Game Consoles Archives - Page 6 of 6 - Tales of the Aggronaut

I am still reeling a bit from a dream I had over night. I guess in theory you could call it a nightmare, where I ended up leaving my current job and ending back under the yoke of the one boss in my work history that I hated working for. I’ve always been one of those people who tended to naturally get along with bosses. Pending they are coming from a place of logic, I get why they want the things they want… and especially now as a “boss” myself I get how orders that seem disconnected from reality end up having to be passed down. This boss however was petty and vindictive and gave me nothing but a constant stream of conflicting information. If I did what I thought was right… he would rail on me for not doing it however the hell he wanted me to do it. If I stopped and asked for directions in how he wanted me to do a thing… he would rail on me for not taking initiative. In the end it was two and a half years of the lowest point in my career that did some serious damage to my psyche that I am apparently still sorting out.

On the gaming front however I have been playing quite a bit of World of Warcraft, mostly because I want to unlock the two Allied races that I have yet to. Let me take a moment to talk about how much bullshit the way these races are unlocked is. Primarily that it is grossly unfair that two races for a single faction are unlocked by doing content that has been in game more or less since the launch of Legion, and the other two gated behind the newest content and honestly the most frustrating to do. So I have the two horde races of the High Mountain Tauren and the Nightfallen unlocked and a monk and rogue create respectively. Now I am working on the frustrating rep grind that is roaming around Argus and doing daily quests barely watching the needle climb at all.

Argus just feels bad and was only slightly improved when I got the reputation to unlock the improved flight whistle. Why in the hell this was not a default thing makes zero sense to me. I get that they rushed this content out the door and did a lot of visual tricks that are easily dispelled the second you lift off the ground. However the constant tug of war of achieving flying only to have it arbitrarily taken away from you is maddening. We experienced this with Pandaria and then suddenly losing the ability to fly on the Timeless Isle and Isle of Giants and in both cases it felt horrible. Having a speed bump in the form of Argus still feels horrible… but I am gritting my teeth and dealing with it for the sake of racial unlocks. As to why this suddenly matters to me now? I have no clue… it could have been simply spurred on by having access to the races in Alpha.

The other game I have been playing a significant amount of lately is Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate on my new pokeball edition 2DS XL. Unfortunately the shut down of MiiVerse and the lack of having any sort of a native screenshot functionality will keep me from actually capturing any shots of my gameplay. However this has sorta become my evening retreat as I chill out doing some monster hunter from bed before finally heading to sleep. I find having some sort of a wind down activity helps a lot and at least thus far this fits the bill nicely. I do however have a USB to 3DS charging cable at work so I might start taking this with me and playing a little over lunch now that I am getting into some of the more exciting activities.

I’ve not made it terribly far but at this point I have taken down two monsters: Velicidrome and Seltas… both of which I need several more parts from. I have the mission to hunt the Great Jaggi so I am likely to attempt that next because I need a single hide to upgrade my current sword and shield. Not sure why I have not broken out my beloved Longsword yet, but for the moment I opted to stick to the starter weapon. In truth in Monster Hunter World, the Sword and Shield is probably my second favorite of the weapons so I am in part using MH4U as a way to get more familiar with its quirks.

How quickly I have taken to this game in the relatively short amount of time I have been playing it… tells me that Monster Hunter World is not necessarily a fluke for me. Sure it was this amazing gateway into a very complex game… but the core mechanics are ultimately the thing that is keeping me there. I’ve had similar experiences with Generations, but I feel like 4U does a much better job of easing you into the game and giving you some semblance of a story to care about. At some point I fully expect to return to Generations and push a little further given that I have yet to actually get to a single real monster there.

Last night I had all of the intent in the world to come home and stream some Monster Hunter World nonsense. Wednesday is likely going to be one of those days I stream because it is a relative dead spot for the rest of the Moogle’s Pom team. When I got home from training however I was just mentally toast and was not sure if I could handle non-streaming interaction… let alone being “on” while playing something. As a result I slipped into the comfortable chill of Final Fantasy XV. As you can see I have decided to go with a completely different outfit for Noct because the Mariachi Charro suit with a Moogle Riding a Chocobo on the back is freaking amazing. I’ve always thought the classic Mariachi attire looked classy as fuck, and since FFXV is sorta this weird homage to the Americas it sorta fits. I also swapped the Regalia paint job for a classic two tone with black/gold rims and the black and white interior.

This is mostly going to not be a post about Final Fantasy XV but I had some screenshots to break up the blocks of text so I am using them. I’ve been in ITILv3 certification classes and it is simply a lot of information to consume and remember. What is making things more difficult is that some of our practices at work go against the norm and even attribute completely different meanings to some of the terms I am going to have to be tested on. Some of my peers talked about just being mentally toast when they got out of class each night and that is precisely what I am going through. We’ve taken six quizzes, a 40 term vocabulary test, a bunch of brain dump review sessions… and today is the day. We have a handful of study activities and a practice test… and then finally at 1:35 to be exact I take the online proctored certification test.

I spent some time reading last night and watched a few study guide videos… but I could tell that no more data was going to fit into my brain that evening. Its almost as though there is some maximum buffer of learning that I have reached each day and only sleep manages to come along and clear it out. At this point we have covered probably well over 100 specific terms that we are going to need to understand and differentiate from other super similar terms. It is not like my job is on the line if I don’t pass… but I will catch massive hell because my predecessor did not when everyone else that went through a giant class together did. So far I have made roughly 80% on all of the quizzes so I am trending to be able to make the minimum of 65% needed to pass the test and get certification. Ultimately I will feel better once I have taken the practice exam and seen how I do on that.

In the meantime… I am ready for some normalcy to return to my week. I’ve been in training each day since Tuesday with my entire focus being absorbing as much raw information as I can. Coming back to work Friday and doing normal tasks is going to feel super odd given that I have been holed up in a classroom for the last three days. It honestly may not be until the weekend that I have decompressed enough from this experience to be able to interact with other human beings on a regular basis. I have stuff that I ultimately want to do in both Final Fantasy XIV and Monster Hunter World, and I have not even had a chance to check in and see what the weeklies are this time around. I know the Wiggler quest ends soon, and then shortly after that the Anjanath Horizon Zero Dawn quest. I need to make sure that everyone I know has the bits from that quest they still need before it poofs.

On the Final Fantasy XIV front I need to burn through the rest of the main story quest so that I can unlock the rest of the dungeons needed for Expert Roulette. I would really like to get into a comfortable pattern of coming home and doing the few daily roulettes for bookrocks in order to catch up gear wise. I would also really love to grab some people I trust and run through Rabanastre so I can get some quick explanations of the fight before I start tanking it on a regular basis. I could in theory run it as Samurai, but I am not sure if my gear is good enough to get in there on that class.

Finally last night I spent a little bit of time downstairs in bed playing around with my 2DS XL. Firstly I have to say how much better I like using this than the 3DS XL. For whatever reason the screen on the 3DS always screwed with my eyes. I could never actually see the 3D paralax effect and as a result everything just looked fuzzy even with the 3D settings flipped all the way to the lowest settings. As a result the 2DS screen looks so much crisper and as a result every game just feels better. The other awesome side effect is the fact that it is so much lighter, and also qualifies as a “New” device meaning I can finally put some of my favorite SNES games on it. I managed to catch Monster Hunter 4U on sale for $8… but sadly at the time of posting this it has gone back up to its full price. I started that game and already like it more than I did Generations, and I managed to defeat the Well-Done Steak boss on my first attempt because of figuring it out from World. These games feel so fresh and new… and I have to think a lot of my reluctance to play them had to have been how much the screen frustrated my eyes.

Bad Grind Good Grind

Moogle Charro Suit