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Media Consumption 10/3/2015

October 3, 2015 by Belghast

Week of PS4

This week was pretty much the week of me intending to play other games… and then never quite getting off of my PS4 in time to actually do that. As a result I spent most of my time upstairs in my office with my chair turned to the side pointing at the television that runs my consoles. Also as a result I did not really watch any television other than last Sunday night, which means that portion of my usual media consumption was pretty scant. However that said I did watch a bunch of really interesting things on the Internets own television station… aka YouTube. As a result this episode of Media Consumption is largely going to focus on things I found interesting on YouTube.

Tommy Westphall Theory

So firstly I have to give a major shout out to the PBS Idea Channel for creating videos that are almost always thought provoking or at least makes me want to discuss whatever it is they are talking about with my friends. This week however they posted a video that quite literally blew my mind. Tiny fireworks went off followed by lots of mental pain… as I attempted to reorient myself to accept the notion that what they were saying could be real. They delved into this idea called the Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis, where essentially over four hundred different seemingly unrelated televisions shows… all occur in the same universe. To make things even stranger the suggestion is that this entire universe exists in the mind of one autistic boy named Tommy Westphall that appeared on Saint Elsewhere. If this sounds interesting then by all means watch the video and prepare to make mind explodey noises.

Ahoy – Nuclear Fruit Series

The problem with the internet is that things change regularly… and there is little to no way to track down what things previously were called. There is this great channel that is currently called Ahoy, but I cannot for the life of me remember what the original name was. Essentially it is a channel that does these awesome videos that explore video game concepts with amazing narration and artful two dimensional graphics. I first was made aware of the channel through the Brief History of Graphics series where they delve into computer games and explore the various eras and the graphical changes that came into play as part of them. There is also a really great series called Iconic Arms where they delve into the ubiquitous guns that we use in shooter games, and the origins of them… usually delving into the maker and the real world conflicts they were actually used in. Today however I am here to talk about their latest five part series called Nuclear Fruit, where they delve into our fascination with nuclear warfare and the games that were inspired by it. As of writing this there are only four parts available but the next part should arrive this coming week if they follow the standard schedule. If you look in this playlist the video appears to be available but just flagged to “private”.

Cool Ghosts – The Taken King: Does it Fix Destiny?

If for some reason you missed this yesterday, I am a really huge fan of this video. It does an excellent job of highlighting the things that felt wrong with Destiny Year One and the way many of those have been improved in Year Two. Yesterday I also went into my own reasons for why I think the game is in a much better state, but still the video is well worth watching. Matt Lees the guy who appears in the video makes absolutely brilliant videos, the problem being they are somewhat sporadic. My hope is that his new “Cool Ghosts” initiative where he collaborates with another friend will serve to be a fertile ground for new content. In the mean time we can always just re-watch his crowing achievements of the PS4 and Xbox One reveals.

Fear the Walking Dead

There is a huge part of me that is excited for this weeks Fear the Walking Dead… because it means this season is over and we can return to the normal Walking Dead television show. In all fairness I have to say last weeks episode had things finally starting to get interesting. From this point out… I am going to delve into a ton of spoilers and if you have not been watching this show you might just want to stop reading this sub section. We found out a bunch of stuff that does not bode well for the characters. I have a feeling that there is no way that they are getting out of tomorrows episode without at least losing one of the characters. Essentially the crazy old man… aka Daniel Salazar… aka the only person who has the survival instincts necessary to survive the undead apocalypse… has kidnapped the soldier that his daughter Ofelia is sweet on. Then he proceeds to do what so many fathers have wished they could do to the guys dating their daughters… slowly peels away his skin in a cruel torture ritual. The thing is… as horrible as this act is… it is quite literally the only way he was able to get him to spill the beans about operation Cobalt. This is apparently a planned execution of all of the civilians when they abandon the Los Angeles Basin. As we go into this weeks episode it is essentially the day these events are supposed to play out. That said it seems like most of the soldiers who would have been involved in said plan… got nommed on in an overrun hospital. So here we go… things are finally going to get crazy… because I am tired of this suburban living under armed guard phase of the show. Let the bodies hit the floor! It is seriously time to weed out some of the characters.

Week In Gaming 9/27/2015

September 27, 2015 by Belghast

Week of Playstation

This week was very much a week of me waiting on something to happen on my PC while pivoted to the side and playing the PlayStation 4 instead. The strangest thing has happened and I am not sure exactly when it did. For years I was a diehard Keyboard and Mouse gamer… and if you suggested that I play a shooter with a controller I would give you a dirty look at best… and at worst give you a thirty minute rant about why that is a sloppy control mechanism. The thing is… shooters now have a significant amount of aim assist regardless of what platform you happen to be playing them on. Sure you can get closer to pixel perfect aiming with a keyboard and mouse… but I am finding for extended gaming sessions a controller just feels more comfortable. Destiny was essentially the game that forced me to learn how to play with a controller, and now… I am finding myself replaying some games that I played exclusively on the PC on my PS4. Over the week I picked up the Borderlands “Handsome Collection” because it was silly cheap on PSN, and I have to say… I am finding the game more enjoyable over there. While I won’t necessarily say I have abandoned the keyboard and mouse… I am finding myself equally comfortable with a controller and it seems so strange to be typing those words.

Destiny

This week the game that I spent the most hours playing was without a doubt Destiny. I am not sure why but the game feels fresh and new, and all of the frustrations I had over gearing for light are just gone. Instead light has become this number based on the average attack power and or defense of your items, and seeing it climb is awesome… but at the same time not something oppressively holding me back from doing interesting things. I now think of light much more like a traditional gear score system in MMOs. There is some content gated on that number, but it doesn’t feel like something that is extremely grindy to get. I happened to luck out this week and Hawkmoon this seasons exotic hand cannon was available on Xur. I had enough coins to buy it and bam I am now rocking a really awesome weapon, which only serves to improve my experience. I’ve heard that you can send blue engrams to low level characters as a more efficient way of farming Strange Coins, and I might end up doing that as I pretty much depleted my entire stash on this one item.

Other than that I am slowly working my way through all of the story content that I have not played since launch. It feels strange to be progressing in three different storylines at essentially the same time, doing whichever happens to suit me at the moment. The big thing I am trying to work towards right now is I really need the dreadnought patrol zone opened up because I keep getting those as daily quests. I am not sure how far into the story that happens but I keep working on creeping that storyline forward in the hopes that the next one will unlock the patrol zone. Other than that I unlocked Sunbreaker and am completing most of my content as that, in the hopes of leveling it quickly. There is something satisfying Fist of Havoc, but I have to say super fire hammer brothers is also pretty awesome as well. You can whittle down objectives super quickly while throwing those hammers. I’ve taken Taken bosses down to half health during my “hammer time” but the only problem is it essentially leaves you out in the open and vulnerable. So I end up having to run for cover as soon as I’ve spent all of my energy. Needless to say I am having a lot of fun with Destiny and probably going to continue playing it over the coming weeks.

Creativerse

I’ve blogged about this game already at length this week, but I have to say I am still really liking it. I am also digging that the company is from McKinney Texas which isn’t terribly far from me. Not sure if I can rig this but it would be kinda awesome to go down and meet that team at some point. I am hoping that they end up doing Pax South this year, because the game has so much potential. I called it “Pretty Minecraft” but really that is selling the game short by a large amount. I will say that it has pretty much killed my desire to play Minecraft at all from this point out. I get what people say about the mods, but in reality I never modded Minecraft that much other than adding in quality of life things like a mini-map. Regardless of how I modified the game it just felt like I was playing the same thing over and over with varrying differences. This game however feels fresh and interesting because the world itself is something that I don’t know the formula behind. I talked about this a bit the other day, but I think part of it is the fact that I have no real resources to rely on yet. I can’t go on a wiki and find out that obsidian spawns between these two coordinates or if I need an item for a recipe I have to find it the old fashioned brute force way of exploration. If you are in the mood for a building and exploration fix I highly suggest you check it out.

Star Wars the Old Republic

swtor 2015-09-13 19-44-00-02 — Oh Captain My Captain

Last night during and after the podcast I finished up Alderaan on my Smuggler. In the time it has taken me to get this far on my Smuggler, I found out that Tam has leveled like three characters from 1 to 50. How is he doing it? Well he is doing ONLY the class storyline, and I think maybe he has made a convert out of me. I shot through Alderaan last night only working on my class storyline and gained three levels in the process. Mostly at this point I just want to see the class storyline on several new classes before Fallen Empire comes along and changes a good deal of it. I think the rest of the day I am going to likely work on my Smuggler and see just how close to the end I can manage to get. My hope is that even after Fallen Empire they come up with a way to speed characters to the post 50 content. I need to circle back around and do the Shadows of Revan content on my Jedi Knight, but honestly I am having so much fun with my Sawbones. This is still such a great game, if you just treat it like a subscription. The free to play options are complete and total bullshit, and feel like the most punitive way to play a game I have seen period. If you can stomach the fact that you have to pay a subscription to really enjoy this game… then it seems like a really enjoyable experience still.

Media Consumption 9/26/2015

September 26, 2015 by Belghast

The Second Week

There is a distinct reason why I decided to call this new feature “media” consumption rather than television or movies, namely because there are some weeks that go by that I don’t really watch much television. For example unless having cartoon network going on in the background counts, I have not really watched any purposeful television since last Sunday. I did however watch a lot of stuff online and listen to a lot of music, as such this week is going to be a bit of a pivot as I talk about some of those things. As I am starting to pull out of my hibernation state a bit, I am by nature spending less time parked in front of the television.

Meg Myers – Sorry

It is so rare that a musician comes around that so closely matches my personal tastes as Meg Myers. I’ve seen her described as what would happen if Trent Reznor and Tori Amos had a kid… and honestly I feel like that is probably a fairly apt theory. The funny thing is that when I heard this theory I had no clue about the supposed affair that the two of them had back in the 90s… but a good friend of mine is a historian in all things Trent and filled me in on the details. In reality the music is just damned amazing. “Sorry” is her first full length album, but there have been a few EPs floating around for awhile that are up on Google Music, and they have been in pretty regular rotation since I first found out about her. I feel so strongly about this music that when the album was released on September 18th I purchased it… even though I had access to it freely through my Google Music subscription. This means a lot, because I generally don’t buy music other than video game soundtracks… because I have access to stream pretty much anything I could ever want through Google Music. In fact this is the first album I have purchased since backing the Amanda Palmer kickstarter. It is the first musician in a long time that I feel like I want to wholeheartedly support.

If you have never heard anything by Meg Myers I highly suggest checking out the title track “Sorry”

If you want to pick it up… [Google Play] [iTunes] [Amazon]

Star Wars Phantom Menace Review

After last week going into how disappointed I was about the prequels after watching them again recently, a good friend of mine linked me a really strange youtube review of the series that takes place over the course of seven different videos. Now there is some disturbing comedy woven in between the bits of actual review that I don’t necessarily think is sane and rational, but most of what this person is saying about the movies themselves is exactly what I had been feeling. If you are like me and living in this constant state of disappointment about the movies… it might be a bit cathartic to listen to someone rip them a new one. The amount of time spent delving into just why Phantom Menace was so horrible… is a bit obsessive but I listened to them one night while playing Destiny. I enjoyed myself, but your mileage may vary.

Inon Zur plays Fallout 4 Theme

If you have been around me for very long, one thing you know is that I love video game soundtracks. One that has been on regular rotation for years is the Rift soundtrack composed by Inon Zur, so I am absolutely no stranger to his work. In the above video we have him doing a very passionate rendering of the Fallout 4 theme song. This combines so many things that I love, because you could not be any more excited about Fallout 4 than I am. Hell I even managed to snag one of the pip boy editions. Fallout is one of those game series that I have been passionate about since College and each one just seems to keep getting better. Lately we have been talking New Vegas on the Podcast because Thalen is experiencing it for the very first time. Knowing Inon Zur is the composer for the main score even makes me more excited about what the fourth installment might bring.

iZombie

At this point my wife and I are around eight or nine episodes into the first season. The hope is between today and tomorrow we can catch a few more episodes while she grades. I still need to remember to set the DVR to start recording episodes from this season, since I guess the whole Fall television thing is happening. I know that I can get the five latest episodes through Hulu but I want to make sure not to miss an episode and have to track it down somehow through nefarious means. Have I ever mentioned that I hate the current state of television and how damned hard it is to sort out which medium happens to be streaming which shows? I feel like if you are a television provider and not offering your shows either through Hulu or through Netflix… then you are passively giving me permission to track your stuff down illicitly on the interwebs by not giving me a subscription based option. Anyways hopefully we will sort out the rest of this season and be caught up soon. This is actually a good enough show however for me to watch it on a weekly/semi-weekly basis.

Fear the Walking Dead

I can honestly say that right now at this moment… there is not a single character on Fear the Walking Dead that I actually like. In fact I would be just as happy as not to see them attacked by Zombies and then replaced by a cast of characters that we have yet to even meet. As much as I am enjoying iZombie… I am that much NOT enjoying Fear the Walking Dead. I keep hoping and waiting to see if it gets better, but right now… that is very much not a thing that is happening. In fact in many ways it has gotten worse, and it is my fear that they will drag this shit out until the sixth episode before finally giving us anything interesting. All of the characters are weak and stupid… and I cannot fathom how any of them are going to survive past the end of this season let along the series as a whole. I guess society hasn’t fallen apart enough for folks to start reverting to primal instincts yet, but I am so ready for the heroine addict son to end up as walker fodder. I guess what is annoying about all of this is that so many people seem to be acting like “life as normal” can continue, when we the audience know that their suburban existence is over and that staying there is essentially a death sentence. Maybe this is precisely what Kirkman was going for… making us loathe the characters so that when they ultimately die we will enjoy it? I would be shocked it more than one of that first family actually makes it out of this season. Right now I am betting on the mom, she seems to be starting to go down the path of Carol.

Week In Gaming 9/20/2015

September 20, 2015 by Belghast

Allergies Suck

This week has been a tale of the universe conspiring to kill me… otherwise known as horrible horrible pollen count. When you go to one of those sites that tracks air quality, my neck of the woods has been bright red for the last several weeks. As a result I have been walking around in a bit of a stupor. Friday I felt like I was coming out from behind a fog, but this morning after running around yesterday I am once again feeling miserable. Essentially it seems like my best option is to huddle inside and forget the world outside exists. The biggest problem I have is that the only allergy treatment that seems to really work is Benedryl… which puts me to sleep. So as a result I take a cocktail of other medications in the hopes of blunting most of the things going on… and then combining that with copious amounts of caffeine in the hopes that somehow someway I will be able to function as an adult. Adulting is really damned hard sometimes. In spite of all of my time hunkered down this week, I really don’t have a wide variety of things to talk about.

Star Wars the Old Republic

swtor 2015-09-19 18-28-31-84 — Treek is a Badass

Once again this week my primary source of gaming entertainment has been Star Wars the Old Republic. As I mentioned last week during the recording of the AggroChat podcast I started working on my Smuggler, and I have continued that process throughout the week. As of last night I am now on Alderaan and level 34. The extremely level gap that I had on the content is starting to shrink and as a result things are getting more difficult. I need to look up and see when the next upgrades are available because I am starting to feel like I need to spend some commendations on both myself and Treek to get some more gear. I had been trying to do this every other level range, so that I skip one upgrade step but the levels have not been coming nearly as fast as they were on Taris and Nar Shadda. I am however rolling in the commendations because they just seem to keep coming quickly.

I am absolutely enjoying the smuggler storyline because it feels so vastly different than any of the other storylines I had experienced. The Jedi Knight and Jedi Consular stories interweave as you go throughout the game, but it seems like the Trooper and Smuggler don’t really work this way. I am very much on my own mission through the galaxy with my own cast of characters to interact with. I am still really happy I made my choice to go with Treek over Corso Riggs, because even listening to him running Crew Missions is enough for me. I’ve managed to unlock three of the faction story bits with Treek and I am wondering if she has a special mission at the end or not. She just seems genuinely happy to roam around the galaxy killing things, and I am happy to keep her in business.

Tron 2.0

Yesterday I went through the steps outlined in this video link to attempt to get Tron 2.0 up and running on a Windows 8.1 system. It took a little bit of fiddling but I finally managed to get things running. I have to admit right now I am struggling a bit, because quite honestly it feels like a decade old game. The controls are not nearly as responsive as I have come to expect from a shooter, also it returns to an area without functional auto-save. This means that yesterday I died… after playing the game about an hour, realizing that the last time I had saved was during the tutorial when the game specifically asked me to do so. The combination of wonky controls, and not having auto-save to lean on… is going to mean that I have to shift the way I think about the experience. I’ve decided already that when I restart the game I will be lowering the difficulty and skipping the tutorial since I already saw it once. Here is hoping that I can manage to get through it before the AggroChat show next week!

Final Fantasy XIV

This is going to be the first week period that I have not actually logged into Final Fantasy XIV. Allergies and generally feeling like shit kept me from raiding on both Monday and Wednesday nights, which was unfortunate. I’ve been in this holding pattern waiting on the 3.1 release to come in and sweep me off my feet with overwhelming love for the game again. However over the weekend at the Tokyo Game Show they announced that we can expect the 3.1 patch in November. That seems a really long ways away… considering that people are desperate for content right now. The only thing we can think is that maybe the pet battle system might be what is delaying it… but honestly it would seem like a much better call would be to bump pet battles to 3.2 and get some fresh content now. This is precisely the problem we went through at the launch of 2.0 and ultimately why many of us quit playing when we did. We got tired of grinding the same two dungeons over and over. In the mean time I will have SWTOR and Wildstar to entertainment. I don’t plan on quitting the game, but I will probably not be playing a lot of it until November to be brutally honest.

Disney Infinity 3.0

The other thing that I have started playing with yet again is Disney Infinity. I managed to catch a silly deal on the Disney Infinity 3.0 set while only spending $15 out of my pocket on it. This gave me the 3.0 base game with five figures… the exclusive Boba Fett and then Luke, Leia, Anakin, and Asoka. The 3.0 interface itself is much refined from the 2.0 version and features an almost MMO like feel to it where you have various hubs in a persistent main world. Additionally there seems to be some sort of arcade feature that allows you to connect to players around the world and play with them. I have not really explored much other than talking to each of the quest givers off the main hub, and unlocking their specific area. Boba Fett is pretty damned overpowered as he has rockets that pretty much destroy anything they hit. The only negative that I see so far with the Star Wars characters is that unlike Iron Man or Thor none of them seem to have flight abilities. I halfway expected that Boba Fett could use his jet pack, but instead that is just used as a sort of charge attack. I am guessing that also means that most of the play sets will be built in a way where they don’t need flight in any fashion. Right now there are really only the two playsets that I have seen for 3.0 but I am sure more will be coming shortly.