Cats

A Land Without FOMO

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Do you ever find yourself not taking action because you can’t wrap your brain around exactly how you want to do something? This is something that has plagued me my entire life as I sit back and overanalyze a situation and end up just postponing actually doing anything. If I am under pressure I am extremely good at making snap decisions, but when I don’t feel that sense of pressure… I tend to sit on something indefinitely without actually ever taking action. So much of my life, I put myself into situations that artificially cause that pressure and tension… so that I actually go through with things.

For example I’ve had an additional camera for our security system for two years now, but never quite got around to figuring out how I wanted to mount it. Yesterday I decided that I would mount it by the end of the day… and in truth, it took me all of ten minutes to do it. However, I spent two years at least once a week mulling over what angle and position I wanted to mount this damned camera when in truth it doesn’t really matter that much. Its entire purpose was to let us watch Tripod, the three-legged calico that has been living in our backyard for going on three years. I put it up and it is finally serving this purpose… and also letting us know that apparently Splotchy, the cat that is patiently waiting on Tripod to finish eating… is back hanging out in our yard again. I think while phantom (the cat we found his original owners for) was around he had made himself scarce.

Last night I made marinated boneless pork ribs and stovetop stuffing and sat down after dinner to play some more Quantum Break. Yesterday I have to admit I was not entirely sold on this game but felt obligated to see it through to the end. Yesterday however the game hooked me and by the time I got through the fourth chapter I am honestly on pins and needles to see how this all shakes out in the end. I have to give credit to Remedy for a handful of things. Firstly they make extremely interesting landscapes for your characters to roam around in. Even in Alan Wake which was basically a blue-toned rainy woods simulator… there were some absolutely stunning setpieces. Control was a visual feast and each time you discovered a new area you were introduced to some situation that should not be able to exist in the real world.

The other thing that I have to give them credit for is creating very interesting stories. A time travel story is something that has been done so many times, but they managed to figure out a way to make this feel fresh. I guess another aspect of this is that they seem to be able to capture really great acting performances both with in-camera live-action sequences worthy of a high production value show and in the orchestration of assets to create very believable digital actors. I mean I have been impressed by acting performances in games before, but always it was in the voice-over delivery… never really in the digital manifestation of those actors in video game form. Sure there is a noticeable difference… but it feels natural when you shift between the player-controlled digital sequences and the live-action denouement at the end of each chapter.

It is extremely likely that I am going to wrap this up in a few hours this evening, and now I am not really sure what I am going to roll into next. Right now I am thinking probably Ghost of Tsushima, which I left in a very partially completed state on the PlayStation 5. My goal for today… like my goal of putting up the camera yesterday… is to stop calculating how to do it… and just move my PS5 setup downstairs to live beside the Xbox Series X. Ultimately this NEEDS to happen before Horizon Forbidden West launches next week. Essentially most of this single-player gaming has been me in a holding pattern until that game releases, but I have been greatly enjoying this time.

One of the core problems that I have playing MMOs is the constant sense of FOMO that they instill in the player base. There is always some new thing that is coming around the corner and will only be available for a limited amount of time. Be this a new season in Destiny, a holiday event in FFXIV, or the feeling of needing to do your daily chores so that you don’t fall behind in World of Warcraft. It is the aspect of those games that I like the least and honestly, over the last few years, it has been one of the major turn-offs. Instead of making me want to engage and no-life something until I have ticked all of the boxes… it makes me want to check out completely and not even participate.

Playing all of these single-player games has made me realize that more or less they are completely immune to FOMO. The game exists as it is and the experience will more or less be the same if I play it tomorrow or if I play it three years from now. They are experiences that happen on my schedule and on my terms. There is no need to rush around and make sure that I get this thing done by this deadline… because the game will always be there waiting on me. That is not to say that I don’t want to play MMORPGs anymore, but this week and watching the zeitgeist scurry around Lost Ark has made me realize that maybe just maybe I am done for a while. I greatly enjoyed the story of Endwalker and I do want to return at some point and play more… but I also don’t really feel like I am on a specific timetable for that.

Wolfendooms

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It was a really bizarro weekend. First off I opted to talk off Friday afternoon, which in itself isn’t too strange other than the fact that I more or less went home and slept for a couple of hours. I normally can’t take naps but I guess it was a week worth of not sleeping super well catching up with me. For those who have read this blog lately you will know that my wife was on a work trip in Portugal. Whenever she is gone the house and most specifically the bed feel very wrong and as a result it greatly impairs my sleep patterns. She flew in safely during the time when I would normally be recording AggroChat, and due to scheduling problems with lots of people we just skipped doing one of those this week.

She is safe and sound and past the first day of culture shock seemed to really enjoy the trip. I am enjoying having her back and she has adjusted back to our standard schedule a lot faster than I would have expected. We wound up going to bed around 10:30 on Saturday night after getting her home and a rapid round of unpacking. Then she was up around 6 am and managed to keep it together until around 8 pm last night. Then we were up as per normal around 5:30 am and hopefully she makes it successfully throughout the day without crashing. I have a silly belief in the totemic power of the purple coffee mug that I sent her off to work with, and I hope it shields her throughout the day. We have a lot of bright and colorful mugs, but the purple one is by far the most important.

This weekend there was a test for Phantasy Star Online 2 on the Xbox One and I booted up my console for the sole purpose of participating. As I understand it there will be a later test for the Windows client, and I am mostly just going to have to tide myself over until then. For those who may remember I went through the nonsense process of getting set up to play PSO2 some time back and then proceeded to stop playing it after the initial few weeks. The Japanese client jumped ahead four versions and I felt like I was missing so much stuff and had no clue who any of the characters were. I am hoping that when it finally comes here officially we can play it properly from the very beginning. I didn’t spend a lot of time playing but it did make me realize that I am probably going to go back to my good ole fashioned RAcast instead of the HUmar I was playing during the beta this weekend.

As far as traditional gaming goes, I spent quite a bit of time this weekend playing Mars: War Logs. As I have said before there is just something about the way Spiders makes games that I find appealing. I greatly enjoyed Technomancer and Mars: War Logs comes considerably before that game in a timeline and explores an area of Mars that is mentioned in Technomancer but that you can never quite go to. I am somewhat glad that I played the games in the order that I did because there are some interactions that I would have viewed in completely different light had I known things that transpired in this game. Much like the difference between Witcher 2 and Witcher 3… this game is a much more simplified version of the same formula that I have seen in other games like Greedfall and Technomancer. As a result it is way more streamlined and other than the fact that the game has horrible quest advisement… it is way easier to follow what you need to do in the world.

On the cat front, Josie is pretty bonded with me after having spent a week with me being her only human. I am hoping that over the next several days she starts snuggling with my wife again, but all day yesterday she was pretty much glued to me. I mean I guess it makes sense because not only was I the only human around for a week but I am also the human that provides food twice a day every day. The whole feeding thing goes a long way for an animal friend. It is in part why I keep hoping that someday the outdoor cats will let me pet them. The latest Josie trick is that she has learned how to climb the ferret cage that is still in the kitchen, and has also figured out how to climb halfway up and then parkour her way into the windowsill. She is adorable, which is good for her because it gets her out of trouble for all of the messes that she inherently makes during her manic play sessions.

And now to the title of the post. The above thread is courtesy of Thalen who posted it on the AggroChat staff slack. I am completely on board with calling shooters Wolfendooms. Does that mean that Destiny would be a Wolfendoomtribes though? The whole transition from “Doom Clone” to “FPS” is still one that I find interesting. I’ve been struggling to figure out a term for the Bioware Dragon Age/Mass Effect genre since I have been playing so many Spiders games that are desperately trying to fill that niche. I’m also really curious if there are more games out there like that from smaller studios that I just never encountered. Anyways time to wrap this up and head to work, but if you have any Bioware-esc games that you know of that might not be on my radar drop me a line in the comments.

State of the Cats

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Since this is a week that brought us pretty fraught other “states of the”, I figure I would present some alternatives and talk about the cats. At this point we have had Josie the Pussycat since January 21st and in those 18 days she has adapted swimmingly to our home. Prior to my wife’s trip I was not exactly her favorite person. We got along fine because I was the person who feeds in the morning and evening, but we weren’t exactly on cuddling terms. This was fine because in reality I needed to be spending as much time as possible with Kenzie and Mollie to make sure they knew that nothing was going to change in how much attention they were getting. If fact as I am typing this I am reaching over and petting Kenzie who has appeared beside me wanting attention.

This week of being the sole “parent” however has reached a place where Josie is fully bonded. This means that pretty much all of the time I have both Kenzie and Mollie with me, and at certain points I have had all three girls trying to snuggle at the same time which while precarious has worked fine. The thing with Josie is she moves really fast and shifts positions pretty often. The above photo is a case of “suddenly cat” as she came bounding in from out of nowhere and hopped up on my chest to snuggle into my beard. She tends to prefer sitting on my chest, draped over my mouse arm or snuggled in beside me on the right side. Some of these work better than others… like last night I was playing some destiny and she was bound and determined to half sit/half stand on my chest and make me crane my neck to look around her while playing. She for whatever reason likes watching the screen while I play games.

Kenzie and Josie get along pretty well which is good, because I was concerned they absolutely would not. Kenzie and Mollie do not at all get along, nor did Kenzie and Luna. However in both cases I am starting to wonder if it was more of a Luna and Mollie thing than a Kenzie thing. Luna would absolutely attack first with Kenzie which is ultimately why we ended up finding her a new loving home. Mollie is skittish as hell and we blamed that on Kenzie wanting to be up in her business, but again Mollie always makes the aggressive noises first and then Kenzie turns around and bops her. Whatever the case Kenz and Josie seem to be buds and I am super fine with this.

In fact at one point last night they were chasing each other and it was the sort of back and forth friendly chasing. Josie would chase Kenzie… then give up the chase and Kenzie would turn around and chase her back. This went on and on back and forth across the living room for a good ten minutes. They also regularly rub up against each other which I take to be a good sign, and last night I saw Kenzie grooming Josie a bit. I am hoping with time that they end up snuggling with each other, because that will make the logistics of me sitting on the couch with three cats a little easier. At all points however I seem to always have both of them. As I write this Kenzie is on the box laying beside me like she often does and Josie is sprawled out on the floor behind me.

Mollie unfortunately is still the odd duck of the group. She is bonded with me, but only just barely. Our working theory has been that she was in a shelter for too long and way too early in her life. More specifically she was in a shelter where she was the only cat filled in a room full of very loud dogs. She will snuggle with me but if I sneeze, cough, or even clear my throat she is gone like the wind only to return after a significant passage of time. She has been snuggling with me again this week so I am going to take that as her starting to settle in. Everything with Mollie takes way longer than it would with any other cat. You mark progress with her in millimeters not and not meters.

At first she was very much not into Josie and still to this day there are squabbles between them. However I have also caught her sniffing Josie and the other day little britches came running in and head butted Mollie who more or less was okay with it. Given enough passage of time I think things will reach a stable truce, or at least as well as there has been with Kenzie. Mollie loves that there is a hammock upstairs and she pretty much spends the vast majority of her time in it. The hammock downstairs is now populated by Josie, and Mollie seems to be okay with this swap. My wife’s office is pretty much always a warm room and that probably adds to the enjoyment for Mollie.

I wish I could somehow wave a wand and make them all be the best of friends. However for two weeks in we have made more progress than I was honestly expecting. Kenzie and Josie are now my partners in crime which is awesome. There is a reason why I had chosen Kenzie as my Palico in Monster Hunter World, and if I had the ability to create two… Josie would absolutely get added into that mix. Little britches certainly is making life interesting in a good way. I am anxious to see what happens when my wife gets home from Portugal on Saturday. I expect that Josie will be excited to see her since it has been shown that cats remember their humans for long periods of time. If nothing else it will be nice to have another human in the house because Josie pretty much wants constant attention.

I am super looking forward to having my wife back because I have missed her. I keep thinking I see her out of the corner of my eye while sitting downstairs. There have been a bunch of times I almost made a random comment only to realize that it is just me and the cats. I’ve not done anything terribly exciting during my bachelor mode time. Probably the most exciting thing was using Door Dash for the first time to try ordering from a restaurant I have never eat at… only to get what I am pretty sure was a minor case of food poisoning about 24 hours later. Needless to say I did not touch those leftovers. I am ready for life to start being back to whatever normal passes for in our household.

Apparently Chosen One

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It is not a great morning. I am suffering from what I sometimes refer to as “intestinal panic” and have been since last night. As a result I am little out of it and also did not get amazing sleep which has caused me to stare blankly into the void several times this morning instead of writing a post. Yesterday I found out that a round of mass banning went out in TemTem and for whatever reason I always get paranoid when something like that happens. To the best of my knowledge I have not done anything to warrant a ban, but given that there is usually no recourse it always makes me more than a little paranoid. This time around specifically because the company seems to think that maybe they accidentally banned a few people. Thankfully however I was able to log in just fine and thankfully this time around Crema is accepting appeals. However posts like this one will always serve to make me extra paranoid about random bans.

I continue to push forward in The Technomancer and while I thought I was getting close to the end… I realize that I have yet to finish chapter three of the game because I don’t have that achievement, and that there is also apparently a chapter four achievement. I may just not be able to tell at all where I am in the pacing unless the final chapter is super short. Last night I mostly spent my time working on a plan to disgrace my arch nemesis, which to be honest… I still don’t quite understand why he is chasing me in the manner that he is. That is a finer point that I have yet to figure out, and I am hoping that eventually as I wind my way further down this rabbit hole that it is explained. I am apparently the chosen one without actually having explained why anything about me makes me the chosen one.

There are two things that this game needs badly. The first is a way to skip time without having to find a bed, because unlike the Fallout/Elder Scrolls games beds are in fairly short supply in this world. The second thing is some sort of a fast travel system because I have retread the same steps to the point of madness. Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, but Spiders made the design decision that encounters would respawn frequently, which means each time that I trek through the slums I have to fight the same guards and the same gates over and over. The game suffers from a significant amount of backtracking because new quests will send you to the same destinations you have been to hundreds of times, and will again force you to fight the same encounters. This is definitely something they seem to have learned from this game because Greedfall had a perfectly adequate fast travel system.

In Josie news, she has entered the phase where she is into everything. She has explored her environment enough to be comfortable with going places she shouldn’t go now. I woke up this morning and she had knocked a ton of stuff off the top of one of the dressers because of course she did. We are reaching a point of equilibrium with the cats, or at least Mollie is starting to settle down. She has always been our high strung baby, and as I said yesterday over twitter she has now adopted the upstairs cat toy and Josie has adopted the downstairs one. Last night was the first time since Josie coming home with us that Mollie snuggled properly, which I am hoping is a good sign. In fact for most of the night I had Kenzie snuggling on the blanket draping my legs, Mollie laying over my mouse arm and Josie sprawled out behind my head on the top of the sectional. This absolutely seems like progress.