Games

A Collection of Games that I Write Posts About

Adorable Zelda

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This weekend various things happened, but one of them was that I played the first game that was not World of Warcraft Classic since the launch of aforementioned game. Friday two games of note came out, but the one I spent the most time playing was The Legend of Zelda Link’s Awakening. One thing that is important to know about me is that I love Zelda games, but more importantly I love the pre-n64 style of Zelda games. So while I am a huge fan of Breath of the Wild, I honestly had more fun playing A Link Between Worlds.

I purchased a Gameboy in 1989, and quite honestly it was more novelty than something I actually played on a regular basis. It was something we brought on trips or would occasionally link up with friends, but considering it had no backlight it made it extremely difficult to play at times when playing a game might be super convenient. If it was light enough to see I was way more likely to be doodling in the backseat of the car on a drawing tablet than to actually be playing the Gameboy. I got my Super Nintendo in 1990 and by the time Link’s Awakening came out in 1993 I was a Sophmore in High School and could give a shit about anything on the awkward to play Gameboy at that point. I did not have a renaissance of the Gameboy until 1994 with the release of the Super Gameboy, but for whatever reason mostly fixated on Metroid and never went back to play this game.

As a result I went into this experience knowing next to nothing about the game apart from the fact that it was supposedly wildly different than the traditional Zelda narrative and was still exceptionally well received. This could have meant a few things, because Majora’s Mask is wildly different than the traditional Zelda narrative and I am not at all a big fan of that game. Minish Cap on the other hand is also wildly different than the traditional Zelda narrative… and I instead loved every minute of that game. What I did know however is that the game feels like it borrows from A Link to the Past and managed to make a Gameboy game that looked very much like that.

What I was not expecting however was a game that was a way harder start than pretty much any other Zelda game out there. There is a whole trading quest system that exists and I found myself trying to figure out how to trade this for that, and what the hell to do with the thing that I just received in return. I also spent time playing around with the fishing system which is absolutely adorable… as is pretty much everything else to do with this game. As a whole this very much feels like a game where they just went hog wild with the systems development and also a game where they played with a bunch of interesting concepts… like the fact that apparently Hyrule and the Mushroom kingdom are not part of the same tapestry.

There were a lot of times I spent with the “beep beeps” as I call them, which apparently caused Tam to lose his shit and laugh the other night when I said it… but at the same time immediately knew what I was talking about. It is that moment when you are down to half a heart and the game is playing a constant and annoying health warning sound going “beep beep… beep beep” over and over and over. Thankfully while some of the concepts are mechanically harder than most Zelda games they are seemingly fairly generous with mobs dropping hearts when you actually need one.

I’ve not made it super far into the game, and have pretty much beat the first dungeon boss and started the second area. I do find it super interesting that this is a Zelda game that includes a vertical element with one of the first abilities that you pick up being a feather that lets you jump. It took some getting used to in order to sort out how best to jump across objectives, which lead to me falling in several pits along the way.

Can we just talk for a moment about how adorable the Great Fairy is? I love this art style and honestly would love to see other games in the Zelda series redone in this style. It really fits the feel of this setting, and quite honestly it makes me wish I had a version of the original game remade in this fashion. It also just makes me wish that I had all of the games that came out on the mobile platforms available and playable on the switch. I’m not much of a handheld gamer, but I do like the switch as a platform and its ability to shift back and forth between the two modes of handheld or docked.

This seems well worth picking up, especially if you are like me and somehow skipped this entry in the series. It feels vastly different than any other Zelda game I have played, but also that is perfectly okay. It feels like a game where they experimented with a bunch of big ideas that somehow managed to work perfectly. Additionally it has a really great soundtrack, which makes me want to go back and see how the chiptune versions sounded.

Failing to Mechanic

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I love this spot in Arathi

First off I have to say… I am shocked and amused at just how many people ended up reading my “non-post post” from yesterday. I am also thankful for the people who checked up on me throughout the day to make sure I was okay. I have no clue why I suddenly needed copious amounts of sleep Wednesday night, but I most certainly did. Last night however was apparently the opposite and it enabled me to do some shenanigans that I will probably pay for later.

For the better part of this week I have been living in Arathi Highlands working on the warrior quest. The drop rate of the items needed from the elemental “exiles” is sufficiently low enough that when combined with how tough they are to take down it feels like I am mired to almost a halt. At this point I have 8 of one type, 6 of another and 2 of the last. The other side event that has been going on this week is that Eliyon and I have been trying to make some dungeon runs happen. Thalen and Vernie both needed another trip into the Library to finish a quest. We all needed a run through the Armory to get credit for the overarching quest and I think Eli probably wants the axe. Lastly we have all been sitting on a stack of Razorfen Downs quests.

Yes You Can Pet the Dog

While I failed completely at taking any screenshots of our Scarlet Monastery run, we started there and did the two wings. It was around this point that it was nearing 10 pm and in theory should have been the moment I begged off for the night. However given that last night was effectively my Friday and that I was off work today… I kept going. We all agreed to make our way to Razorfen Downs and start working our way through that instance. I was a bit surprised that Vernie agreed to this given that I think he probably still had work today.

There is an aspect of the dungeon design of Vanilla instances that on some level we knew at the time but never really marveled at. So many of these instances are designed in a way that they clearly expected you to go in and do one side of the dungeon, and then return a bit later to finish out the dungeon and do the other side. So in Razorfen for example you have two sides that are accessible from the entrance. You have the side with Undead Boars that ultimately gave themselves over to the Scourge, and then a side populated with more traditional Undead skeletons and ghouls.

The Boar side starts around 34 and tops out at 39, and honestly was a pretty easy jaunt giving us a bunch of false confidence. So much so that we damned near wiped when we got the first pull of Undead side without being completely ready for it. The level increases to 37-39 for the trash mobs and the final boss is 41 ramping up the difficulty significantly. The wide level ranges I believe are designed to have you split your run up over several nights, like we have done with Scarlet Monastery. We talked a bit last night about how they could have messaged this better, with making having a quest that sends you into the instance and there being an obstacle that you then have to leave the instance to figure out how to get past.

In a style that Grace would have been proud of, we managed to take down the final boss by the slimmest of possible margins. All it took was sacrificing the tank, because seemingly I was the only one who died regardless of everyone getting super low. Effectively we struggled because we were “ignoring the mechanics”. The final boss summons 3 ghost adds when you have pushed the health past certain thresholds. What we should have done is stopped dpsing the boss and cleaned up the adds before returning to fight the boss again. Around the time the summon happens the boss roots the tank making it super hard for the adds to be picked up.

Instead in truth nub fashion we burned harder escalating the problem and making it a race to one of two conclusions… we win or we wipe. The problem is that once you start a death race like that, you really cannot back out and try the actual strategy. The only reason why we won at that point after failing the mechanical components was by sheer determination to push through. As a result however I have a really nonsense sword that will hold me until I can get a Thrash Blade, and something to fill my neck slot, along with the lopsided tanky shoulders from Scarlet Monastery. The only negative of this whole situation is that we didn’t wrap and I didn’t make it to bed until roughly 12:30. A really long time but a really fulfilling one as we knocked out three instances.

Honeymoon Waning

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I am struggling a bit when it comes what to call this post because I don’t want it to seem overly alarmist. That said I have noticed something over the last seven days that gives me concern. I mentioned these thoughts to my friend Eliyon yesterday and at 7:00 pm CST last night he agreed that there might be something to it. Last week there would have likely been 8-10 people on at that time of the evening, but last night there were three… and of those 3 one of which was Stargrace’s auctioneer that she leaves logged in most of the time while doing other things. There has been a noticeable drop off in activity.

Granted at this point we are twenty four days after the official launch of WoW Classic, and also at this point folks are exiting what I would call as the “easy levels”. At 37 the going is so much slower than it was even in the 20s and I have been chewing on this level for a couple of nights now. Granted I am not focused on being optimal and more focused on trying to get as much ore as I can to push up blacksmithing and mining, along with keeping up with the constant maintenance of needing to craft food. As a warrior I eat an excessive amount of food, and in order to lower downtime I am eating every 2 or 3 encounters.

I am not sure if I can really call this a trend yet since it more or less just started happening over the last week. I know of several cases where folks have stuff going on, like Grace for example is going to be out of pocket for another two and a half weeks or so. The west coasters don’t tend to start showing up until 9 ish my time, which means that in many cases we are ships passing in the night. They are coming on as I am logging off and I think players are starting to move away from playing the game at any cost and trying to find a more healthy balance. All of these things are probably adding up to the absence that I have noticed, but it does still give me pause.

For me at least I have not felt the sirens call of something else. I didn’t even pick up Borderlands 3 for example because I knew I would be otherwise engaged. Similarly there is a bunch of stuff coming out this week that I am likely going to just let sit there unpurchased until I hit a lull. The desire to hit 60 and gear up is way too great to allow myself to be distracted by something else. The only thing looming on the Horizon that is likely going to pull me away at least part of the time is the impending release of Destiny 2 Shadowkeep on October 1st. Even my beloved Monster Hunter World and its Iceborne expansion has not been enough of a draw away from Classic.

The positive is that there seems to be a group of us all in the same level range that seems to be similarly committed to this nonsense. So long as I can keep easily building guild groups I am likely going to stay engaged. However I wanted to throw this discussion out there. Have you been noticing a drop off in your own guilds? What things have been pulling players away from the game that you have noticed? I am curious if I am alone in this observation. Ultimately I am hoping this ends up being just a “bad week” and not a lasting trend. The servers are still actively populated and the chat channels lively, but I have noticed a thinning out of players in the level range I happen to be in.

I think ultimately I am finding myself between waves. I am too slow to be part of the “first” crowd, and too fast to be among the folks that are still in their early to mid twenties. I think maybe I need a change of scenery. I have been focused on grinding out the items needed for the Warrior level 40 weapon quest, and doing runs along the walls of Arathi for ore. This means I am moving every so slowly, but it does give me constant access to raptors which serve as two sources of cooking materials. I still have no clue where I am going to get the money in a few levels for a mount, and I figure that is going to be another phase that stalls me out as I go find something grey to grind. The various “gold farms” that I have heard of are all heavily camped, so I may just go without a mount for awhile.

Random Buy Fail

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I am a huge fan of “random buy” videos, especially the ones done by Booster Tutor and Tragic MTG. The idea is simple, buy a random pile of Magic the Gathering cards and mine for gold. So when I was posting my blog yesterday on Facebook, I saw the marketplace link in the sidebar and randomly decided to search for MTG cards in my area. I found one that looked interesting. Now the goal of a random buy tends to be to find someone who knows nothing about Magic the Gathering so that they have not sifted out anything worthwhile.

So when I happened across this image it seemed to fit the bill. You see a random assortment of cards improperly stored in what appears to be a cassette tape carrying case. Upon zooming in I saw an assortment of set symbols from a specific area somewhere in the Lorwyn and Alara block era so somewhere around the 2008 to 2010 time frame. This is an era in Magic with a lot of really interesting cards. The seller originally had a price of $125 for the whole bundle, which I knew was completely unreasonable and over the course of a few messages talked them down to $40 which I felt was a reasonable amount to gamble away on potentially nothing.

I arranged to meet them on my way home at a QuikTrip, aka a very busy and very public gas station in case they were nefarious. I tend to always do my Craigslist purchases at some QuikTrip because you are guaranteed to have a massive number of people coming in and out. When I pulled up I saw a very mad-maxian vehicle loaded to the brim with various bits of scavenged stuff. They had parked under the awning of the adjacent car wash, and while I was dealing with the wife the husband was rooting through the vacuum trash cans to see if anyone threw away anything useful. The cards had been transplanted from the tape carrying case to the bottom of a family sized cheerios box making this seem all the stranger.

The heartbreaking part of the story is that the cards had seemingly either been out in the elements or stored in a really humid environment. They reportedly came from a storage unit, but I am guessing one of the ones that is more storage shed than climate controlled environment. What was left was a weird mix of cards from that era. Of the likely 700 cards probably 300 or so are in reasonable condition. Large chunks of them however were stuck together or just completely toast. The Thornbite staff for example would have been worth around $8 were it not completely garbaged out. There were a bunch of things that were in the dollar or two range but almost all of them had some measure of damage.

I am guessing that the Yu-Gi-Oh cards probably came from a different source and they just lumped them together with the Magic cards because they looked “similar”. They were in much better shape but also largely worthless because they all seemingly came from some unlimited series. I’ve never even held a Yu-Gi-Oh card before now and I am realize they really are crappy quality. The artwork is not good and they are printed on what feels like the same sort of card stock as business cards. I am however super disappointed that the Beaver Warrior isn’t worth something for at least kitch value.

The reality is… I just wasted $40 on a questionable lot of Magic the Gathering cards. However as a result I have a fun story about that time I bought cards in a cheerio box. One thing that I thought of after the fact is that I really should have been wearing some sort of gloves while sorting through the cards because god only knows what sort of things were growing on them. I thoroughly washed my hands afterwards in hopes that maybe I didn’t get some sort of harmful fungus on me. Do I think the Facebook seller screwed me? No not really because I legitimately don’t think that they knew what the hell they had. They also tried to throw in some 80s non-sports cards that were badly warped because all cards are similar right?

The truth is I think that they did some quick googling on what the hell Magic the Gathering was and saw that some cards are worth hundreds of dollars and went with that on their initial pricing, but were all too happy to be talked down a bit. I read them as junkers that are constantly looking for the next thing that they might be able to sell for some cash. It is a lifestyle that you see a lot around here of folks who are at flea markets on the weekend selling everything from electronics to novelty shower curtains. Anything that might be valuable to someone gets picked up and carried along for the journey, and the vehicle told the tale of a serious picker. Would I do this again? Probably. It was at the very least entertaining.