Games Archives - Page 485 of 690 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Cats and Wolves

January 8, 2016 by Belghast

Cattes a Plenty

At some point last year, lots of folks in my feed showed up with this Japanese app on their phones called Neko Atsume. From what I can tell it roughly translates to Cat Collector, and it is one of those passive things that I tend to refer as a “maintenance game”. The thing is…. I like cats. In fact as I write this post I have one on either end of my desk sleeping on their blankets. I for the most part avoided the game until recently when for some strange reason I decided to give it an install. Firstly I’ve talked about my problems with mobile gaming in general. I tend to install a game, play it a few times… and then never touch it again. Largely my life is not exactly mobile friendly, and if I have access to games…. I am generally at home when I can use a more traditional gaming system. This game however… fits that realm of do something… leave it sit for awhile… check back in on progress for a minute or two. I’ve found myself popping it open while waiting on a meeting to start, and the jolt of happy kittehs doing stuff seems to help my mental state.

The concept is really simple. You purchase cat toys, place them in your virtual yard… and the neighborhood cats will come visit you and leave you gifts if they enjoyed themselves. The gifts come in the form of silver or gold fish… with the later also serving as the cash shop currency of the game. As far as advancement… I have zero clue how that works. I know I have seen screenshots of folks with much bigger yards, but I have no idea how that actually occurs yet. The starter yard has a fixed number of mount points for items, and at any point you can pick the items up and replace them with other items from your inventory. I have a pretty simple yard right now, but it seems to draw cats in pretty well. You can play the game completely free and there is a conversion between silver fish and gold fish… but it is pretty painful. You can get 10 Gold fish for every 250 Silver fish, which is doable because over the course of a few days I have earned over 250. Right now it gives me tiny doses of happy especially when I pop over and my yard is completely full of cats doing adorable things. I fully expect that within two weeks time I will have abandoned this mobile game just like I have abandoned so many others.

Slowly Leveling

The other big project I have had over the last several days is working my way through the content in Destiny on my Xbox 360. This has been a somewhat crazy side mission, and I have to say… it has been interesting leveling from scratch for a second time. There were a lot of things I struggled with in Destiny playing through it that very first time, and for the most part none of them are big deals this time. I guess all of the time I have played on the Playstation 4 really has made me significantly better at the game, because swapping consoles has been a non-issue. Sure the 360 controller feels a little strange, but I seem to be able to switch hit between it and the dualshock without much problem. Admittedly I find the dualshock 4 significantly more comfortable, and if there was a way to make it work on the 360 I totally would. I guess you might ask yourself why exactly am I leveling on a last generation console… well I still have friends playing it. I have been really damned impressed at just how well the game plays. I mean admittedly it feels like someone smeared vasoline on the screen because everything feels a little fuzzy… given the lower resolution and with it lower texture detail. However the moment to moment game play is exactly the same… and the weapons and movement all feels just as responsive. I am sure at some point I will pick up an Xbox One, and at that point… in theory my 360 characters get to transfer over so any work I am doing now I can carry forward into the next system.

There are so many lessons that I have learned from playing through the first time. This time around for example I am stockpiling every single blue engram drop that I happen to get. The idea is that if I can wait to open any of them until level 40, I will be able to push up my light level quickly and get to a viable position to start doing content. I am investing a lot of time right now in this platform, but the hope is that eventually it will be the sort of thing I only play when I have people to play with. I still greatly prefer the Playstation 4 version, and those are the characters that I really care about. In theory I could have spent my level 25 boost on my Titan and probably would have been done by now, but there is something fun about doing this legitimately again. At this point I have beaten the main storyline of the original game, and darkness below. I am also a fairly significant way through the House of Wolves storyline, but it was getting late last night and I did not really want to deal with the Vault of Glass mission, so that is where I will pick up next time I play. I’ve reached level 25, which concerns me a bit… given that I have quite a bit to go before I can function very efficiently in the Taken King content. I mean in theory I could already be doing that… but sub 35 some of those later missions are a pain in the ass. Generally speaking on Destiny alts I push all the way to 40 before even really starting Taken King, so that I can burn through it easily. Given I need leveling fuel… I will more than likely start Taken King as soon as I finish up with House of Wolves. I guess I could do some Strike grinding, but I really really hate the Omnighoul strike, and that seems to be all I ever get in the level 20 range.

Imposters and Shaman

January 6, 2016 by Belghast

Still Adjusting

The last couple of nights, by the time I got home from work I was so irrationally tired. I am sure it is largely just me trying to get adjusted to waking up at 5 in the morning again, but whatever the case it is annoying as hell. Last night I was so out of it, that I didn’t even cook a “real” dinner but instead simply made a peanut butter sandwich and then proceeded to sit on the couch fighting desperately not to fall asleep. By the time my wife got home around 7ish I had managed to get a second wind and started actually functioning, or at least a mental state closer to functional. I am hoping by the time I hit the weekend, I will have worked out all of the differences in sleep patterns and next week will be easier. What does not really help is the fact that upon coming back Monday it has been crisis central at work. We’ve dealt with a project that is threatening to go off the rails, a virus scare, and processing some crucial year end/beginning of year things. I guess that is always the case after coming back from Christmas break. Folks stop really functioning around Thanksgiving and all of that work gets pushed until we all get back that Monday after New Years. I have a friend that is smart in that he tends to take his vacation after the first instead of connecting the dots between Christmas and New Years like most of us do. That means he misses most of this insanity.

The only real positive is it feels like everyone else out there is struggling with 2016, so at least we can share the misery together. Making matters worse is that my boss is fairly sick, and I am now paranoid that I am coming down with it. The thing is… I would happily go to bed tonight around 8pm if I thought I would actually be able to sleep all the way through the night. My fear is that I would go to sleep, and then wake up at midnight completely unable to get back to sleep. There is just too much stuff to do right now so I feel like I cannot afford to get sick. There are projects that have to be completed, and others that need to get started. I am dealing with some of the most extreme impostor syndrome I have in a very long time, because I feel like I should be able to juggle all of this madness better. Its kinda shit walking around for days paranoid that someone is going to find out that you are a fraud, and that you really don’t know anything… all the while you are very clearly doing complex things that negate the notion that you are a fraud. Brains are dumb. If I could figure out how to negate the effects of this… and also the weird panic freak outs that I have been having life would be awesome. The other solution that I would love to fix is the fact that regardless of how tired I seem to be sitting on the couch, the moment I put head to pillow I am either wide awake or deluged by a panic attack.

Pushing Alts

Once I finished Draenor Pathfinder, I was hit with this feeling of… “Hey! You should finish some more alts!”. As a result I started in pushing up my Draenei Paladin Exeter, and as of last night I managed to hit level 100. I am honestly shocked at just how fast leveling goes when you can fly. Now one would think that maybe this would tip me to the other side of the “flying in draenor” discussion, but not really. When I leveled three characters to 100 without flight, the experience felt more “earned” if that makes sense. The time spent felt like I was actually living in those zones, rather than just flitting from point to point dropping off this or that item. Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful now for the ability to level faster… because three characters was about the right amount of time that I wish to spend in these zones. The other characters, I just want to push as fast as humanly possible. Ultimately I started doing this Alliance side again because I needed a break from the Old World Horde leveling path. After rapidly pushing a druid to 40 over Christmas break, it felt “too soon” when I returned to working on my Orc Warlock. In theory at some point soon I might just end up transferring that druid to The Scryers so that I can play it with the regular crew of people that I play horde with. It seems silly to transfer a sub 60 character, but I really don’t want to push a new character through those zones that quickly. I need to do some more research into the horde potential zones, because in just following the adventure guide it seems to always direct me to the same places. Mostly I want to sort out how to get down the Grom’gol path and into Stranglethorn Vale.

In the meantime while on this break from Horde, I think I am going to work on my Dwarven Shaman. I have an army of still to be leveled to 100 post 90 characters… and this one is sitting at 91. I think in theory I can probably wrap him up quickly and make some movement over the weekend. Mostly what tipped him over the edge was a discussion with some friends that indirectly influenced me. Tam was talking about specs that became “better” than others… and mentioned some period of time when Enhancement was the bees knees. Which made me think about how Enhancement is the only Shaman spec I can really play… which made me remember how much I actually liked playing it. So as a result I think I am going to push the dorf for a bit and see how close I get to 100 before getting that urge to play Horde again. Largely I think it would be kinda awesome if I was able to push all of my characters to 100 before Legion…. but given how many horde characters are not even 20 yet… that is going to be a very tall order. In the meantime I am trying to do whatever feels the best, and trying to sort out how to stop feeling so damned tired all the time. Today is better than yesterday… and that was better than Monday…. so I feel like it is a gradual thing. With time I will get back used to this 5 am crap… and will continue onward being a super responsible adult type person.

Sleep and Nagrand

January 4, 2016 by Belghast

Struggle Is Real

It is Monday morning after my week and some change holiday break, and I have to tell you… the struggle to exist in the world is real. I am hoping through that yesterday I ultimately went through the worst. As I said yesterday morning, we set an alarm in an attempt to force ourselves to shift vaguely in the direction of a schedule. As a result I pretty much sleep walked through yesterday, and found myself generally staring in the direction of things rather than actually participating. This was doubly awkward since we were having our last “christmas” event of the year with my mom-in-law coming over. I tried desperately to keep up with the conversation, ultimately failing. The small wonder however was the fact that she brought her laptop for me to look at because it wasn’t working. Sure enough the first time it attempted to boot, it hung after login. However on the second shutdown and restart everything went normally, and as a result I busied myself staring at its screen for the remainder of her visit. I did the normal gamut of fiddling… checking her antivirus to make sure it was up to date, and patching as much as I could with windows update. A computer requires significantly less interaction than a human being, and that was ultimately what I was banking on.

The ultimate problem is… that she has no internet connection. What I mean by that is that she does not pay for internet at her house, but instead piggy backs off the wifi of her grand neice. This is perfectly find mind you, it is not like she was war driving one day and hijacked a wifi signal. The problem being that there is roughly a half football field of distance between her house and the nieces house, and our RV pad is smack dab in the middle. It was my hope that either we would put in wifi at our RV eventually, or set up a network of signal boosters to piggyback the signal across. The problem is since she doesn’t really know how technology works, it is hard to explain why her internet connection sometimes works fine and other times not at all. Basically it shouldn’t be working at all, and it is by sheer dumb luck that you can pick up a wifi signal from that sort of distance. The problem also being that she cannot differentiate between telling us something is wrong with her laptop and the software itself and her internet connection. This is the truth with most of our family, they know that facebook isn’t working but are of little to no help to actually diagnose over the phone as to why that is the case.

Paladins Everywhere

Wow-64 2016-01-04 06-25-06-22

The problem with a big goal is once I accomplish it, I end up floundering for a bit trying to find something else to focus my attention on. In the past many of the times when I have left a game it was because I completed some big item that I was grinding my ass off to achieve…. and lost interest after finally getting it. I know it is in my nature to feel let down after finally getting something, and I am trying really hard to not let Draenor Pathfinder be that way as well. Since I finally can fly around, I have been focusing for a bit on trying to push up some of my post 90 characters on Argent Dawn and my highest of those is Exeter my original Alliance Paladin. Over the course of the weekend I took him from 94 to 98 and am now starting Nagrand, where I hope to finish up. I like finishing in Nagrand because gear wise I end up in a fair better position than if I grind the hell out of Spires of Arak. After the initial leveling in Draenor I have followed the pattern of swapping zones every time the game prompted me that the next one was available. So in my case that would be 94 for Talador, 96 for Spires of Arak and 98 for Nagrand. Doing this ends up with me in a mishmash of gear, and a bunch of abandoned quests, but seems to also be the fastest possible way to churn through the content.

Master-of-None-Poster-629x360

Ultimately my goal is not to experience the quest content, because I have already done that several other times. The goal is to level as fast as possible, and I guess in theory I could simply just do the dungeon queue as a tank and be done with it. That is absolutely an option I will consider, but yesterday I absolutely was not competent enough to be responsible for the lives of anyone other than myself… and at times even that part was questionable. I died an awful lot yesterday, and spent probably as much time running back to my corpse as I did actively questing. The problem being that while every fiber in my being told me that I really just wanted to go to sleep, I knew that would only prolong the horribleness and make my first day back at work sheer hell. So I continued trying to busy my mind. While attempting to level the paladin we searched Netflix for something anywhere near as compelling as Making a Murderer, only to strike out multiple times. In the evening we ended up watching a documentary called Dear Zachary which was extremely good.. and moving… but I would not suggest watching unless you are really ready to cry. We ended up closing the evening out watching the Netflix comedy series Master of None because seriously… after that documentary we both needed a laugh. We ended up shutting down around 10 and making it to bed…. only to sit there and talk for awhile as neither of us seemed to be sleepy anymore.

I hate my brain so much at times, because through out the day all it did was complain about how tired it was… and begged me to go to sleep… and now that I am finally read for it to shut down it is acting like a spoiled toddler crossing its arms and holding its breath. I wish so much that I had a normal relationship with sleep… that it was just one of those things that happened naturally for me. My entire life it has been a struggle to actually have a normal sleep schedule. Every fiber of my being is wired to be awaken during the night… because I feel far more alive after the sun goes down than at any other part in my existence. The sun and I really do not get along, and I think in theory I could be happy working night shift. The problem being I work the sort of job that happens during the day time, and I have tried for years to become the kind of person that functions during the day. There are all manner of tricks that I play upon myself and an absolutely silly amount of caffeine and energy drinks that I use to force myself to remain viable and cognizant during the hours I am supposed to be. But my brain is a brat and refuses to function like a normal human being, and I get so tired of playing the game where I am laying comfortably in bed… and every neuron is firing wildly trying to keep me from achieving a restful nights sleep. Fuck you brain… you are an asshole. But hopefully I got enough sleep to be mostly functional on this first day back from break.

Frustration and Fallout 4

January 3, 2016 by Belghast

Morning Will Suck

This morning I attempted to get myself back in line for the impending work week, and I have to say the experiment has been a dismal failure. I normally get up for work at 5:30 in the morning, and then get up… do my routine and finally knock out a blog post. Sundays have always been difficult because generally speaking I am up until at least after Midnight and often times 1 am working on the AggroChat podcast that I end up having to finish editing and posting in the morning. Last night I was up until around 1:30 but thought it was probably a good idea to set an alarm. So at 7:30 I at least put toes on the ground…. and sat there teetering on the edge of the bed for a few minutes trying to decide what step came next. I finally realized that hoping in the shower was a good idea, and did that hoping that the water would somehow jog my brain into functioning enough to go through the rest of the morning boot up routine. I had decided yesterday that instead of having a yummy bowl of cereal in my warm home…. I would get out and find something in the cruel cold world to call breakfast. This ultimately meant that I would go outside and scrape the vehicle since apparently over night the temperatures had dropped a bit.

So I consumed my breakfast and a big tall monster zero…. and played the fun game of trying to throw my muffin wrapper away. I say its a game… because my kitten for some reason LOVES muffin wrappers. She will literally go dumpster diving through my trash can trying to get it, only to drag it out from the bottom of the bin…. carefully unwrap the plastic bag I threw it away in and unfold the muffin wrapper so she can lick it. She is a damned determined cat and the second I leave the room and let my guard down…. she strikes and before I know it she has the damned wrapper out again. This will be something that continues over the next several days. The long and short of all of this…. is that tomorrow is going to be pure hell. I am dreading going back, not because there is something there that I dread necessarily… but that twelve days off from work is more than enough time to completely destroy any routines you have had. Many nights it might be two in the morning before I finally get to sleep… which is not exactly conducive to a 5:30 alarm clock. The goal is to have forced myself to get up earlier than normal this morning, and to stay up all day long regardless of how tired I might be…. in the hopes that I will get a nice full night of sleep tonight. I feel like it is not going to go anywhere near as well as I might have hoped.

Making a Murderer

This break has been the one of binge watching content, and while most of it was Star Wars… we did manage to watch a new Netflix series called Making a Murderer over the last few days. Apparently my wife’s friends had been talking about it, and when she said they explained it as “like Serial” I knew I was in for the ride. Serial was one of those things that I got in on late, but I still dutifully listened to the show over the course of a few days while doing other things. The only problem with content like this, is that it does not wrap up neatly in a box at the end of the experience. In a “crime drama” at the end of the show you have some grand exposition that explains how it “really happened”, but real life is never that neat. Serial more or less was a show that made me wonder if this kid did what the police said he did, but it never made me physically angry at the police. I could see their side of the tale and I could see the kids side of the tail… and the end result was you mostly trying to sort out what you personally believed in the mix. “Making a Murderer” on the other hand presents a tale so frustrating that it ended up with me yelling at the screen several times, and my wife having to talk me down.

I am not sure how much I can say that won’t give the entire tale away, because I feel like it is probably best to just watch the 10 episode series for yourself. There are however lots of moments that swayed me to the side of the supposed killer. I feel like he was most definitely not given a completely fair chance in this case, and there is a significant amount of bias in the area against him. There were several incidents that occurred that were never explained… like one of the police officers running the tags for the Jeep two days before the victim was reported missing, but after she WOULD HAVE BEEN missing. The recorded dispatch call sounded as though he was staring at the vehicle reading the plates off, and verifying that it was a jeep. Don’t get me wrong… I know a lot of really awesome police officers, but I also know some that probably would not bat an eye at planting evidence to support their case. The thing is… I believe at no point did anyone think they were framing an innocent man… but instead that from the moment his name was mentioned he was already assumed guilty and they began trying to make a case against him work. I think that is probably the worst thing that the show highlights is how non-existence the burden of proof really is. Maybe I am just more questioning of information… but I had more than enough “reasonable doubt”.

The Fallout 4 Show

Last night we recorded our AggroChat podcast devoted to Fallout 4. More or less this was the reason why I pushed through the storyline recently, and I have to say forcing myself to complete this game was one of the more miserable experiences. I wanted to be able to talk about story plots, but part of me thinks i would have been happier if I had just not done that. Bethesda games in general for me are about the little moments, and not the big picture. This is a game that delivers in spades when it comes to little vignettes, but fails to deliver when it comes to giving me a larger story arc that I really cared about. The biggest problem for me at least was the fact that in no way could you complete the game in a fashion that did not end up with completely closing off all of the other options. I hate red versus blue situations… and even though fallout 4 was red vs blue vs orange vs green…. it still set up an artificial conflict that I had no way of mediating. There were no “grand bargain” options but instead a lot of “nope they will hate you now” paths you were forced down.

All of that said… the game itself was really awesome and I highly suggest it. When we finally do the game of the year show, this is more or less going to be my pick. I love the game, but then again I have loved every Fallout game to date…. well except Tactics… we don’t talk about Tactics. It was awesome and interesting hearing everyone elses options on the game as well. When we got to recording the show neither Ashgar or Kodra had managed to beat the storyline… and I think I probably would have been far happier if I had joined them in that club. Dallian on the other end of the spectrum had gotten 100% of the PS4 trophies, meaning that he had quite literally gotten every ending possible I believe. The takeaway is… this is a Bethesda game. If you like those games, then you are absolutely going to love Fallout 4… and more than likely you already own it and are happily playing it. If you don’t like Bethesda games, then this isn’t the departure you are looking for. If you are on the fence… then wait for a sale and try it then. If you’ve never played a Fallout game… I highly suggest you pick up Fallout New Vegas because it pretty much represents some of the best storytelling in the series. The show itself is full spoilers so if you plan on playing Fallout 4 at some point, and if you are one of those people for whom spoilers mean something…. then you probably should skip the show until a later date.

AggroChat 89 – The Fallout 4 Show

Podcast: Play in new window | Download