Games

A Collection of Games that I Write Posts About

Pouty Wizard

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Friday was the start of another Diablo 3 Season, and as is usually the case Grace and I met up and leveled together until I decided it was time for bed. This season we also grabbed our friend Byx to join along in the fun, which made for a really enjoyable grind. Since I had never gotten a Wizard or a Witch Doctor to level 70, I opted to play a Wizard this time around and to be honest… it is messing with my head. Finger Wigglers are not exactly the sort of classes I excel at, and I am having trouble adjusting to just how squishy I am and now much I am riding the razors edge between destroying everything with impunity and my own death.

The set this time is Tal Rasha which has a bunch of different viable builds. Essentially the idea behind it is to stack up a massive buff for casting an ability of each element. This sort of idea plays nicely into items like the Convention of Elements that give you alternating buffs, but there really is no way to actually time hitting the right ability while the right buff is up… or at least that is not something in my scope of functionality. Instead I teleport wildly while spamming every ability trying desperately to keep my buff at 4 stacks while destroying everything with a cavalcade of Meteors raining down from above.

This season we cheated and cheated hard in the form of Saturday morning getting one hell of a boost from a friend of ours named Kolrath. He seemingly ground all night long and by 9 am Saturday morning was a whirling avatar of death that managed to push me from 40 to 70 and Grace from 55 to 70 in a matter of two runs. After that I have spent a bunch of the weekend farming bounties in an attempt to get all of the items needed for my particular build. At this point I think I have them and now begins the slow process of grinding out the post seasons journey steps. The bane of my existence is the set dungeon and I will have to buckle down and master that as it is ultimately going to hold me back from completing two of the steps.

I really do not like being on a timer and having to be mindful of that while doing a bunch of other shit… is pretty much the exact opposite of the kind of gameplay that I want from a game. As a result it is the set dungeon that always hamstrings my progress. I can do them, I just need to sort of force myself to do them. If anyone is online and doing literally anything else… I will join in that and ignore my maintenance duties. Similarly I tend to push off the solo Greater Rifts as well, but at least in this case I have done through a solo 40 and need to knock out a solo 50 soonish. I am missing most of the gems that i need to finish this set so I am going to be doing a lot of grinding of Greater Rifts.

When it Rains It Pours

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This is Kenzie. In one of the yesterday’s photos she was the one laying on my legs while Allie was laying beside me. She is my crazy monkey girl and is currently screaming at me to throw a hairband for her to fetch while I am typing this. Along with everything I talked about yesterday, we got some bad news about Kenzie recently as well. It turns out she is Diabetic and after taking a second round of bloodwork to verify it… we will have to very soon begin giving her insulin shots every morning and evening. Insulin is nonsensically expensive and while an injection pen is in theory going to last us a good while with Kenzie, I am now deeply concerned about the expense for those who have to take way more doses.

I was at first appalled when the vet said that in a lot of cases folks end up putting the animal down when they have diabetes. I could never consider something like that with Kenzie, but when the cost of upkeep is going to add one to three hundred dollars a month depending on severity I guess I can see how that would put folks in a really tough spot. I am thankful that we will be able to weather the burden and that our Vet did a ton of legwork for us and found the cheapest place for insulin pens and needles and we just had to then go acquire them. At some point this weekend we will be taking her into the Vet to be taught how to deliver the shots correctly, and then this gets added to my daily routine.

I am also thankful that Kenzie takes meds well and will pretty much tolerate us doing anything. I hope that streak continues when that “anything” is poking her with a needle twice a day. She has finally stopped screaming and is laying down beside me now on the box that a PC Tower Case came in. I was so slow getting my system transferred over into it that she claimed the box as her domain, giving her a way to be close to me while I sit in my office chair. When I finally swapped over to the new case, I put the old case in the box and taped it back shut so she would continue to have her own personal perch. For the longest time she laid beside me on my desk, and there is a blanket sitting there still for that purpose… but she prefers the cardboard box.

Now we get on to the title of this post that is both figurative and literal. We are going through a nonsensical amount of rain right now and coming home from the store yesterday I got completely drenched, along with the four sacks of groceries I was carrying. When I got everything into the kitchen I went back into the living room to take off my jacket and lay it up to dry when I noticed a bunch of water on the coffee table. I had a moment where I was trying to figure out if I accidentally sat the wet sacks down on the table, or if it was something else. Then while trying to figure this out I heard a distinct drip coming from the rafter above the table. We have a very slow leak and it has happened once or twice before, generally speaking when the rain is blowing horizontally due to the wind. So that is another thing on the list that will have to be dealt with as we get someone to come out and look it over. I am hoping it is just a case of the flashing pulling up or something like that.

Tonight however… I am hoping to get some relaxation in the form of mindless Diablo 3 grinding. It is the opening of a new season and with it comes something I have never done before. I have a plethora of Demon Hunters, Crusaders, Barbarians and Necromancers… but I have never before gotten a Wizard or a Witch Doctor to 70. Grace confirmed that the Haedrigs set this time is a good one for Wizards and as a result I am planning on pushing myself well out of my comfort zone and running up a finger wiggler. If this works I might even knock out the Witch Doctor next season.

There is just something relaxing about our quarterly ritual of grinding up fresh characters in Diablo 3. Given all of the nonsense happening right now in my life I really need something peaceful and relaxing. I’ve had pretty fraught evenings of late where I never could quite settle into playing anything in particular. So I am looking forward to having a purpose tonight.

Lastly before I close things out. I want to take a moment to thank everyone for their comments yesterday. They really do mean a lot even though I told you that you didn’t have to make them. I mean I knew that my admonishment would do nothing, but I also sorta felt like I needed to let people off the hook. We all have a lot of things that we are dealing with and my burden is by no means more significant than anyone else. That said I really do appreciate the constant reminder that I have a bunch of people out there that care about me.

Scottish Pokemon Impressions

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I am going to lead this post off with a general confession. While I enjoy Pokemon games, I am in no way a massive fan. I grew up at the wrong time. I first played Pokemon Blue on a Gameboy Emulator and the first Pokemon game that I legitimately played when it was something current was during X and Y. Pokemon came out while I was in college and while I remember playing Pokemon the card game when it showed up in the place where I was playing Magic the Gathering, I never got heavily into it because I was more or less turned off by the massive crush of kids it brought into the shop.

So while I “get” the controversy surrounding this game, I also don’t really grok it on a deep level. I’ve never moved my pokemon from one game to the next game. I’ve only ever traded pokemon with Ashgar and a ton of random Wonder Trade connections. I fundamentally of not of the mental calculation that makes up what a diehard pokemon player is. So while there is raging about this game or “Dexit” talk on the internet… I think they are mostly old people yelling at the clouds. I get it… I am also an old man that occasionally yells at the clouds for stupid reasons. If this was your first occasion of being mad on the internet, I am sorry… you will be mad about more important things in the future.

What I see when I look at Sword and Shield is a super charming game that finally works more or less than modern 3D games do… with dual stick action and big free roam areas to wander about in. There are a lot of functional improvements this game brings to the table, like I really enjoy the wild Pokemon aspect of being able to see what sorts of critters are hiding in the tall grass. I also really like seeing significantly higher Pokemon in the wild that serve as targets for when you finally get your levels up enough to capture one of them. I love the quick button for Pokeballs, and I love that I can just tell motion controls to screw off and that unlike “Let’s Go” this one lets me play comfortably while docked with a pro controller.

While Gigantamax is a weird gimmick… I absolutely love it. I love fighting with my giant sweet monkey boy. If you chose any of the other starters, I regret to inform you that you chose incorrectly because nothing is as perfect as my monkey boy with his stick. But what I love more than anything are the weird raid like encounters that you can get into in the Wild Area. You can in theory play with a group of friends, or if you are like me and have none… the computer invents friends to play along side you.

Defeating one of these “raid” encounters allows you to catch the Pokemon in question and also rewards you a ton of candies and even occasionally TMs. I have to admit I have done nothing useful so far other than attending the induction ceremony, because I am spending all of my time wandering around the Wild Area catching critters and doing raid battles. I think at this point I have gotten four different TMs from these random raid dens.

Another adorable thing is the camping system where much like Breath of the Wild or Final Fantasy XV you can assemble a random assortment of the berries that you find out in the world… apparently into curry? Like I have issues with the fact that I am making savory berry curry but whatever. I do feel a little bad eating it while my Pokemon watches, because that just seems mean. Like I totally want to see my sweet monkey boy chomping down on food as well so he will be happy.

My sweet monkey boy sadly turned into an edgy monkey teen last night, but I am going to get through these awkward years. I am pretty sure Lime Kong is now into obscure dubstep remixes that I have never heard of. It’s okay when he reaches adulthood we will finally learn to see eye to eye again as I continue to force him to fight random strangers for fun and profit. Really the concept of a Pokemon game is sorta jacked up if you think of it. Lets try not to think about it.

And just to prove that I am still a twelve year old boy inside… when the game asked me to pick a number for my jersey I of course chose the only option. For some reason the writing up top looks like someone wrote “Asse” upside down which only serves to improve the asthetic of the 69. All in all it is a perfectly fine game and I think the grousing about it is largely without merit. The Switch is a relatively underpowered system and I more or less expected a mainline game that looked like Pokemon Let’s Go. I was not disappointed, and in fact a lot of the animations are way more charming than anything I have seen in a Pokemon game to date.

I have no clue what these cards do, so here is mine. I am not sure if this is a sort of friend invite system or what. Whatever the case you can see me as an adorable noob poke-trainer. I went for the glossy finish for extra cringe.

Also while we are trading digits… feel free to friend me up. I am probably never going to do anything that requires friends in one of these games but I like knowing that there are other players out there doing things. Switch time is more or less time when I am either playing it docked or hanging out in bed. All in all though I am pretty happy with Sword and Shield, or at least what I have played of it.

Jedi Fallen Order Impressions

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This morning I thought I would write up some of my thoughts about a game that several of us absolutely thought was going to be vaporware… Jedi Fallen Order. There is a specific reason for this because it seems like EA has cancelled more Star Wars games than it actually has made since getting the exclusivity deal to the licensing. However it appears that Respawn has decided to just give a giant middle finger to EA and make whatever the hell they want to make. All reports seem to indicate that Apex Legends was more or less a passion project that EA ignored, and Jedi Fallen Order is a game that EA just doesn’t make anymore… a Single Player non-LIve-Services game with absolutely no Micro-transactions and a boat load of cosmetic goodies that are unlocked through gameplay. Respawn should really share whatever dirt they have on EA with other studios so they can make awesome things as well.

During the game you play as Kyle Katarn… I mean Cal Kestis a wayard Jedi Padawan that managed to hide out in the time following Order 66. I like Cal fine but he seems to be purposefully bland as to allow you to more or less insert yourself into that character. He is voiced and looks like Cameron Monaghan who I mostly know from Shameless but others will know from Gotham. He does a perfectly cromulent job bringing this character to life and there is an adorable “a boy and his dog” relationship between him and the goodest droid boy ever… BD-1. The only negative is that I would have liked it if there was a Female option as well given that absolutely nothing about the character appears to give two shits about the gender. Cal Kestis is an equally generic name so they should have totally done a Revan here and just let you pick whichever gender you preferred to play as.

The game itself is gorgeous and I have been playing it upstairs on my gaming machine in 4k, which leads to a really awesome experience. The game presents you with a giant warning screen suggesting that while it is playable with a keyboard and mouse that you go ahead and use a controller, so I am begrudgingly doing that as well. Since I have nonsense large hands I am using my favorite Xbox One controller the Power A Fusion Pro 1.0 controller which is sadly no longer made. As far as gameplay itself it is this weird amalgamation of Uncharted and Darksiders… with a lot of tropes made popular with the Dark Souls games but play out in a way here that feels less awkwardly punishing.

The souls comparisons go basically like this. When you die you lose a bunch of experience and you can gain it all back… as well as completely heal your character by tapping the mob you died to. There are a bunch of meditation locations in the world and these function like campfires in Dark Souls games… as in you will completely heal up and restock but also all of the mobs you killed respawn as a result so it plays a tradeoff between healing up now or causing yourself hassle in the future. BD-1 has the ability to dispense healing stims which play the same role as the Estus Flask allowing you to heal up without invoking the respawn penalty.

The other connection that gets drawn is the style of combat. This is not a button masher and if you do button mash… your character will flail around uselessly as a result. You start with a single bladed light saber and at a couple of points during the game you will be able to upgrade this to a double bladed saber, and swap between the two freely as needed. The thing that I find the most interesting is that each weapon has its own feel and range of uses and the first time I tried to treat my double saber like the original single I also flailed around hopelessly until I got the swing of it. Combat is deliberate and involved you exploiting timing in order to unleash some extremely impressive looking combos that make you feel bad ass.

All of that said… there is still a large chunk of the game that is learning how to traverse the levels and figure out Zelda Temple style puzzles. When you are entering a puzzle area and you are seemingly struggling to grasp what needs to happen… you are offered hints in the form of conversations with BD-1. Often times these aren’t super helpful but are charming as hell and well worth listening to… and at least in a few cases reaffirmed that my idea was correct as to what needed to happen next. There are a lot of times this game feels like Uncharted or a modern Tomb Raider. The truth is… the mix of elements makes for an extremely compelling gameplay experience.

The game excels at giving you set pieces that make you feel like a Jedi, and does an exceptional job of set design that slowly teaches you the basics. It then takes those basics and repeats them over and over through the level, each time mixing and remixing the same themes that you have seen before and then finally chaining them together in a way that makes you feel like you really can use the force. There is one sequence that involves a zip line, to a wall run, to a wall climb that seems extremely daunting at first… but by the time you reach that area you have done all of those separately enough times to make you feel comfortable to chain them all together.

The game tells a relatively simple story, but it does so in a charming manner with a bunch of characters that are both interesting and acted extremely well. It isn’t so much that it is a storytelling juggernaut, but the complete package of how the game feels and the story blend nicely to give you an enjoyable experience. While it is not a role-playing game at all, I would say that this is probably my favorite Star Wars game since Knights of the Old Republic. The only thing that could have made it better was to make the character something you could create yourself similar to the original character in KOTOR.

I get the impression that Disney is wanting to enter this game in as part of the cannon as it mingles with other characters that are already firmly rooted in Star Wars history. I have to assume that is why we have a fixed character that we are playing. This is an unfortunate choice however given the levels of superfluous cosmetic choice you are given in the game, that the most important one is completely missing. If you can get past that one fatal flaw however the game is amazing and I would highly suggest it to anyone who is willing to listen to me. I’m on what is either the 3rd or 4th planet depending on if you count the starting area as its own thing. I will be playing more of it tonight because it is pretty much dominating my gaming schedule.