point all signs pointed to this being yet another Square Enix multiplatform title.  In fact during the E3 event, this appeared as part of the Sony PS4 press conference and was not even shown during the Microsoft event.  The outrage that I see so far is far less about Xbone vs PS4 but the fact that at least on initial pass it seemed like it would not be coming to PC either.

If you dissect the message that was delivered you can see something subtle happening.  Every single time they mentioned that this was exclusive they played with the words a bit.  They kept repeating the carefully constructed phrase “coming exclusive for holiday 2015”.  Over and over at least four separate times they used that exact same wording.  So that screams to me that they are putting a lot of hype behind something that may or may not be the case.  There are always a number of 100% platform dependant titles on a console.  The best example of these are the classic titles that you can only get on a Nintendo console like Zelda, Mario, Metroid, Kirby and Kid Icarus to make a few.  Then there are titles that come out first one a given console, but later on ship on every other console.

On Exclusivity and Microsoft

This is after all a card Microsoft has played for years, trumping the supposed exclusivity of a given title that then not only comes out but in part becomes far more famous on another platform.  If you remember both Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect were XBox exclusives, yet in both cases the franchises came out on the PC and with Mass Effect it now exists on all of the consoles and was a massive sales juggernaut.  Similarly even during this generation both Dead Rising 3 and Ryse: Son of Rome were supposedly platform exclusive titles but in both cases they are being released on the PC.  There was even the situation of Ninja Gaiden II that was a platform exclusive, and then later Tecmo released the game as Ninja Gaiden Sigma II so that they could break their exclusivity agreement.  All of this leads me to believe that this is just more marketing chicanery from Microsoft and not actually a platform exclusive title.

Ultimately games are developed to make money, and right now with 5 million Xbox One units being dwarfed by 10 million Playstation 4 units, it simply does not make sense to ignore the larger platform.  Ultimately this was a master stroke on the part of Microsoft however if they manage to pull it off.  I wouldn’t exactly call Rise of the Tomb Raider a platform selling title, but it certainly helps to buff up a console that has floundered a bit in its first year.  A good friend of mine has this rule that he refuses to buy a console before there are five titles that he wants to play on it that he cannot get anywhere else.  I personally have found this to be a pretty good rule so far, and ultimately this lead me to purchase my PS4.  If I reached a point where I had five titles for the Xbox One… I would consider getting one, but for the time being I just don’t have any interest.

Results of Poor Messaging

Microsoft has reached this point out of some phenomenally poor messaging.  When the console was announced they made a series of blunders in trying to guess exactly what their console buyers would want.  All of the touting of its television features really lost me in the process.  I barely watch television, and when I do it tends to be for a specific purpose… to watch one show and then move on to the next thing.  The only channel I watch with any frequency is Cartoon Network, more specifically Adult Swim.  Even then the last time I sat down in front of the television to actually watch television on purpose was well over a week ago.  So the focus on the initial marketing message of the console by demonstrating all of the admittedly interesting things it can do with television…  really landed off in left field.

Since then he has been struggling to out message Sony who has quite frankly dominated the news cycle with some pretty innovative features.  For sake of fairness I personally own right now 2 Xbox 360s, a Playstation 3, a Playstation Vita and a Playstation 4.  So I am not exactly an unbiased observer here.  I have clearly chosen the Sony Platform over the Microsoft one in part because all of these consoles work so well together.  The other thing is that Sony has focused in with laser precision on a very specific message.  “This is a console about video gaming, and we want to provide you an awesome gaming experience.”  So far this message has worked and resounded with folks looking for a next generation gaming console and not necessarily a next generation media pc.

It’s About the Value

The primary reason why I jumped allegiance during the last generation is admittedly just how amazing of a value Playstation Plus is, or more so how disappointing a value Xbox Gold was.  PS Plus is a $50 dollar a year subscription that gives you tons of free content as a result.  I just made a list of titles I have gotten in the two years I have been subscribed to the program.

Dust 514, DC Universe Online, Ratchet and Clank Collection, Dead Nation, Unit 13, Gravity Rush, Wipeout 2048, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Hitman: Absolution, Outlast, Resogun, Pinball Arcade, Infamous 2 , Little Big Planet 2, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One, Malicious, LIttle Big Planet Karting, Uncharted 3, Mod Nation Racers: Road Trip, Thomas Was Alone, Stealth Inc: A Clone in the Dark, Lone Survivor: The Directors Cut, Zen Pinball 2, Worms: Battle Island, Labrynth Legends, Zombie Tycoon II, Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee HD, Hotline Miami, Grid 2, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Payday 2, Metro: Last Light, Closure, Knytt Underground, Dyad, Bioshock Infinite, Darksiders, Saints Row: The Third, Batman: Arkham City, BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend, Poker Night 2, Joe Danger 2: The Movie, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Borderlands 2, Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny, Tekken 6, Galaga Legions, Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, Castle of Illusion, Jet Set Radio, Binary Domain, Vanquish, The Cave, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, Street Fighter X Tekken, Dragon’s Dogman: Dark Arisen, Remember Me, DmC Devil May Cry, Resident Evil Chronicles HD Collection, Mega Man 9&10 Combo, Tomb Raider, Pro Evolution Soccer 2014, Battlefield 3, Sleeping Dogs, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, Trine 2, PixelJunk Shooter, PIxelJunk Monsters , Velocity Ultra, Soul Sacrifice, Stick it to the Man, Limbo, Puppeteer, Surge Deluxe, NBA 2K14, Warframe, Flower, Strider, Towerfall Ascension, Doki-Doki Universe, Terraria, Muramasa Rebirth, Vessel, Dead Space 3, Fez, Dragon’s Crown, Metrico, Rogue Legacy, Proteus, Road Not Taken, Crysis 3

That is 94 individual titles that I have gotten for free through either the console itself or the Playstation Plus service.  In many cases those titles are available on multiple platforms and as a result I get a copy for every platform it is avaialble for.  This is a huge deal for me, and not only do most of the titles have what Sony calls “cross buy” where if you buy a copy for any platform you get it on ALL platforms… you also get “cross save” on the newer games.  Lately I have been playing quite a bit of Rogue Legacy, and I can start a game on my Vita and then pick it up later upstairs on my Playstation 4.  On top of that if I have a game I want to play on my PS4 I can pick up the Vita and use it as a remote screen and even play it remotely.  Admittedly playing from your PS4 while not on the same network is a bit laggy, but the simple fact that it exists is mind boggling to me.

Now I realize that “Games With Gold” is a thing that exists now and they have been fighting to catch up, but at this point there have been 35 titles to Playstation Plus that has released 148 PS3 titles, 14 PS4 titles, 48 PS Vita titles and 87 psp/psone/minis titles.  I am admittedly bitter however for having paid for years of Xbox Gold subscription for what amounted to the permission to play games online and watch Netflix.  Since then they have reversed this decision and made Netflix a free software, but when I initially got my Xbox 360 you had to have the full gold subscription to use it.  Sony is just as much of a corporate monstrosity as Microsoft, but they have been doing a much better job of disguising that fact and giving me warm fuzzies along the way.  Since I still have all three of their most recent platforms, and even a PSP if we want to go back that far…  they are doing an awesome job of giving me reasons to care about each and every platform and more specifically the interoperability between them.

Share Play

Hands down the most interesting thing to come out of GamesCom for me was the announcement of Share Play.  The Playstation Now game streaming service has been announced for some time, and it is currently happening playable in beta, but for the time being it just is a poor value.  What Share Play does is take that same game streaming technology but flip it around to make it extremely useful.  Right now if you want to play with a friend, you both have to own the same game and log into it at the same time to meet up and play.  What Share Play proposes is that you can be sitting on your couch and your friend on theirs, but be virtually playing the same copy of the game together.  The idea is that you send your PlayStation network friend an invite to join your current game session.  At this point the game is then streamed to their console and you are playing together in the same session.

I have no clue what the ramifications of this technology will be and what sort of internet connection you will need to make it work.  Thankfully however most of my friends that I hang out with on a nightly basis also have some pretty beefy internet connections.  So I can see us getting a lot of play out of this feature.  Want to try out a new game, awesome… pop in my game and play with me and see if you like it.  Want to work together on some achievement, awesome…  let me send you an invite and we will work on it together.  That is the thing I like the best about the PS4 experience so far is that it feels very socially connected as I am constantly able to see what my friends are playing and especially during the Destiny betas we have been able to pop around freely.  The only negative I have so far is that the voice chat system is horrible, and as a result I still prefer to use teamspeak.

Wrapping Up

I realize that I am not an unbiased voice about the whole Microsoft versus Sony debate.  In truth there really isn’t much of a debate to be had in either direction.  Buy whatever console has the games you want to play on it and ignore everyone that is spouting off about your choice.  I made my choice based on the fact that it had more games that I wanted to play on it, and with the Playstation Plus service from the day I brought my PS4 home I already had a half dozen titles to play on it that night.  PS Plus and all the other consoles do an amazing job justifying the purchase of MORE Sony Consoles.  As far as Rise of the Tomb Raider, I am taking a wait and see attitude.  I think right now that this exclusive agreement is just a carefully marketed and cleverly worded announcement.  Will it ship on Xbox One first?  More than likely… but will it be followed up within six months to a year on every other platform?  Almost assuredly so, because so far if it is popular and demanded enough most Xbox titles see a PC release…  I am looking at your KOTOR, Mass Effect, Fable, Dead Rising and I imagine every other blockbuster that gets released for a Microsoft Console.

#XboxOne #PS4 #RiseoftheTombRaider