Games Archives - Page 480 of 691 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Modding Tamriel

February 7, 2016 by Belghast

Struggling to Record

Last night was one of the worst ideas I have had in awhile. I am still extremely sick, and for the most part don’t really have a proper speaking voice. The problem being, that Saturday night is the night we record AggroChat. This seemed to be an off week for most people. Grace was busy, and Ashgar was being worked to death in the “on call” rotation. The smart and adult thing to do would have been to simply apologize to our listeners and take a week off. However I am hopelessly chained to this notion of not missing an episode… either in my daily blog posts or weekly podacsts. I guess there is a part of me that is afraid that if I ever go by without making a post, that all of this will fall apart. That people will go their own separate ways and whatever thing we have called AggroChat will just cease to exist. I mean I am deathly afraid that if I miss a day of posting on this blog… that day will turn into six months before I start posting again. So there was what I should have done…. and then what I did. The end result is me today not really being able to talk, and afraid that I won’t be magically better by tomorrow morning for work.

The show itself went pretty well, I just felt like I struggled to try and maintain a voice that could actually be heard and understood. Quite literally I sound like I am going through puberty, where my voice cracks and squeaks at uncontrollable times. My vocal cords I guess have been ravaged by the congestion and the constant coughing. To make matters worse yesterday my eyes started watering uncontrollably and are all bloodshot. Basically I feel horrible, and will probably end up taking a sick day Monday as a result. The worst part has been trying to get any rest in this state. I’m taking NyQuil but it doesn’t seem to actually do much. My night felt like it was perforated by getting up every hour on the hour to readjust myself. I am hoping after staying up all day today I will be tired enough that I just simply collapse tonight and don’t much care what position happens to be comfortable. I realize this is just a cold…. but my god is it one of the worst ones I have had. I swear I have had the honest to god Flu and it has effected me less annoyingly.

Questing Auridon

eso 2016-02-06 14-57-32-85

It wouldn’t be me if I went too terribly long without adding some interface addons into Elder Scrolls Online. Right now I have Dustman, a mod that auto sells junk items and allows you to auto sell other items that you don’t really want, which is one of those things that I end up trying to find in any game I play. I also have Lore Books and Skyshards that simply mark the location of any books or shards that you have yet to collect. I also found a really cool mod called Undiscovered which marks areas that have some sort of a POI that you have yet to visit, which makes completing maps much easier. The best of the mods however is the Minimap I am using which is ultimately something I complained about not having back in early testing. I love the compass rose, but it doesn’t really replace the minimap… and I found myself spending too much time with my map open when I lacked the minimap. Having this makes the overall experience of moving around the world so much more enjoyable for me, because quite frankly…. I have gotten used to always being able to see that top down view. The only negatives are that most of the really awesome interface mods that I ran during the first days of the game…. seem to be long gone. I guess I should probably check the non-curse sites just to make sure that they might not be still lurking out there. I realize that I am essentially “Wow-ifying” Elder Scrolls by adding these mods in…. but quite frankly I don’t care. It makes my experience more enjoyable.

eso 2016-02-06 14-40-30-08

The biggest improvement so far is that the Veteran system was replaced by the Champion system, and it finally feels like I am making forward momentum again. I like that doing a few things here and there ends up earning me a point that I can spend on improving my character. It also feels like they have put some serious polish in place, because in playing Friday night and most of the day yesterday… I really didn’t encounter any bugs. All of the deeply scripted events went off without a hitch, and while I had gotten used to having to log in and out to get things to trigger during those first days of the game…. all of that seems to be a thing of the past. The other really positive thing is that the community seems to be pretty cool. I’ve gotten a lot of impromptu help, or folks asking if I wanted to join in for this world boss or that anchor. I’ve not really seen anything that made me cringe, which is a huge plus given that there were plenty of cringe worthy happenings during those first months. I am not sure how long I will remain playing the game, but I gotta say I am enjoying myself…. which is huge given the funk I have been in lately of not really knowing what to play.

Tamriel Revisted

February 6, 2016 by Belghast

Point Click

Yesterday I kept being reminded by co-workers of just how horrible I sounded, so after I finished with my critical meetings I took off and headed home around 12:30. After eating a hastily grabbed lunch of convenience store pizza… I collapsed on the sofa trying to force fluids while finding something comforting to watch. I guess my version of comforting is a little different than most people, because I wound up watching the entire first season run of Rick and Morty. Granted I have watched a lot of this show, but it turns out there were a handful of episodes that I missed when they originally aired. Whatever this thing is that I caught down south, it is very much kicking my ass. Blogging has been a real struggle because it is very difficult to string thoughts together into enough of a cohesive mass to make into a blog post. It is my will along that I am committing fingers to keyboard and producing words… because I simply do not want the streak to stop. I am a couple of months away from my official three year anniversary on the whole daily blogging thing, and the seventh anniversary of my blog. So until I hit that at the very least, I will keep up doing the daily thing even if I have to struggle to make words happen.

Lately my crutch while sick has been Diablo 3, but I feel like I am running out of things I care to do right now. I’ve gotten the seasonal rewards, but more than anything I am farming content in the hopes of getting the last few items I need to drop for the build I am working towards. Clearing regular rifts and doing bounties is the sort of mindless interaction that works well when I am sick, but I am quickly reaching the point where I am questioning why I am bothering? The other side mission has been to gear my monk, but once I found out from several folks that you only get one set of gear per season…. a lot of my gusto was lost. I thought I would be able to go kill the bosses I needed to get my first set of gear, on my second character and be up and running and clearing content pretty quickly. Alas that is very much not the case, and my best option is to ride along with Rae who is regularly clearing TX stuff… but honestly after being able to participate, going back to just having to pray to stay alive… makes it pretty uninteresting. Yesterday my big problem was the fact that I had a very needy game install going on in the background, that kept slowing down my teleportation to the point that the battle.net would disconnect me before actually ending up in zone with Rae.

Worst Install

On a whim yesterday afternoon around 1 pm, I started installing The Elder Scrolls Online. I guess I had forgotten just how painful the install process was, because it took until roughly 8 pm for it to finally complete. During the last hour of that time I was pretty much unable to play anything else on my laptop. The thing is… I have installed much larger games in far less time…. so I have to fault the launcher for just how painfully slow it was going. I mean I say this as someone who was installing to a laptop that is using a AC Wireless card capable of 650 MB connection on a total internet connection that generally runs around 150 MB down. I should have been able to completely saturate my pipe and had this game down in short order… but it took quite literally 7 hours to finally get installed. Now for a good chunk of that time I was still playing Diablo 3 so that could have been slowing things down… but the total download was tortuously slow. The last hour or so it was thrashing my hard drive badly enough that I really could not do anything else functional on the machine, so I wound up mostly fiddling around on my phone while watching television. The problem with ESO was that I honestly can’t remember why we stopped playing, other than the fact that one by one we just stopped until I was one of the last four or so people still active. For me I guess the Veteran game system was so bloody boring because it felt like I was no longer making reasonable process. I made it roughly two zones into the Aldmeri campaign, when finally my desire to keep playing petered out.

I guess recently I had been curious about what was going on in game, and they have done a few high profile DLC releases. So around 8:30 last night I finally was able to log in and poke around. Firstly I have to say I guess playing this game for roughly two years in testing… means that I have some serious muscle memory going on. While I had to reset all of my talent points, I can still for the most part remember exactly how I played it. All of the little things like dodging, and blocking attacks… came back without any effort and before long I was up and running and questing again. I feel like maybe this is the speed of game that I need right now. What I am struggling the most with in my current state is interacting with other human beings. I have been pretty much oblivious to twitter and slack since coming back from Pax South, and as a result I am kinda cocooning in my own little world again. Much like SWTOR…. ESO was a great single player game… and as a result I found myself really enjoying questing around last night. That is of course until the nyquil kicked in and I simply couldn’t hold my eyes open any longer. I figure I will put in some more time today playing and maybe talk a bit about my experiences on AggroChat tonight. That is of course if I have any voice left. Right now my voice is pretty damned squeaky so I am thinking we might have to rely on someone else to do the bulk of the talking this evening.

Pax Pox

February 3, 2016 by Belghast

The Convention Crud

So this weekend obviously was Pax South, and I am not sure how you could read my blog and not know this… but whatever. It went pretty well overall, but on the drive home Sunday my throat kept getting more and more sore. At first I was thinking that maybe I was getting closer to Oklahoma, and as a result my allergies were just going haywire. The entire time I was in the San Antonio area, I honestly did not have much issue with my allergies. It was just like they magically went away, so in theory driving back home… could feel like I was coming down with something. However yesterday I heard from Damai that he too is in the sore throat phase, so I am guessing we quite literally did walk away with whatever crap happened to be going around down south. PAX is this universal incubator for illness, and last year I somehow escaped catching whatever Ashgar and Rae ended up bringing home. This year however I was not quite so lucky, and in spite of using the hand sanitizer every single time I passed one… I still caught something.

I’ve been in hibernation pretty much the last two days. Originally I had requested off both Monday and Tuesday to recover, but had not planned on actually taking Tuesday. However it seems like I apparently was clairvoyant in knowing that I would need that extra day. This morning… I still feel like crap, but my fever broke sometime between going to bed Monday night and getting up Tuesday morning. My lungs are getting consistently clearer, and my throat while feeling sore still is getting consistently less sore as time goes on. While it felt flu-like at first, I am guessing it is just a run of the mill virus or cold, because I seem to be getting over it pretty quickly. The irony is… that I completely resisted catching whatever my wife had prior to the convention… but I am guessing that probably taxed my immune system to the point of catching something while there. In any case I think I am more or less on the mend, but going out and grabbing some groceries last night left me completely exhausted, so I can only imagine what state I might be in tonight when I finally get home.

Lady Monk

The great irony of a gaming convention is the fact that during those few days… I end up playing far fewer games than I usually do. The other strange side effect has been, that now that I am back at home…. I am not quite sure what to play. As a result I have been poking my head into Diablo 3, even though I have seemed to lack much purpose. Monday night I spent a good chunk of it running around with Grace and completing various stuff like greater rifts. Then when she logged to go take care of something, I ended up starting a brand new character. I realize that I could have probably gotten one of my friends to boost it to 70 within a few minutes… but instead I have been leveling a monk through doing bounties. The funny thing about this is that with all of my paragon levels, Master is the new Normal. I could probably ratchet up my difficulty some more, but I like how fast everything seems to be going right now. I’ve needed to run bounties for a bit, and doing so on a fresh character feels like I am gaining more than doing it on my crusader.

The truth is, I’ve never managed to get a monk to 70. My original non-seasonal one is 68 and I realize that I could very easily push it over the line. The problem being that I just haven’t had any desire to play non-seasonal characters. I have been in this mindset that “seasonal” are the “real” characters… and that the normal characters are almost like playing on some test server somewhere. I realize that it is backwards from the truth, but I have shifted to this point of view as looking at the season as the only thing that really matters. As a result I just can’t seem to bring myself to play any characters that aren’t in the current season, which I guess works out nicely since that seems to be what most people are playing. The only thing that worries me is how I am going to function when I need to merge this season into my existing already overloaded bank. At some point I need to spend some time eating some legendaries and unlocking abilities, because half of the junk that is clogging my non-seasonal vault is never actually going to get used. In any case as of last night I hit level 43 , and I plan on working it up some more tonight. I should be able to hit 70 in no time as I am gaining at least one level per bounty step on average.

The Division Impressions

February 2, 2016 by Belghast

Bad Christmas Simulator

I have to say I was pretty sad when I found out that The Division beta would be going on the same weekend I would be in San Antonio at Pax South. So when I heard that they planned on extending the deadlines, I have to say I was pretty pumped. The Division is one of those games that has looked good on paper up, but I have been really questioning as to whether or not I will like it. Call of Duty for example, is one of those series that I enjoyed when it first came out, but as it has evolved I have become less and less interested in the continued military operator fantasy. I think a lot of it has come from the fact that every game seems to use exactly the same guns. I mean I get why this is the case, since these guns are real world guns… that they are just trying to replicate in a game. So when I started thinking about The Division versus Destiny…. I have to say I lean heavily towards crazy space guns over things that can actually exist in the world I happen to live in. However I am also a huge fan of post apocalyptic settings…. and The Division seems like it might deliver on a near future version of that. So to say I was fraught is an understatement, then over the weekend I ended up talking with a couple that told me who much they liked it, coming from a heavy Destiny background. So when I got home Sunday night, I went upstairs started the hefty download.

So when I got up yesterday morning I finally got the chance to play the game. I really was not sure what to expect, and I guess in all of the screenshots and video I had not really gotten it through my head that it was a third person shooter. This has honestly been the biggest challenge for me when playing Warframe recently, because I am generally bad at playing a shooter from a third person perspective. Third person definitely makes things easier to move around, but when it comes to aiming a gun…. I just find it awkward. The fact that this is a game that relies heavily on ducking behind the next patch of cover, it almost HAS to be third person to make that work. In many ways it reminds me of Gears of War, in that you are constantly rolling forward trying to move up on mobs while at the same time staying in safety. The problem with that is… I am just not that kind of a player. I tend to be very run and gun… and sure I use the hell out of cover but I am constantly zipping in and out of it. This game feels more like a tactical RPG at times than it does a pure shooter, and I am not quite sure how I feel about that. You have to understand… that I have never played any of the other Tom Clancy branded games, because that player fantasy never really appealed to me. The fact that this game is an MMO Shooter of sorts… is really the part that places it in my wheelhouse rather than the content matter.

The Systems

The thing that I really want to talk about is just how damned good this games mapping system is. When you pull it up it brings up a holographic representation of the area you are in, and it has various objectives marked. You can go talk to an NPC inside each of the bases that gives you a situation report on the area, and as a result creates these little highlighted markers. As you are running through the world, you can see every single blip on the map… but you get special visualization for whichever objective you happen to have highlighted. In the various screenshots I am posting today, there will be these orange lines running down the street, and these serve to show you the best route to the location you are trying to reach. This makes movement through the very dense sections of New York city pretty manageable. What it does not take into account is that in many cases you can actually cut through buildings to get to your destiny and in doing so find all sorts of hidden resources. As you are roaming around there are lots of caches that you can find, and these have everything from resources to weapons, and it feels like looting structures in a zombie survival game. I am still not 100% certain what some of the resources are used for, but the obsessive side of me cannot leave a single bag sitting un-looted.

Tom Clancy's The Division™ Beta_20160201101723 — Ramshackle Bases

The gameplay for the most part resolves around expanding your reach and setting up these bases of operation in new areas. At first you start out on the banks of the Hudson River, and you push into the city with the first mission based around driving away the hostiles and reclaiming a base. From there you start retrieving people from the impromptu medical center set up in Madison Square garden. So you rescue a virologist to take back to your base, and then that launches a sequence of quests that involve collecting additional resources to help set up your medical facilities. The problem is for me at least that I cannot seem to stay on track, and that even though I have a giant orange line leading me to the objective…. I keep ending up going off the rails and looting every building that I happen to come across. The other issue that I am having is that I struggle how to identify who is just a harmless bum roaming down the street…. and who is someone that will actually kill me. I ended up wandering down this alleyway, without much options for cover… and next thing I know a patch of what I think are harmless survivors… ended up opening fire on me. In the middle of the batch was apparently a major boss that straight up killed me. So while the mapping system is amazing, the threat assessment portion seems to be kinda confusing at least for me… since everyone including me… dresses like they just came from a shelter.

Still on the Fence

Right now I am not sure if I am on board or not. I played enough to decide that I mostly liked it… but I still struggle with whole third person thing. The big boss fights are pretty hectic, but I have learned that for the most part… I simply need to find a hidey hole and kill mobs until the boss finally comes to me. It isn’t nearly as heroic as rushing in and dodging bullets…. but it seems to be more consistent than trying to run around and stay alive at the same time. The other big take away…. is that gear is really damned expensive. I am used to being able to buy upgrades pretty quickly in games… but I have sold a lot of random crap that I have found out in the world, but have been able to afford absolutely nothing. One of the things that I love about Destiny is that I am constantly getting new weapons to play with… and if this game ends up keeping the same set of weapons around too long I am going to get bored. What makes MMOs interesting for me… is the whole aspect of constantly upgrading gear. I have learned over the years that characters get stale for me, when I stop getting upgrades. So while I am getting drops that are upgrades are mostly armor, but I have yet to get a single interesting weapon drop. So I think in the long run that might be an issue if the beta test is relevant to how the rest of the game is going to feel. The other big problem for me is that I have a feeling that if folks get this…. we are going to be spread out between PC, PS4 and Xbox One… and I am certain that there will not be cross platform play. Right now I am leaning towards the PS4 version… but I have a feeling that most of the AggroChat folks if they got this… would be playing it on the PC. So now I just have to decide…. do I pick this up or do I wait, and while making this decision I should probably see how nice the pre-order bonuses are.