Games

A Collection of Games that I Write Posts About

Hidden Gorge

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Final Fantasy XIV – PC – Cactuar Server

Last night I spent the majority of my evening hanging out with Grace and Mor in Final Fantasy XIV. First I have to give a massive shout out to Thalen who crafted a full set of Samurai gear and had it waiting on me in the mailbox by the time I logged in for the evening. Other than the fact that he is just an amazing human being, I think he was wanting to quell any possible excuse I had for not playing. In the past I have talked about hitting walls where I just don’t have the gear level to be able to complete the next story dungeon. In one quick motion, Thalen wiped all of these excuses off the table.

Final Fantasy XIV – PC – Cactuar Server – The Praetorium

In part I came back specifically last night because there is an event happening that I have missed out on the last two times it has been in place. Essentially Yoshi-P and crew are exceptionally good at bribing people to do content that might be less than popular. Essentially you are rewarded for running less popular Dungeons, Raids and PVP Activities with special tomestones that you can then turn in for a number of cosmetic or non-game-play impacting items. These include some pretty rare chase mounts and as a result it seems way easier to grind out some bookrocks rather than hoping and praying for a drop to happen. I started the evening with Grace and I running Praetorium for xp and the 10 Irregular Tomestones of Law that you get for completing it.

Final Fantasy XIV – PC – Cactuar Server – Hidden Gorge

From there at the suggestion of Mor I wound up trying out some PVP in the form of the Hidden Gorge map. This is effectively Summoners Rift or whatever it is called in your MOBA of choice, as you protect minions as they attack towers. If you take out two towers you can effectively assault the “Nexus” and win the match. The match itself is constrained to twenty minutes and you will be rewarded 5 special bookrocks and 50 poetics per completion as well as 500 wolf marks for a lose and 1000 for a win. So it seems like a pretty chill way to sit back and get your event currency while also racking up marks that you can spend on some of the sweet PVP cosmetic sets.

Final Fantasy XIV – PC – Cactuar Server – Hidden Gorge

I can’t say that I actually did a great job, but I did manage to effectively hold my own. This is probably where I am going to be living for the next bit because it also seems to be a reasonable way of leveling alternate jobs. I spent the majority of the evening working on my Bard and managed to get it to 73 before the evening was over. Between running a Praetorium and a bunch of Hidden Gorge matches, I should be able to rack up some of those mounts in relative short order. Does this mean I finally have traction in Final Fantasy XIV again? Quite possibly… but I still have yet to finish up the main story quest which I will likely be doing in between PVP matches.

Chunky Robo Ranger

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Phantasy Star Online 2 – Original Xbox One

This weekend was one where I was all over the place on my gaming. There is a huge part of me that wants to be playing Phantasy Star Online 2 since several of the AggroChat crew are currently enthralled by it. The biggest problem I have is that I know how good this game looks on a PC and as a result I am constantly confronted by how awful it looks on my base Xbox One. I know at some point on the near horizon it will be releasing for PC and that the characters will be cross compatible. In theory I should be able to catch up without much issue, and all of this means that my desire to actually play is severely diminished. I did get to level 10 however before ultimately “noping out” of its chunky graphics.

Trials of Mana – Nintendo Switch

I also played a bit of Trials of Mana and progressed the story to the point of being able to my make very first class change choice. On Duran I went light side and became a Knight, on Riesz I went Dark to eventually become a crazy dragoon, and on Angela I went light to go Sorceress because the Dark “blood magic” route seemed like a trap. Still greatly enjoying this game but I am only really playing it before bed, and even then only until sleep claims me. The prolific appearance of golden angel statues seems to help me out in this mission as it never feels like I have to make it much further to get to a save point.

Final Fantasy XIV – PC – Cactuar Server

I’ve also been trying to ease my way back into Final Fantasy XIV, with minimal success. This is in part because my friends Bells and Zuu are now playing, and I want to be able to hang with them and run content as they get to various dungeons. The other side of this point is that an event is about to start today where you can farm moogle widgets and earn older mounts. I like mounts so it might be fun to poke around and farm up a bunch while the event is going on. Thalen in theory says he can craft a lot of the gear pieces that would potentially make my viable again, so here is hoping I can actually get back in the swing of things. I have no clue what the struggle is with this game, but it is real.

World of Warcraft – PC – The Scryers Server

On the World of Warcraft front, I managed to finish the Death Knight and am in the process of gearing him out. This makes my seventh character to level 120 since the Winds of Wisdom buff went active, and I went from having only a couple of characters horde side to play around to a pretty sizable stable of options. I am still not quite certain what I plan on “maining” come Shadowlands, but ultimately I have narrowed it down to a handful of options.

  • Warrior – This is my OG love as far as classes go, but ultimately it all depends upon how good tanking feels on it. Last expansion at the start tanking felt like I was being completely ineffective. The positive here is that I really do love Fury as well and gives me an enjoyable DPS alt for running content and raiding.
  • Demon Hunter – Once the Warrior failed out after getting it to 120, I rapidly leveled a Demon Hunter because tanking felt extremely strong. Over the course of the Battle For Azeroth expansion, I have come to really enjoy it.. but I do not really love DPSing on it.
  • Paladin – After leveling a Paladin on both Alliance and Horde sides, I have really come to love the class. Tanking feels great and I have always loved Ret as a dps spec. This even would give me the option of healing… which admittedly will probably never happen but of the WoW options this was the only healer I could actually stand playing.
  • Death Knight – When I finally hung up my Warrior shield at the tail end of Wrath of the Lich king it was for playing the Death Knight and I “mained” this all through Cataclysm. Playing the Death Knight has made me remember what I loved about it, so it now is in the running as well.
World of Warcraft – PC – The Scryers Server

I legitimately have no clue what I am going to choose for a class, but at least for now I am somewhat leaning in the Paladin direction. As far as World of Warcraft projects going forward I will be working on finishing off the Monk since he is in his 80s. That would give me a 120 for every class but Priest, Shaman and Rogue which are not exactly favorites of mine. However I like playing all of them more than a Mage, so that is ultimately why I chose to boost that . Monk is fun, but not nearly as fun as leveling some of the other classes I have had in my stable so far. I should give Brewmaster another shot, but so far leveling as Windwalker has had a pretty high time to kill.

I am all over the place right now when it comes to my gaming habits and I guess for now that is perfectly fine. What have you all been up to over the last few weeks? What games do you find yourself drawn to? Leave me a note in the comments below.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Hopes

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Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 releasing September 4, 2020

With the announcement of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 I have high hopes but also some significant concerns due to the recent track record of the series. Yesterday I had a project piece to write, but this morning I cannot get it out of my head. The details so far are that Vicarious Visions is working on the game and it is targeting the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC via the Epic Games Store. It also is coming out fairly soon, with the trailer announcing that it releases on September 4th, which apparently a demo of the Warehouse level coming out before that for anyone who pre-orders the game.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 Collector’s Edition Contents

There are as far as I can tell three main products available, the standard game is roughly $40 regardless of platform. The digital deluxe edition is roughly $50 and adds some retro stuff for create a skater mode, retro costumes for Tony Hawk, Rodney Mullen and Steve Caballero, and The Powell-Peralta Ripper visualized as a skater. All of those things really only matter to those of us who are 40 somethings and grew up in the era when Powell-Peralta and the Bones Brigade were kings. Finally you have the physical collectors edition that is roughly $100 and comes with the game, digital deluxe goodies and a legit Birdhouse Skateboard Deck. This is intriguing because in theory the game is $50 and based on my research Birdhouse decks seem to sell for around $60 so you are seemingly getting your moneys worth with the edition. As much as I loathe physical editions of games, it is a temptation just to have it so I can hang the deck on my wall.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Trailer footage of the Warehouse Level

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was a big series for me, and I owned the original on PlayStation, the first sequel on Dreamcast and when the third game came out for PlayStation 2 it was among one of the first titles I purchased. You have to understand I was a little skater punk during my pre-teen years and I even went to see the Bones Brigade when they did an exposition at the fair grounds. I was a horrible skater, but I loved everything about the scene and even patterned a lot of my early musical tastes based on what I was hearing in the background of skate videos. The soundtrack to Streets of Fire is still freaking amazing even though everything else about it is 110% cringe these days.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Trailer footage of the Schoolyard Level

I grew up playing games like Skate or Die, 720 and T&C Surf Designs which were generally horrible representations of skateboarding as a whole but the best we had access to. So when I got my hands on the first Tony Hawk game I was completely enthralled. I spent countless hours in Free Skate mode just doing random tricks and figuring out lines to take in the timed modes. The Dreamcast version of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 however elevated everything to a new level, because the graphics at least for the time were completely amazing. I got caught up in create a skater mode as I leveled up and maxed out all of the traits, allowing me to do some silly stuff with the game. The second game even had a create a skate park mode, allowing you to craft levels from a bunch of prefab components. It reminded me of my early years building entire fingerboard skate parks with cardboard and index cards, using bic pen barrels as coping.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Trailer footage of the Dam Level

I really want the remaster of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 and 2 to be amazing. I loved the original games, but I also have to take a moment to express my doubts. Not all of the games have been great, and Activision doesn’t exactly have a great track record with the franchise. In 2012 the released Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD which was in theory a remix of the best levels from the first and second game, but fell short on a lot of the mechanic aspects of the game. Everything felt very floaty and the moves seemed to lack the weight that the original console games by Neversoft had. In 2015 they released Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 which seemed to take these floaty mechanics and double down on them with moves that felt more like you were ice skating on concrete than actually riding on top of grippy urethane wheels. To make matters worse the game attempted to dip its toes into the games as a service model and required you to connect to lobby servers in order to play.

I hope they do in fact recapture the glory of what made the first few games in the series amazing, and give us a legitimate clean game without the entanglement of always on play and microtransactions. There is already a video that analyzes the game play we have seen so far, and the Youtuber offers concerns that the animations thus far appear to be more akin to what we were seeing in HD than in the first or second game. Ultimately at the end of the day it will come down to how it plays, and we won’t know that until September. I have a lot of hopes though, because I really want this game to be good. The Skateboarding genre evolved after THPS into more simulation games like the Skate series and the indie darling Skater XL. These are absolutely not my jam, because in truth all I really want is the arcade fun that the Tony Hawk series gave me. So here is hoping we can get a return to form for that series.

An Undead Death Knight

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After yesterday’s totally important post, we are going right back to my regular nonsense. I am still playing an excessive amount of World of Warcraft and I am still very much finding it relaxing. At this point currently I am working on an Undead Death Knight and have just started on Frostfire Ridge in the Warlords of Draenor content. I mean I realize that Death Knights get a bit of a boost, but it feels like I am moving slowly because I opted to do Howling Fjord instead of Borean Tundra. While I like the look and feel of the Fjord so much better, I gotta say across the board Borean Tundra is just a better built zone. The objectives are more tightly clumped and there is way less travel time between them. The amount of time I spent flying halfway across the zone in Howling Fjord was significant.

I am somewhat obsessed with leveling an army of Horde characters while this buff is active. One important note is that at the beginning of this process I had two characters sitting at 120, my Warrior and my Demon Hunter both of which were leveled during the early days of Battle for Azeroth. Now you can see I have a pretty formidable stable with effectively five classes missing… Death Knight and Monk that I have already made progress on and then Priest, Shaman and Rogue which are not exactly favorites of mine. For the sake of transparency I should state once again that I spent my boost on the Mage since that is my least favorite class to play, and it also serves as a handy bank alt given its teleportation properties and ability to rapidly deliver stuff to friend characters.

I am of course the consummate adult while going through the leveling process. This time I decided to write a word instead of just drawing a penis with my trail of gunpowder. Sadly it mostly translates as “Euck” but oh well an effort was made. I have been informed that this is client side only, so while I didn’t do this sort of nonsense when Warlords was relevant, I absolutely do now knowing it harms no one. I have to say, as much as I generally did not enjoy Warlords, it is a way better feeling expansion if you are playing the Horde. Additionally that intro sequence while frustrating because it is unskippable, is pretty freaking epic feeling. I feel it is some of the best crafted content in all of World of Warcraft, because it feels like you are playing through a movie for awhile. I’ve always loved the Borderlands style title cards introducing each of the Villains as you encounter them.

In other news I finished the process of unlocking Kul Tirrans on the Alliance side and I now have a potbellied Druid. I don’t love the Alliance content, not in the same way as I did the Zandalari content… but it is equally competent. The funny thing about Kul Tirrans, especially seeing mine… is that they just remind me of the Norn from Guild Wars. I have no interest in leveling another Druid right now, but I mostly chose it for class because it has freaking amazing shape shifted forms. I dig the whole Drust thing, but I am also a huge fan of my Worgen Druid so it would be real hard for me to pass up being a Werewolf. If they had Paladin as an option I would probably consider race changing Exeter over to a Kul Tirran, but alas that is not a thing. Mostly I am just happy to have this done because this was the last thing that I absolutely had to be playing Alliance to complete. I can finish out the rest of the requirements for the Mechagnomes from my horde characters.

The above shot is just something I am posting because I thought it was really cool. I am not exactly sure where I was flying from, but I was headed over to the Dark Portal and this vignette in the distance just looked really cool. Sadly I never could time my screenshot for when one of the lightning flashes happened. There are times when this game still looks really pretty even though the engine at times feels a little dated. The world really is massive at this point, and while we spend most our time zipping around in portals… it is occasionally nice to manually fly over top of it to see vistas like this one.