Tales of the Aggronaut

Assassin’s Creed II

March 23, 2014 by Belghast

Steampowered Sunday #10

I have had a really lousy week, and if you have followed my blog you know why. However that said, I did not want to break the Steampowered Sunday tradition. This week we had a tie between Assassin’s Creed II and Evoland, and in order to settle the tie I essentially flipped a coin. As a result I played roughly and hour and a half of Assassin’s Creed II. At face value this seems like a game I would not like very much, considering in general I do not like stealth titles. However so many friends of mine have been so into this game series that I felt like I had to give it a try. I feel like I am somehow losing gamer cred by admitting that I have never played ANY of the Assassin’s Creed games before today.

Watch live video from Belghast on TwitchTVAll of my friends have said that the essential title that I needed to start with was Assassin’s Creed II, so as a result that is the title I have placed in the running for a few weeks. Initially the title suffers from many of the console game tropes that I hate. Namely the “long introduction” and the forced “stealth” to get to an area where the game opens up. Then when you finally get into the action, there is yet another trope that I cannot stand… “the un-skippable mini-game” namely in the form of the rooftop race with your brother. So early on… things were not looking really good for this title. Within the first 15 minutes it had committed three cardinal sins. That said I kept playing and eventually got a grasp on why exactly this game is fun.

Where this game shines is the open world exploration aspect. While they only give you a small area at a time to roam around, for the most part you are allowed to get to your objective in whatever fashion you like. Additionally the “stealth” aspect of the game is extremely forgiving. If you are “feeling your wheaties” you can beat the shit out of your pursuers, or if you don’t feel like fighting you can simply run away and in a grand theft auto style wait for the coast to be clear again. Your enemies show up as very clear red dots on the map, and in many times you can simply blend into the crowd to avoid them. The only time they seem to notice you is if you are extremely close or doing something like running about or doing something to draw attention to yourself.

I realize at an hour and a half into the game I have barely scratched the surface. So far it seems like the game progresses in a very GTA style, where you are presented a series of small quests. Some of them involve going and fetching something, others beating up a person, and others still following around NPCs and helping them with some task. All of this is pretty boring, but the fact that you can accomplish these missions by wandering around the rooftops of the city make it far more enjoyable. I can see why people are into this title, and I think I would like it even more if it were more open and free. I can only imagine how great this title would be if it were presented in a more “fallout” type sandbox manner. Right now you are given pretty clear direction in what the quests do and which ones you should take.

So far the only real frustration is when I manage to get a “timed event” style quest. I find movement in this world to be cludgy at best, especially after being used to the parkour of newer games like Titanfall. There are many times where I do something like leap off of a building that I did not intend, but did so because I either didn’t wait long enough for my camera angle to readjust or waited too long. If I can get used to the quirks of the movement I feel like my enjoyment will improve, however when you put me under a timer and the movement does something screwball I feel like throwing the controller across the room. I have to remind myself that this game was initially released in 2009, and since then game controls have become so much more responsive. I am sure if I cracked open Assassin’s Creed IV many of these issues have been solved.

Overall I think this is going to be a title I play quite a bit more of. In fact once I finish a few chores this morning, I will probably boot it back up and play some more. I am hooked enough on what is there to make me want to play some more. Right now I am also feeling deeply antisocial, so a single player title is a good option. At this moment I am tentatively positive about the game and considering I got it as part of a massive package of other Assassin’s Creed titles, I can see maybe going back and playing the others as well. My friends all told me to start with 2, because there were some serious controllability issues prior to that point. If that is the case I am very glad I did, because I already feel like 2 is more than a little awkward, I would not have likely made it this far in a title where the controls were worse.

Comfort Gaming

March 22, 2014 by Belghast

Classy Defined

This morning I got up like I do most weekend mornings, and threw on enough clothing to make myself presentable. Generally speaking I don’t shower until later in the day, so generally this means I have to throw on a skull cap to tame my hair that is sticking straight up. In the winter this makes sense… in the summer not so much. Honestly in the morning anytime I see someone in a skull cap or baseball cap… I pretty much assume they are doing precisely what I am doing. As always I went to QuikTrip to gather up sustenance, and walked away with chocolate donut holes for the Mrs. and a jalapeño sausage roll for me.

While there… I saw the definition of classy. This woman walked in, who looked like she was already three sheets to the wind. What was she buying you ask? Well she planted an “Olde English” 40 oz malt liquor on the counter. Granted this is 8 am in the morning, most of the people in the place are buying donuts or juice or something more breakfast appropriate. In addition she had a package of twinkies and asked the guy at the counter if he sold single swisher sweets. After some fumbling around he found her a three pack, and I guess that was “close enough”. So yeah… I guess that is how some people roll. I am guessing this is not breakfast but a “night cap” of sorts. Just not something I normally see in the neighborhood QuikTrip.

Comfort Gaming

I think I grieve differently than most. Since the news of my grandmother, all I have really wanted to do is “turtle”… aka pull my head inside my shell and forget that the world exists. One of my chosen ways of doing this is to go off and play games that have always made me happy. One of the games I always cycle back to eventually is Everquest 2. It is like an old friend that I have spent so much time with, that I don’t even need to talk anymore… and I know that it understands me. Yeah I am sure it is odd that I personify a game like that, but really EQ2 was a thing I did for “me” and no one else. All the while raiding in WoW I would steal private time by logging into Norrath and wandering around aimlessly on my army of alts.

Just as a coincidence, right now my absolutely favorite event is going on in EQ2. Once a year Chronoportals open up allowing players to revisit areas from the original Everquest. Some of them are rather funny, like the Ancient Cyclops event in Sinking Sands. Back in the day there were all sorts of “theories” for how you get the ancient cyclops to spawn. Some of these involved killing all the madmen, spiders or mummies… and none of them really worked. It was a fairly random chance that you would get him to spawn. Why did players care? Well the Ancient Cyclops dropped the item needed to start the Journeyman Boots quest line, which of course provided the player with their own personal way of casting “Spirit of the Wolf”. SoW Plx!

Basically they are a really awesome way of getting account bound gear for your alts. I am not sure when I will actually level an alt again, but sooner or later I always seem to, and having these weapons and gear makes a bit difference. On my Shadow Knight I am still using the sword that comes from the Lower Guk chronoportal event. It is precisely the kind of mindless nostalgia that I need right now. The above video has me running through several of the events, or at least the ones I could remember off the top of my head. However if you are looking for a full listing, the place to check is Zam as always the amazing Cyliena does a great job as always with updates.

The Great Wipe

The end of Alpha is I believe next Wednesday morning, and the beginning of Closed Beta begins Wednesday afternoon/evening when the servers come back up. What this means is everything we have created along the way… will be gone. The only thing that will be kept are your characters, and the various entitlements like things that came from the trailblazer packs and things purchased from the store. This means all of the claim data will be wiped. I have a big mixed opinion about this. I don’t mind the idea of losing the work I have done on my claim, but I really don’t like the idea of losing my claim in general. I like my claim, I like where it is. My frustration is that there will be a massive landrush Wednesday evening… which is going to suck.

My plan will be to try and get a spot similar to where I had it before on Liberation/Pingo, but if I cannot… who knows where I will end up. Basically the acquisition of goods begins a new. So that means we will have to go back to square one with only our extra special trailblazer axe to start and work our way through the gearing tiers again. Here is hoping that with the addition of heartwood the grind for stuff is far less painful. As a result I got in for a bit yesterday, but I didn’t really feel like doing much. I made a few claims extension flags to see how well that worked, but really with everything going away, I don’t feel much like screwing with it. I have a bit of my stuff templated, but really I found using super huge templates really awkward so I will probably build everything back from scratch.

The cool thing about closed beta is that each of us trailblazers are getting friend keys. The notice from the other day says these are no longer going to be time limited keys… but instead permanent access to the beta from this point onwards. I know a few people who wanted them, so I will be trying to hand mine out that way. However there should be a lot of them up for grabs as I know a lot of people in the blogosphere who are Trailblazers. My hope is that they pretty much limit the closed beta access to just the friend codes for a bit, at least until the great landrush is over. My goal is to get another claim somewhere in a forested area and then start over from there. I really liked being in the forest, especially since the later item grind ends up being wood, and not ore.

In Memorial

March 21, 2014 by Belghast

Bad News

When last I wrote it seemed as things were looking up, and that my grandmother was improving. So I got up yesterday morning thinking this, and as I went through training I kept expecting to get a text giving me a status update on how thing were going. I had just finished eating lunch at Chipotle when I got a text from my father. Now normally my dad is jovial at all times, but this one was rather somber saying only “call me as soon as you can”. When I saw it, my heart sank because I was pretty sure what was going to say. Sure enough when I went outside to call back he said “grandma is no longer with us.”

Things were in fact going as planned yesterday. She was visibly improving, and they had taken the ventilator and feeding tube out. She seemed to be breathing on her own just fine for a bit, but then apparently her blood pressure shot up rapidly and she suffered a heart attack. Apparently there is only roughly an 11% chance that a young and healthy patient is going to make it back from going “code blue”. However when it is someone who is either very sick or very old, it is almost futile. My grandmother unfortunately was both sick and old, and even though they tried to revive her there just wasn’t really a chance.

A Normal Life

After she had passed the doctors said that she was never going to have a normal life again. This had been a fact that apparently no one shared with us, or at least not the right people at the right time. Apparently it was highly unlikely that she would have ever left the hospital and returned to normal life after what she had been though. She would have been in some form of a medical assisted situation from that point on. She had already been tied to an oxygen tank for several years, and as much as she hated that… she would not have tolerated more very well.

I don’t believe they had fully roused her from sedation yet when it happened. So I hope that means she went relatively peacefully. She had been “under” since last Friday evening when they did so to try and force her to rest. As a result the majority of this week she has been sleeping relatively peacefully. I am very thankful that I spent the time with her Friday, holding her hand and letting her lean against me as she struggled to breathe. While she shifted in and out of lucidity, I know there were moments that she knew very much that I was there. I got to spend at least a few moments with my grandmother before they put her under.

Bereavement Special

The thing is… I have been through so many deaths in the family at this point that I end up falling into funeral mode. On the way up to my home town we stopped in at the grocery store to purchase what I jokingly refer to as the “bereavement special”. People bring you all sorts of stuff when there has been a death in the family, but no one ever thinks to bring the most important thing… toilet paper. So when there has been a death in my family or someone else’s I tend to bring a package of basics… because those are almost always the first things to go. So last night I gathered up Toilet Paper, Paper Towels, Napkins, Disposable plates, cups and silverware and a huge box of trash bags.

The hardest thing about last night is realizing that this is likely going to be the last big family get together. My grandmother was the glue on my mothers side of the family. Her house as the focal point of the holidays. When my grandmother on the other side passed away several years ago, we watched as slowly any semblance of a holiday fell apart. While I realize that I will still have the holidays with my parents, gone will be the big gatherings. My generation is really not as close knit as the older ones, and while I get along fine with my cousins… we all have our own lives and things to do. We rarely make the time to get together in any fashion, even though the majority of us all live within an hour of each other. So this funeral may be the last time I see some of them until the next funeral.

Haunting Malaise

In all honesty, it really has not hit me yet. I am so amazingly thankful for my friends and the insane outpouring of support that I have received so far. You guys are all amazing, and I love you all dearly. Right now I think my body is in mental shock, and at some point I will absolutely lose my shit. I am not sure if it will be before or after the funeral, but for my Grandmother on my dads side it started during the funeral and continued on for a few days. Honestly that death was the beginning of a downward emotional spiral, and I am hoping that I can stave that off this time. I was in a really bad place mentally after that death, and I am hoping I can go into this one knowing that is a possibility and keep it from happening.

In part that one was towards the end of this insane streak of deaths in the family, and I think I just couldn’t take any more. There was a period of time where over the course of 5-6 years we lost 14-15 family members. I think I have mostly recovered from that, and I handled the death of my Grandfather okayish, and that has been about two years ago. I guess in a way I am thankful that I saw her last Saturday. At that point they had put in the ventilator and fully sedated her, and she was just lying there peacefully hooked up to all these machines. It was at that point that it entered my mind that it was possible she would never make it out of that bed. I have had the better part of a week to chew on that image in the back of my head. Right now I think I am in a better place to deal with her being gone than I would have on last Friday, when everything was immediate and fresh.

My Childhood

No matter how prepared I am, this is going to hurt a lot. My earliest memories from childhood are from my Grandmothers house. My mom went back to work pretty quickly after my birth, so from infant on I spent every single day with my grandma and grandpa. There are so many stories of me as a child, and at this point I find it hard to sort out the ones I actually remember and the ones that have been recreated in my memory based on the stories of others. I do however remember laying on the floor in front of the television watching Mr. Rogers, and doodling. I remember running around her house with a towel safety pinned around my neck as a cape. I remember my grandfather chasing me around the house with a cattle prod, and me hiding behind grandmas legs for protection. It was years later that I found out that the cattle prod he was using was completely broken, and he was making the buzzing sound with his mouth.

So much of myself I owe to my grandmother. I am pretty certain that my love of games in general comes from her. Every single day, for hours on end she would sit at the table playing solitaire. Sometimes she and I would play candy land together, or trouble… to the point where both boards were completely worn out. She was my caretaker and my constant companion as a little boy. Hell the fact that I don’t use a recipe when I cook is almost certainly directly tied to her. She was one of those rocks that you can place your world on as stable and unchanging. I miss her so much already, not having her around is going to be hell. I’m getting emotional writing this, and I have to go to training yet today so I am going to cut it off here. Thanks again for all the support, I greatly value each of you in my “internet family”.

Gadgetzan Bound

March 20, 2014 by Belghast

Obligatory Update

Yesterday while I was in training I got a text from my mother. It seems as though the lasix is doing what it is supposed to do and my grandmothers kidney function is improved. At this point they are talking about maybe taking her off the ventilator today, and trying to wake her up completely. For the last several days they have kept her sedated with propofol aka “the Michael Jackson drug”. This has been allowing her to rest and hopefully heal. As always I want to thank you all for the support. I am not sure if I want to hope that things are turning around yet or not, because I really don’t want to jinx things. If they can take her off the ventilator that means she moves out of ICU and up to something called a telemetrics floor. Which I believe means all the monitoring of ICU, just without the critical nature. I of course will report in with what has happened one way or the other tomorrow.

Gadgetzan Bound

Last night I did not get a ton of playtime but the time I did get I continued working on my Night Elf Mage. At this point I am 45 and sitting in Gadgetzan, having more or less completed Thousand Needles. Tanaris feels much the same, even though it has changed massively since when I was first out here leveling my Hunter back in 2005. The flavor of the zone is still there… namely the conflict between the goblins of Gadgetzan and the south seas pirates. While not as hard hit as thousand needles, the zone has lost a significant amount of dry land during the Cataclysm. In many ways this has made some of the places more enjoyable. I especially liked the shallow lake full of sea giants.

Back in Everquest, the iconic “dangerous” mob was the Sand Giant, and Sea Giants have that same sort of feeling. I remember the first time I encountered one, and I also remember it completely kicking my ass. So while it feels odd that I am openly hunting them during a kill quest, it also feels cool to know that I can now take them down. Additionally you might notice that I finally got off my duff and made some glyphs. I have to say the “unbound” elemental is so much cooler than the stock frost elemental. On top of that it has a much more soothing sound as opposed to the default “water boiling” noise.

I only managed to put on a few levels last night, but mostly because I was not feeling up to pugging. There are days I can deal with the frustration and stress and there are other days I cannot. Last night I just wanted to wrap up in my cocoon on the sofa and vege out for a bit. I ended up going to bed fairly early, which I am sure is something my body needed. I still feel like I am half coming down with something, half allergies going haywire. According to fitbit I managed to get over six hours of sleep last night, which is pretty damned good for me. Traditionally I barely get five hours on the best night.

Out of Touch

The oddest thing about being in a serious training class, or at least one with the word “bootcamp” in the title means that I really am disconnected from the world while doing it. This has been odd, I am so used to knowing about everything happening within minutes thanks to twitter and google plus. Being disconnected has created this sense that I am missing something important. Yet instead of trying to catch up last night, I mostly just kept ignoring it. I guess my mind is going into weekend mode when I really don’t check into stuff much at all. Training has been good, but it was one of those situations where I did not realize quite how much I already knew about the software. Day one was pretty much just a review of concepts we already knew.

Hopefully today we will get into the hardcore nuts and bolts of tearing stuff apart and reassembling it in a fashion we want. The instructor is pretty hardcore, in that I guess at one point he was over the hardware division at Microsoft, as well as other things. Nice guy, seems to know what he is talking about. The time has gone extremely quickly, and I think it helps that I am taking it with two other co-workers. I guess right now it just feels like I am in this bubble that is not entirely “the real world”, but instead some odd “training world”. Oh well just today and tomorrow and then we are back to normality.