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Poor Driving and Change

May 15, 2019 by Belghast

Last night I largely spent the night playing Rage 2 and doing a really poor job of driving around the wasteland. In theory I should use this as an opportunity to test out the little 3D Printed controller wheel that I have… but instead I am just suffering through the mouse and keyboard controls. It is funny how even when they do not feel amazing… I will still gravitate towards mouse and keyboard in part just to keep from having to switch between controller and keyboard all the time. I will always be of the firm opinion that shooters are just better with a mouse… and then many of those shooters also want you to control vehicles which work best with a controller. So either I suffer with the shooter gameplay or I suffer with the often side content that is driving. The problem with Rage 2 however is you spend a lot of time in your vehicle as you cross wide swaths of territory between missions.

So while I did not get a screenshot of this because I was enthralled by the combat… one of the random events that happened in the world is that I encountered an enemy vehicle convoy… which I followed around trying to take out. There were roughly 3 car type vehicles, 3 or 4 motorcycle type vehicles and one giant Semi sort of hauler vehicle that was the primary objective. I managed to whittle down the convoy to just being this big massive vehicle… and chased it around through the landscape for a good fifteen minutes slowly plinking down its health. Often times I would drive poorly and get way off track forcing me to jet booster thrust my way back into gun range. Unfortunately I only managed to know it down by about half health before I got a verbal warning that I was almost out of ammunition. I am guessing I need some of the vehicle upgrades to realistically fare well in vehicle to vehicle combat… but I gotta say… I was completely hooked by the experience.

Every town seems to have a major problem that you need to deal with for them… before they can turn around and help you. Last night I made it through one of those missions… which unlocked another sequence of events that I am going to need to do before they can actually help me. That is fine… like I said yesterday there isn’t a lot of back and forth in the dialog so I more than expected to keep going on fetch and assistance quests until the storyline culminates in a battle with the big bad of the world. It is the moment to moment game play and the exploration of new areas that make the game interesting to me personally. I like checking enemy camps off of my list, especially when they happen to be hiding an ark full of goodies. As I move forward into the game I keep encountering newer and tougher groups of enemies… and I have to say… Authority soldiers are already a pain in the butt because I don’t have an amazing answer to their energy armor yet.

Last night during the quest I was speaking of in the previous paragraph, I picked up my first new weapon… which is a really amazing shotgun. Shotguns are a weapon that I always find deep kinship with, because they are sort of the no-nonsense killing machine option that have been pretty much something I gravitated towards since Doom. The most recent Doom game had an awesome design as far as shotguns go with some interesting mode switching, and Rage 2 does something very similar. If you are firing the weapon blindly you end up with a fairly rapid fire short ranged blast option. However if you hold down the right mouse button and aim the weapon, according to the in game dialog, the weapon melts together all of the shells into one large high powered slug that knocks targets back and has a satisfying thump when it fires. When it says it knocks things back… you can get some interesting situations where you hit a single target and it ends up knocking a whole line of enemies down if they are approaching single file through a choke point. So far this weapon really is my only answer to the Authority troops, and you end up getting it in a mission where things are constantly leaping out of the walls so it also does a great job of twitch reflex killing.

I’m still very much enjoying the game and look forward to playing more of it as the week goes on. However there is one more topic that I want to bring up. I will be over the next few weeks moving all of my sites from my current host over to a different host. I’ve been with my current host for the entire decade during which Tales of the Aggronaut has existed. Initially I used them because a good friend of mine was one of the system admins, and I could always poke him if I needed something weird done. However after he left the service has not exactly been that stellar. Additionally there has been a pretty constantly series of blips in server up time and I am getting tired of it. I needed to find a good host to use for another purpose… and instead of doing a single one off… I bought a big enough hosting account to hold everything of mine and even do MP3 hosting if I choose to do so and move away from Libsyn. I will go into more details later as I move everything over depending on how positive or negative the experience is. I’ve moved a single non-gaming site over and it went pretty smoothly. This weekend I plan on moving AggroChat and depending on how well that goes might move Aggronaut as well.

Mostly I just wanted to give my readers a heads up that some changes will be coming in my infrastructure and it might wind up with me being down more than I intend to.

Regularly Playing: April 2019 Edition

April 30, 2019 by Belghast

It has taken me until this morning to actually get around to writing one of these, but by god it is still april so it still counts in continuing this streak of posts. I am notoriously bad at actually keeping a series going, which is weird considering I did the whole daily posting thing for over three years. For those who are just tuning in once a month I attempt to true up my sidebar and talk about the games that I am actually regularly playing during a given month. Some months there isn’t much net change and then other months we basically wipe the slate clean. This is going to be on of those first types because a lot of things changed this month. Without further stalling… lets rip the band-aid off.

To Those Remaining

Dragalia Lost – Android

I cannot believe that of all of the titles I was playing last month… that this is the only one that is still kicking at the end of the month. Dragalia Lost has been going strong for me pretty much since release, and in part it does well with me because there is always another event just around the corner. Right now we are in the middle of an event that crosses over characters from the Fire Emblem series that came along with a big patch that changed the way that summons work. No more useless Wyrmprints and now we can simply buy the ones we need from a vendor. I play this every night before bed and at a minimum do my daily activities until I reach the point where I am just about to drop the phone… at which point I plug in the charging cable for the night and go to sleep. It has become a part of my routine, which means it is probably here to stay for awhile.

To Those Returning and Brand New

Diablo 3 – Switch

This one never stays off the list for very long, which is in part why I am generally so hesitant to remove it when I eventually do. There is a new season coming up and I fully expect to get re-engaged with this title during that time. As to which platform I do it on is another decision point. Right now my usual partner in crime does not have the switch so more than likely we will be teaming up on the PC. I do however kinda want to make my way through a switch season and try to earn a bonus bank slot in the process. I wish to all that is holy that I could just link my switch copy to my PC copy so I could sure rewards. Cross play is a thing that is needed more than probably any other innovation in gaming.

Final Fantasy XIV – Console

Another game that does not stay off the list for terribly long is Final Fantasy XIV. I am not fully engaged with this game at the moment, but I did come back and finish all of the story content. Since then I have been languishing a bit at trying to find something to draw me to the game and hold me there. Most recently I have started working on beast tribe quests because who doesn’t love mounts. I know I will return in full with the expansion because I always do… but for the moment I am struggling to find purpose.

Grim Dawn – PC

I am not entirely certain if this game has ever made one of these lists but I have played it off and on since its initial early access release on Steam. It only took me until recently however to actually fully engage with the game and find out how damned good it is. This would be my replacement for Diablo 3 entirely… if it were simply better at providing interesting multiplayer options. That said I greatly enjoy what the game does give me, which is a largely single player experience that lets me pour my mind into it and watch fountains of loot explode around me as I do. If someone was looking to get into an ARPG… this is now the title I would probably point them towards.

Magic the Gathering Arena – PC

A brand new expansion has released and as a result I am back engaged with Magic the Gathering Arena. War of the Spark promises to add a ton of new planeswalkers… 36 in fact… and have the final conclusion of the whole Nicol Bolas storyline. I was nowhere near as engaged with Ravnica Allegiances because none of the guilds included were really my jam apart from Gruul and maybe Orzhov. Whatever the case I never really got super into what was happening and faded away from the content for a bit. With War of the Spark however I am back in full and enjoying the experience… and at the same time starting to do some direct duels with friends with the prospect of playing some weird decks in the future.

Marvel Future Fight – Android / PC Emulator

I have been playing an excessive amount of this game lately, and it shocks the shit out of me. Firstly this journey all started after being nostalgic about the Marvel Heroes ARPG by Gazillion and looking to see if anyone had managed to come up with a private server option yet. In one of those threads someone mentioned that Marvel Future Fight on mobile devices was the closest that we had to that game… which lead me to download… and the rest is more or less history. It feels weird for me to be playing a mobile game in place of other games… because that is a barrier that I never quite crossed before even with Dragalia Lost. Mobile games were something I only did when I did not have ready access to other platforms… this I am playing on an Android Emulator with WASD controls like a traditional PC game. The free-to-play-ness can be really annoying at times, but I am carving out whatever enjoyment I can get from it until this whim passes.

Mortal Kombat 11 – PC

I’ve been having a strong itch to play some fighting games and I think it was brought on largely by the advertising about Mortal Kombat 11 making me nostalgic about my arcade rat past. I am also dabbling a bit with Street Fighter V and some other games… but more or less MK11 is the only one I am playing often enough to add to this list. I even went so far as to pick up a Fight Stick as I talked about yesterday. I’ve missed fighting games… and while I am nowhere near as good as I once was… I want to regain at least some of those skills. I will never be competitive… but I figure I can still eek out some enjoyment.

Outward – PC

I played this obsessively for several nights in a row and want to return to it. I wrote at length about how this game reminds me of the way that Everquest used to make me feel. I’ve been distracted by other games but I am adding this on the list if for no other reason than to remind me to return to it. It is a very interesting title and one that I want to explore some more.

Star Wars the Old Republic – PC

This is a title that I was not expecting to add back to the list anytime soon… but Star Wars Celebration caused an upwelling of Star Wars nostalgia leading to me playing some of this. When I last played I had finished the Fallen Empire storyline, and coming back I picked right back up with the Eternal Throne. Now I am working my way slowly through some of the post Eternal Throne content, of which there are several patches worth and several new areas that have been added to the game. So far I am really enjoying myself and it is making me want Ammo to do another “Belghast” this time my Jedi Guardian in the armor set above… that I scrounged hardcore for at release because I loved the look of it. The storyline in this game is still really damned good and it does a pretty good job of scratching that KOTOR itch.

To Those Departing

Anthem – PC

Oh Anthem… what a fraught mess you are. I spent most of April waiting on the sidelines for a supposed “major” patch to land and fix all of my woes. It never came, or at least not in the ways that I wanted it to. Ultimately Bioware made a game that is different from the game that they intended to make… and has yet to realize this. The other stance is that they could be trying to change the game fundamentally to become the game they intended it to be. Whatever the case… they built Mass Effect Multiplayer with Flight and Diablo 3 loot… but with a high end drop rarity rivaling World of Warcraft Legendaries or Destiny Exotics. That rarity more or less worked in those games because every drop was curated. Diablo 3 and Anthem however with random affixes you get a lot of shit items so you need to get a lot of drops to allow you to sift through them to find something workable. I likely won’t play the game again until the loot is raining down around us… if the game survives that long. I am hearing that matchmaking is already a ghost town most of the time, so here is hoping they can make significant enough changes to allow those of us who left to return during year 2 and see the greatly changed and improved game.

Baba Is You – Switch / PC

Super cute game and still probably on my list of best games for 2019… but after the initial desire to play I sorta floated away from it. I am sure I will return at some point but it doesn’t really need a spot on the list for the moment.

Destiny 2 – PC

No clue why on this one… but I am just not feeling Destiny. There isn’t a firm reason other than the fact that I log in and log out almost immediately. From what I hear the game is in a better state than it has been in a really long time… and I am sure at some point I will make my return and obsess about it once more. That said I am just not into it so I am letting it slip off the list.

The Division 2 – PC

Again I am not sure why… but I never latched onto this one as hard as I thought I would. For awhile I was using it as a methadone for Anthem… and then I stopped using it at all. I am sure at some point I will cycle back around to this one but I might simply be “looter shooter”‘d out for the time being.

Pokemon Go – Android

This one ends its very long streak. I still technically crack it up every so often, largely to hatch eggs… but I had four eggs ready to hatch and I let that notification go for two weeks before actually doing anything. It is a perfectly fine game, and if I engaged with some sort of a community I would probably get into it more. I am trying to increase the amount of activity I am doing as a whole now that it has warmed up so it might have a resurgence. That said… my TicWatch tracks my activity without me actually having to open the app so I admit that was a nail in the coffin for this game. Out of sight and out of mind… you had a good run PoGo.

Ten Years of Tales

April 17, 2019 by Belghast

Ten years ago today I installed WordPress for the first time and decided to put digital pen to paper and roll out the mat of Tales of the Aggronaut. At that time I doubt I had a thought in my head about it lasting anywhere near this long, nor growing into what it has become. Tales of the Aggronaut was not my necessarily my first blog… and the previous incarnation is floating out there still in the ether never to be spoken of again. However this blog combined a bunch of things that I was already doing… namely writing big walls of text. I was one of those folks that would come into a game forum and write big posts talking about my feelings about this thing or that thing… or offering support and advice to those who were in need. I was a fairly active member at the time on the Argent Dawn server forums, and a lot of the people that I am still in contact from those days I met amongst a bunch of lines of text… and the eventual IRC server that spawned from it.

Ten years seems like a momentous number, but I just could not really think of anything I wanted to do to mark the occasion. At this point many days it is a struggle to get myself to log in and make a morning post, let alone come up with some grand promotional scheme. Instead we are going to have a quiet birthday… which is in truth how I prefer to celebrate my actual annuals these days as well. There are many blogs out there that are far longer in the tooth than this one, but I think well aged blogs is a bit of a rarity these days. I know my own blog roll is full of blogs that have gone into the sands of time… that I just cannot bring myself to delete. Blaugust has helped quite a bit, and I am planning on this year potentially outshining last year now that we have a fairly active Discord community surrounding it. I am thankful for my regulars… and I hate to say this because it sounds vain but… anytime I get a notification saying someone liked one of my posts it is a little burst to keep me going.

The other interesting thing about the passage of ten years is just how different my life has become in that time. When I started this blog I was a dedicated Guild and Raid leader making our way through the newly released Ulduar raid and struggling a bit at the jump up in difficulty between it and Neo-Naxxramas. I was also completely devoted to World of Warcraft and namely playing the Warrior class. I also had very definite opinions on raid tanking and various other aspects of the game… thinking myself to be some font of knowledge for the community. I had opinions and I was very willing to share them damn the consequences… because I was in my early thirties and thought I had figured an awful lot of things out.

Now we scan forward to today… and I am a leader of people with fifteen people under me as I transitioned from development to management. As a result I am not longer leading anything at all in my off time and doing really good to be a member of literally anything. While I still organize people around concepts and ideas… I have tried my best not to be the one actually holding the reins. While I used to raid on a near nightly basis… I can’t bring myself to even commit to raiding once a week for a few hours. Where I used to spend every night grouped up with other people and usually on voice chat… I can’t bring myself to communicate with other human beings regularly once I am officially off the clock. Where I used to think I had a clue what I was doing… I am now in my 40s and know that I know next to nothing about most topics and it seems like I am imposing myself when I share my opinions on things. While I am still very much an MMO player… I find myself playing them all effectively on solo mode or maybe with a very small group of people in tow.

Another thing that has changed significantly over the years is how much of myself I am willing to put into these posts. I’ve shared with you deaths in the family, times I am struggling with one thing or another, and things that have happened that brought me joy. I shifted my writing style from being disconnected from the readers… to trying to invite you all into my world for a few minutes each morning as I write. I can’t say that anything I write about is actually interesting, but it is at least grounded in the reality of where I am and what I am doing at a given moment. The truth is I would be far more popular if I would simply stick to a single topic and become an official site for a specific game. Those folks are the ones with the large readership, but me… I am more of an acquired taste. If you are not interested in me as a human being… then chances are you won’t be sticking around for very long.

All of that said… I am thankful for the people that I do have that regularly check in on my world… and it is shockingly a larger number than I ever expected it to be. In ten years almost 200,000 unique individuals have visited Tales of the Aggronaut… and while I am certain a good number of those unique users are bots because internet… it still means that I have introduced myself and my point of view to way more people than I ever expected I would. During that time I have made 2028 posts including this one… which would have been a larger number were it not for the fact that I barely made any posts during the first four years of this blog. Every day however a few hundred of you come and visit my world and I am thankful for the company. It makes me wish I had the fire to do more to actually push this blog and the disconnected community that supports it on a regular basis. In theory I should be pushing a discord or a reddit or some other venue… but instead I would just rather enjoy knowing the fact that I have a bunch of quiet users out there tagging along with me as I do things.

This isn’t exactly the triumphant post you make when you reach a milestone like this, but in truth I didn’t really want a bunch of fanfare. You out there… reading this blog… and an important part of it even though you may have never actually interacted with me directly. Even though I largely write like I am talking to myself, I do appreciate knowing there are people out there that care. As far as words of wisdom to leave this post on… I am not entirely certain I have any. I guess we will see if Tales of the Aggronaut makes another ten years… though at this point I cannot imagine what the world and my life will be like during that time. My blog is as much therapy as it is a purposeful act of creation, and I thank you all for taking the time to listen.

Regularly Playing: March 2019 Edition

March 22, 2019 by Belghast

We’ve passed the official first day of Spring this week and with it will come a lot more engagement with the out of doors and less sitting at home and playing games. As a result over the spring and summer months this list tends to dwindle down to significantly fewer titles. For the uninitiated I do this thing where I semi-monthly update my blog sidebar and talk about the games that I am regularly playing. During the month of March I am being honest with myself and allowing several titles that have been holding on by a thread to drop down to inactive status. However anyone who has read my blog for any length of time will realize that I regularly revisit older titles when I am feeling nostalgia or otherwise restless. I am notoriously bad at keeping up with series, however this marks three months in a row!

To Those Remaining

Anthem – PC

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While I am taking a little bit of a break this week because there is an upcoming patch landing on Tuesday that should increase drop rates, I am still very much enjoying Anthem. March more than anything has been about me championing the cause of this beleaguered game. There is so much that so many people dislike about it, but I am consistently impressed at how fast we are seeing patches being released to address these issues. At the end of the day it is player fantasy about me flying around in a Robotech style mech suit. It’s a good game brent.

Destiny 2 – PC

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You sir are hanging out by the slimmest of threads. In fact I didn’t have any modern screenshots so I had to pull back into the annals of the blog to find something to use. The Season of the Drifter appears to largely be a dud and I am not entirely certain how engaged this whole era of “No DLC” is going to be. I liked the story driven stuff, as limited as it was. I’ve popped in several times but have struggled to engage. As much as it saddens me, my time in Destiny may be waning.

Dragalia Lost – Android

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I swear Dragalia Lost is the poster child for how you do reoccurring engagement in a game… and I sorta wish that all of the MMO-lites that I enjoy would take note. In general you have roughly two weeks with an event going on, so plenty of time to earn whatever rewards you want without feeling pressured to play constantly. Then within days of the finish of one event a brand new one starts causing you to engage all over again. Because it is Nintendo and they purposefully limit that sort of thing… there really isn’t much in the way of excessive monetization either. You just have a pure diablo-lite experience with a character collecting gacha mini game. Sure it feels super bad when you waste your five star pull on a wyrmprint, but I keep coming back for more.

Pokemon Go – Android

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Another game that is sorta holding on by a thread is Pokemon Go. If it were not for the fact that I was getting credit for walking from my watch… I would probably not be interacting with this at all right now. As it stands I spend most of my time hatching pokemon… and even then I have like 3 eggs ready to hatch and I can’t seem to be bothered to open the damned app and do that. However with spring and better weather I might be spending more time out and about and reinvigorating my use of this game.

To The Returning and Brand New

Baba Is You – Switch and PC

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This puzzle game is so good, and I have not talked about it much yet since we are probably going to talk an awful lot about it on the podcast. However it is probably seriously in the running for me for game of the year honors… and we are only in March. You hack reality to help you get to the “Is Win” condition. It is one of those things that is really hard to explain but once you grasp it you find yourself thinking in “IS” statements. So part logic puzzle part programming language.

The Division 2 – PC

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To be honest I was not terribly certain how I would feel about this game, but it has been taking up most of my game time since release. The Division 1 was a setting without any semblance of hope… and The Division 2 has lots of hope. Instead of helping out a government that is dying… you end up helping out the communities of survivors trying to struggle to make it in the post biological apocalypse future. Division 2 is everything about the first game but more finely detailed and expanded upon. This is what a game sequel should feel like.

To Those Departing

Assassin’s Creed Origins – PC

I more or less got it out of my system when I became frustrated with what exactly the ending of the game would entail. I have a feeling at some point in the future I will force myself to finish it, but for now… I am just letting it slide away.

The Elder Scrolls Online – PC

I know without a doubt that I will return to this game because I always seem to, but for now that just isn’t the style of game I am interested in for the moment. I seem to be enraptured with the whole MMO-lite emerging genre because I can drop in and out of them really easily and don’t ask an awful lot of me in the process. ESO is a game of excellent storytelling and questing, and I just haven’t been in the mood for that.

Final Fantasy XIV – PC

I am literally one dungeon away from finishing the Stormblood storyline and I could not seem to push myself across that finish line. For now Anthem and Division 2 have stolen my attention, but I am certain I will be returning at some point soon. However due to the rules of this game, I did not play it during the month of March and as such it is leaving the list.

Magic the Gathering Arena – PC

Another game that I did not expect to leave the list, but is doing so anyways. Still very much love this game and what they are doing with it… and will probably return soon with the upcoming patch that adds a bunch of additional functionality.

Monster Hunter World – PC

This one saddens me quite a bit, but I have not logged into Monster Hunter World in a really long time. Again this is just a problem of limited play time and Anthem and Division 2 stealing my focus. This will absolutely return to the list and potentially sooner rather than later given there is a high quality texture patch incoming on April 4th.

Summary

This was a month with a lot of movement, as I allowed things that were hanging on barely to slip by the wayside with the release of two back to back juggernauts. Most of the things that are falling off the list will return and probably soon. However for the sake of the way this post is supposed to work they are getting removed for the time being. This is absolutely the shortest my sidebar has been in a really long time.