ps4 Archives - Page 5 of 6 - Tales of the Aggronaut

October PS+ Line-Up

October 9, 2014 by Belghast

Writers Block

I have to admit the last few mornings my blog post has been exceedingly difficult to write. For whatever reason the words that generally flow so freely have been clogged up. It feels like I just don’t have anything of any importance to talk about, which has never really stopped me in the past. I guess I am writing this morning to show that even if I blog every single day… I have days where I stare at the blank screen and can’t seem to figure out how to fill it. Generally speaking if I poke around the internet for a bit and in that effort something pops into my head. Today however all I really feel is tired. I’ve been trying to come down with something, and yesterday I had all but lost my voice. I keep thinking it is just allergies since I am not running a fever or anything, but not really sure at this point. More than likely it is since I am struggling under a constant deluge of drainage.

I think part of what is making this morning such a struggle is that last night was one of those nights where I couldn’t quite get comfortable in any game I played. I shifted between FFXIV, Dragon Age, Spunky, Destiny and even started Persona 4. When my wife got home I packed up the upstairs and took my Vita downstairs and hung out playing from bed. I have to say that is one of the coolest things about buying into the “Playstation” system is that everything interoperates so much better than the equivalent. I am even considering picking up a Playstation TV to add another screen to the equation. Right now pretty much anything I do on my PS4 I can do remotely, but my only desire is that the PS3 remote play worked better or more often. There are still a ton of titles that I would like to play on that system as Playstation Plus keeps releasing more of them.

Drive Club Plus

And there we have it folks… I have a topic to talk about. There has been a bit of controversy over the last few days because due to consequences Sony has had to back away from one of the promised titles as part of the October Playstation Plus lineup. Drive Club is a brand new game that is coming out for the PS4 and has been pretty hotly anticipated I might add. Through some financial trickery they cut a deal to offer it for free as part of the Playstation Plus subscription through a special Drive Club Plus edition. Granted this version did not include all of the tracks or cars, but was apparently otherwise fully functional. I was somewhat shocked when I read about it, since in essence this free copy would allow you to join clubs and race with your friends just like if you had purchased the full version. Additionally Plus members were going to be given the option to plunk down $50 to upgrade to the full fledged copy of the game and get all the bits and baubles they were missing.

Unfortunately as the game launched the servers being run for the game buckled under the weight. I feel like Sony made the right call here to delay giving this title away in an effort to help stabilize the launch. The truth is that folks plunked down money for the full priced version of the game, and they should come first. Granted this is coming from someone who has been a long time subscriber to Playstation Plus. The natives are restless however because a number of folks decided to pony up for Plus ONLY to get their free copy of Drive Club. The thing is that they are still going to get it… just not quite yet. What frustrates me is listening to the folks Rage about what is already the best deal in gaming hands down. Where else can you play $50 for an entire year and have six titles delivered to you every month. Even if you don’t like a few titles here and there… it is still a phenomenal deal.

October PS+ Line-Up

One of the tricks I learned several months back from my good friend Ashgar is that you didn’t actually have to log into the Playstation Store from any of your devices. There is one handy dandy web based interface where you can access all of your free monthly Playstation Plus titles, as well as queue them to download to any of your devices. So if you are a Playstation Plus member I highly suggest “purchasing” everything each month regardless if you want to play it or own the device. For ages I only has a PS3 and still found it a good deal… but all the while I was picking up titles for that console I was also picking them up for both PS4 and Vita knowing that someday I would end up picking up those consoles. When I got my PS4 I had over a half dozen titles sitting there waiting on me, and when I got my Vita I had around 50 titles that I could play. The subscription is a great deal but even more so when you have all of the consoles they are giving titles away for. This month seems to be significantly better than most of the recent ones, so I thought I would go into the titles available right now.

Spelunky

Available for PS4, PS3, Vita

This is a title I have wanted to play for some time, but never ended up grabbing it. The idea is that you are a cave explorer looking for treasure, and combating the traps you encounter along the way. What the game is known for is for being extremely unforgiving in that when you die your game is over and you respawn at the beginning of the area with nothing to show for your accomplishment. In that aspect it feels a little bit like Rogue Legacy without the whole generations aspect. I played it for a bit last night on the PS4 and had fun.

Pix the Cat

Available for PS4, Vita

This title looks to be a frantic mix of Pac Man and the classic Snake game that we all played so damned much on our Nokia 5120 phones. Look I am old… I had one of those phones and it was the only game available. This game seems perfectly suited for the Vita but is also available on PS4, and as part of the whole Bragtoberfest event I believe it was Murf that proposed a challenge to see who could get the highest score on this game. I have yet to crack it open but it is installed on both Vita and PS4 so I will get around to it eventually.

Dust: An Elysian Tail

Available for PS4

This is another game that I have wanted to play for some time. Hell I even own it on steam thanks to one of the many “indie bundles” that I have picked up over the years. The irony is that now that it is on a console I am actually far more likely to play it. I really like the Dual Shock 4 controller… and until I pony up the $60 to buy one for my PC, I am likely going to favor playing certain kinds of games on the PS4. Ultimately this is a really cool looking Metroidvania about a series of anthropomorphic animals as they go on a quest to do something or another. I really don’t know much about the story, but supposedly it is actually rather good. Looking forward to playing.

Rainbow Moon

Available for PS3, Vita

This game looks really cool, and I am not sure how it was completely off my radar. Essentially it looks like Final Fantasy Tactics by another developer to be truthful. The gameplay looks really similar, and I am hoping it is just as detailed and in depth. This will add yet another long form JRPG that I need to play on my Vita, as that device is quickly becoming almost exclusive for laying in bed and playing them. Last night for example I started Persona 4 Golden. The JRPG genre is really ideally suited for that handheld, and I am sure Rainbow Moon will be no different.

Dungeons and Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara

Available for PS3

This game… so much love for this game. For me at least this is the pinnacle of the 90s era arcade beat-em-up games. This is a collection of two arcade games, one of which was super rare here in the United States. What made it so damned awesome at the time was that you would sit down at this rather imposing looking machine with three of your friends and play your way through a choose your adventure style quest. At various points you are prompted for what exactly you are going to do… do you save the town or do you save the docks. Each step moves you down a branching path towards the conclusion. I loved this game so much that I ordered the import from Japan that was only available for the Sega Saturn. What makes this version awesome is that it supports network multiplayer just like the Steam copy, so a perfect excuse to go smash some kobolds with friends.

Batman Arkham Asylum

Available for PS3

So here comes confession time… I have never beaten this game or frankly made it terribly far into it. I have had it on Steam for ages, but when I first tried to play it, I attempted to play it with a keyboard and mouse and found the overall experience frustrating. I simply never went back and tried it again. What I find most interesting about this is that ages ago Playstation Plus gave away the later games, but we had yet to receive the original until now. As such I am looking forward to playing this as I didn’t want to jump in on the second or third game without playing the original. Something about it being on a console makes it seem more appealing.

And there you have it… this months line up of games. While don’t get Drive Club Plus yet, there is still a ton of awesome to be had there. What I love the most is that when they give away a game they generally also give away the cross buy rights, meaning if something is available on multiple platforms you can play it on whichever one you choose. Cross buy is one of those features that really endears me to the Playstation system of consoles, and especially since most of the newer titles also feature cross-save letting me start a game on my PS4 and then pick it up on the native vita client. In any case I personally think it is a pretty damned good month that will only get better when they finally unlock the keys to the Drive Club kingdom in a few weeks.

#DriveClub #PlaystationPlus

Leopard Print Paladin

September 22, 2014 by Belghast

Susceptible to Grind

This weekend I played a good bit of Destiny because it is the perfect game for those moments when I don’t feel like I am get into something terribly detailed. I play this game much in the same fashion as I play Diablo 3, in short bursts with the ability to jettison out if needed to go do something else. As such this has become in many ways the game I play when I know we are going to be leaving the house soon. I am never more than just a teleport to orbit away from safety, which makes me consume the game voraciously in small doses. As such I have mostly been running the game in private mode with my fire team locked down to keep people from popping in at random. I feel like I don’t want to deal with the expectations of others when I am playing a game in this fashion. Generally speaking I am either moments from leaving the game, or playing the game while camping something in Final Fantasy XIV… and in either case I am not exactly responsive enough to be a proper group mate.

The bulk of my gameplay has been doing either patrols on the Cosmodrome or on the Moon. I finally got a blue engram to drop, but unfortunately it was for my class item… which is essentially just decoration. Instead of the traditional “flag football” towel, this one is a series of 3 banners that hang down from my waist. One of the things I am learning about myself is that I am deeply susceptible to grinding. I find it super easy to zone out and just wander around aimlessly in an area. I seem to be able to get infinite amounts of entertainment value from simply wandering around killing Fallen and Hive on the moon and accepting the little mini-quests. As such I was level 16 before I actually finished the Moon this weekend and got the quest chain sending me to Venus. I am sure I will be 20+ before I finish Venus, because as soon as I unlock the next patrol zone… that is more than likely what I will be doing quite a bit of.

I think part of the problem with Destiny is the fact that it has relatively little to go with as far as Story goes. As such I find absolutely no sense of urgency pushing me forward to keep completing missions. In a game like Mass Effect 3 I felt like I was moments away from doom at all times, so I just had to keep pushing forward and trying to turn back the tide in a war larger than myself. In Destiny they have failed to infuse the narrative with any of this. Sure things are going horribly wrong out in the galaxy, but we have this last city that seems completely immune to the effect of what is happening. Sure The Traveler is “dying” but I don’t feel this happening, I feel like that is generations away and I have just been drafted into essentially a science fiction stalemate. So I have zero issue wandering about and taking time to smell the “helium coils” as it were. The moment to moment gameplay are what keeps me engaged with this game, and the story line and as such story quests could not exist at all and I would still be happy.

Leopard Print Paladin

At the beginning of the weekend I was a level 40 newly christened Paladin of Uldah. Over the course of the weekend I managed to push my way through to 46 and get the first of my spiffy gear. For those who are not familiar with Final Fantasy XIV, at 45 you complete a class quest that will reward you four pieces of “Relic” gear that represents the defacto look for your class. This means you get a full set of gear minus two slots. The belt is not terribly important because no belt really changes the look of something drastically. However the other missing piece is the chest piece and it is essentially the item that always ties a class set together. On the Lalafell the paladin “short shorts” look is minimized by the total lack of height, however of anyone else it looks like you are wearing white boxer shorts without the chest piece that gives you the plate skirt that is so characteristic of a paladin in this game.

There is a full set of gear that drops in the dungeon Dzmael Darkhold, that rarely sees much use since it is level 44, and at 45 everyone gets their class set. However the one piece that is extremely useful is the chest, which thankfully in all of my journeys I have gathered up a few of these. The problem is that for pretty much every class there is something goofy going on with this set. For the tanks the set features an inexplicable leopard print inlay, with no way to “dye” the pattern away. So as a result for the last few levels you end up looking a bit goofy until you finally ding 50 and get that class chest piece. Thankfully for me I also managed to pick up a nice pink quality chest for 47 that should make the outfit look a little bit more put together for the last few levels.

Red Bunny Samurai

The other thing I am realizing is just how much of my other gear will work for Paladin. Almost all of the dropped pieces and jewelry from the endgame levels worth for Marauder, Warrior, Gladiator and Paladin. The problem with this is that I have several of the pieces glamoured to look like the Warrior class set. Apparently this will not show as such when I equip them however, and quite frankly the Syrcus tower set looks like crap for plate wearers. So I am wondering what set I am going to glamour to that can be neutral and work for both classes. The most important thing after all is that I still have a proper bunny hat. While I freely admit that I stole wearing this helm from Tam, I think I have more than made it my own… since it was clearly designed to be worn by a Lalafell. He tends to favor the white one with the full face mask, where I am enamored with the red one that allows my full face to show through.

My goal for the coming days is to push the paladin to 50 and get it fully geared in 90 or better items. I’ve been stockpiling hunt marks to be able to do this the moment I ding, but I am really not sure how many pieces I will actually need to buy. All of my jewelry is dual class, as well as my chest, belt, and boots. That just leaves three pieces of gear that I actually need to purchase, and then again I will need to spend the requisite 1125 tomestones of mythology to get the zenith weapon and shield. Right now I have a dilemma I suppose in that I am really close to being able to purchase my next Animus book, but I am also really close to 50 at this point. I don’t have the tomestones to do both. In theory I can get the book and the process of simply getting my relic weapon should give me more than enough tomestones to be able to at least craft the relic. Then I can deal with grinding out the rest as a paladin if I so choose. In either case I should have another animus book and a 50 paladin soon enough. Then I suppose my focus turns to finishing off my White Mage.

#FFXIV #Destiny

Recording Console Games

June 19, 2014 by Belghast

Bombing Run

Yesterday was an interesting day, partially because I dinged another level and am now officially in my “late thirties”. Most of the morning was spent in preparation for my wife to fly in, and doing a last minute run through the house to “pick up” a bit. Honestly this year I somehow managed to pick up successfully as I went and didn’t really hit the point where I simply stopped caring that there was a pizza box on the kitchen counter. So it really only took a few minutes, and I streamed some Warlords of Draenor while waiting. For a reason that I did not know at the time… none of my voice over was coming through in the stream, but I will get to that later.

I picked up my wife around noon and we ran across town to my favorite Indian restaurant… where I proceeded to order something completely new in honor of the occasion. My standby has always been Chicken Tika Masala medium hot, and no matter how many times I consider ordering something else… I always end up back on that. The new dish was a sort of super spicy egg fried rice with chicken in it that they call Desi Rice. In any fashion it was pretty freaking good. Overall the day was pretty relaxing, and it served as the perfect break in the working week. It was awesome to have my wife back, even if it is only for a few days as she flies out to the second conference of the year Sunday.

What completely overwhelmed me yesterday was all the well wishes from my internet family. Both my twitter and g+ feeds were blowing up with well wishes all day yesterday, and upon logging into teamspeak that night I got another round. I feel completely bombarded, and I thank all of you for that feeling. It kinda feels like the whole Sally Fields “You like me, You really like me” moment. But amazing friends aside… I find it always interesting to see which bot wishes me a happy birthday first. This year and I believe many of the other years recently… the reward goes for the WoW Ace Forums… who wished me a happy birthday at 7 pm on the 17th, which I can only assume is on Australian time? In all seriousness… I am humbled by the amount of support I get from you all.

Recording Console Games

One of the coolest things about the PS4 is that it can stream live to twitch. It also happens to be one of the most disappointing, since the twitch streaming rate is locked to 480p which shocked me. I pretty much religiously stream in 1080p so it was frustrating the first time I cracked open one of my Destiny Alpha videos and saw how blurry the footage was. The other nuisance is that it seems to only record MY voice chat as part of the stream, and not that of the other people I happen to be partied with. The end result is this disjointed experience of listening to an often times hilarious one sided conversation. I figured there had to be a better way.

For some time I had looked at a capture card, but honestly that whole concept was foreign to me. After doing a ton of research I realized there was a huge problem there, with the way the streaming worked. The two consoles that I most wanted to stream from were the Sony Playstation 3 and Sony Playstation 4… both of which I absolutely love. The problem is that in both cases they use HDCP or High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection aka a screwball system that tries to encrypt the video data from the source to the television. Apparently the Xbox One also struggles with this, and for some reason in all of these systems it is either on all of the time… or turned on the first time you play a movie and then stays on. Normally this would prevent you from recording gameplay footage, because the recording device is not “HDCP Compliant”.

The widely accepted workaround is to plug these consoles into the capture card using component cables. This however causes its own stream of problems as you take a digital signal… convert it to analog and then convert it back to digital. The end result is often blurry and color shifted and just not something I wanted to mess with. So after a lot of research I stumbled on the above video. Basically the idea is to use an HDMI splitter to get around the HDCP lockout without actually stripping the HDCP protection and making the device illegal for sale. All of this is voodoo to me to be honest, but I wanted to give it a shot. I managed to find an Elgato HD Capture device on Craigslist and got a ridiculously good deal on it, therefore enabling this entire thing to work. As of last night I had the set up going and it worked successfully, after a few attempts to work out the kinks. Sorry for the twitch advertisement spam on twitter.

Rube Goldberg of Streaming

This ladies and gentleman is my streaming setup. I decided to diagram it out in part because it made it actually make sense rather than the jumble of cables that I have running around my desktop. Right now I have both the PS3 and PS4 hooked up in this fashion and will ultimately move the Xbox 360 in here as well. For the setup I am proposing you need the following materials.

The Elgato comes with one HDMI cable and the necessary Micro to Full USB Cable. Like I said I got mine through a craigslist deal for $75 enabling this whole setup to work. So the only thing I was actually missing was the splitter. After doing a lot of research on the subject it seems like only a few splitters do what is needed. Thankfully the one I ordered and linked above is both tiny and works great. Ultimately I want to get some much shorter usb cables because right now… having all these 6 foot cables is a mess. Essentially you hook all of your game systems to the HDMI switch, and then hook the switch to an HDMI splitter, and then hook one of the two outbound ports to the Elgato. That then passes the signal to the television and your computer. You can download software from the Elgato website that does a decent job at capture, but I simply integrated all of this into my existing OBS setup.

Trial and Error

After a lot of trial and error I was able to produce a video of me playing Castle of Illusion on the PS3. I do a rather horrible job at playing the game, but that is entirely beside the point. Basically I could have died over and over and still would have been amused because the setup was working. The only problem is… I seemed to be unable to record any dialog from my microphone. I spent the better part of this video fiddling with my settings in OBS trying to make it function again. The video however looked great, and was streaming to twitch and exporting to youtube in glorious 1080p. The trouble with my headset started over the weekend when I decided to disconnect it from my machine and hook it to my ps4 for the purpose of grouping up in Destiny.

Being a USB headset, everything seemed to go wonky when I did this and everything from mumble, to teamspeak to obs treated the headset as though it had never been connected to the system, forcing me to remap everything. Then I remembered… I had hooked the headset previously directly into my machine, and was now trying to go through my powered hub. So I pulled the headset out, hooked it directly into the machine and bam… all of the sudden OBS started working again. This second video has dialog coming across and with the help of my good friend Ashgar, I managed to sort out the volume levels so that I could actually be heard over the game audio. So I feel like right now I have a repeatable solution for streaming HDMI connected consoles over twitch.

Now my specific setup is not a requirement… there are lots of different ways to do this. Some folks have had good luck installing a cheap capture card in their PC and streaming through that. The Elgato seemed like a more hands free solution to working out the finer points of video conversion. There however are a bunch of different devices on the market that do essentially the same thing. I wanted the Elgato simply because it did not require an additional power source and could draw power entirely from my PC over USB. Since the HDMI switch and splitter each have their own power supplies, this just cut down on the total number of cords needed. Right now the hole thing is a colossal mess, and at some point I want to hook it up with significantly shorter cables. For now however it works great and I am super happy to be able to do this.

The Devil’s Lair

June 16, 2014 by Belghast

Bad Decisions

I am still feeling pretty lousy from this allergy induced stupor, so last night I just was not really feeling Wildstar and interacting with other human beings. I ended up logging out about 9:30 and attempting to lay down. I hung out in bed for awhile snuggling with our cats but sleep just refused to take me. So as a result I ended up getting back up and decided I would begin my four job fiesta run. My intent was just to go through the process of backing up my savegame files from the previous draft run we were doing, and simply start the game going… maybe get to the first crystal. Next thing I know it is midnight and I am moments away from getting the fire crystal.

Now however I am paying the price because I feel nice and groggy to add to my allergy induced stupor. It is funny how a game you have played so many times can be so enthralling. So far I am off to a pretty good start. My first job was the Knight which lead to a really easy start to the game and me just being able to roll over the top of almost every encounter thanks to the power of “Two Handed”. The second pick from Gilgobot was the Red Mage, which still worked okay since I did not have either the black or white mage in the first round. Also the Red Mage can totally use a Two-Hander if equipped with that ability, so still pretty much rolling over the top of everything without having to cast any magic at all.

Since I am just a little ways from getting the fire crystal I went ahead and requested my fire job. Now is when things start to fall apart. I wound up with the Geomancer, which is one of my least favorite classes. This means I do have a use for bells… but I’ve always felt the geomancer was somewhat of a useless pick. Basically I have a couple of options… I can either deal with it and struggle through or I can donate money to Four Job Fiesta to buy my way out of geomancer hell. I have yet to decide what to do, and ultimately this is why I chose to request my job a little early so I could mull it over. Basically I have to make a decision before I collect the fire job crystals with which way I am going to go. I would have far rather had ninja or ranger, but then again I would have rather had mystic knight than red mage. but more than happy to roll with the punches there.

Destiny Group Play

Yesterday afternoon after I had finished editing the podcast and writing my morning blog post that almost turned into an afternoon one, I opted to do some Destiny with Tamrielo and Ashgar. At this point Tam and I were both completely sold on the game, but Ash however was not really feeling the game. While I was finishing up my blog post, Ash and tam ran through the first mission in good time and the three of us entered the “Explore Cosmodrome” map point which was a free roaming version of the Old Russia area you visit in the first static mission. We wandered around out there for some time getting both Tam and I to level 7 and Ashgar to level 6. The mobs we encountered ranged from level 2 near the entrance to the area, to level 4 in the instanced areas… and finally level 8 or 9 deep in the zone.

I had the forethought to set this up and stream while we ran around. The interesting thing about the playstation party communication is that apparently it ONLY records my voice. This leads for some odd one sided conversation going on as you watch the video. After having a blast running around in a free form area, we decided to take it to the next level and do what is in essence their first dungeon set in the same basic area. I have to say the concept works… like the boss fights in Borderlands 2 were interesting, but they never really reminded me of the level of complexity found in an MMO boss fight. Destiny seems to bridge that gap and provided us with a number of extremely challenging encounters. The first one was a sort of “hold this spot” fight where we were flooded with really horrible things in the room with us.

The Devil’s Lair

The first encounter essentially involved setting off one of our ghosts to work on scanning an objective, while it does this we have to hold the position. During this time we encountered a brand new mob type that we had not seen to that point called a “Stealth Vandal”. These are the sniper type mobs but they spawn in stealthed and remain so until they actually strike. Now their form of stealth is not truly hidden, but they blend in with the background “predator” like. It took us several tries to get a feel for how the encounter worked and manage to place each of us strategically around the room. Even after doing so it still involved a lot of running around chaotically looking for a safe bit of cover to attack from. Every so often one of us would have to stay alive long enough for another one to spawn back in. This becomes a crucial skill since when the last player dies… the entire team respawns back at the checkpoint and you have to redo the encounter from the start.

The second encounter was the one we had been waiting for. Periodically when in the open world version of the zone these group encounters spawn in. One of them is this insane walking tank that has a blast attack that you simply cannot hide from effectively. If you are on the other side of the wall when it goes off, it will still very much one shot you. The idea behind the encounter is that you have to take out a piece of leg armor, which causes it to fall down temporarily and expose a weak point behind the red cockpit looking shell. You can only whittle down so much health during each one of these phases. So the biggest problem we ran into during the fight is that we simply ran out of ammunition. Every so often another drop ship lands, and periodically it spawns the little drones… all of which are decent sources of ammunition. But this also forces one to make a suicidal run dangerously close to the walking tank to be able to gather it up effectively.

I wish I had thought to fire up the stream before going into the mission, because I swear we were fighting the tank for a good thirty minutes. Once we got to the other side of it, things started to get super creepy. You walk through an area littered with hundreds and hundreds of bones strewn everywhere. I started to wonder if I accidentally teleported into a Doom game, but I have to say I am loving the atmosphere so far. I really have no clue what exactly the “Fallen” are yet, but they seem to be some sort of incectoid baddies similar to the Prothean/Collectors from Mass Effect. Honestly there can be parallels made between those two games in many ways, as the atmosphere often feels like you would imagine Mass Effect would feel if the Reapers came and decimated the planet. So far I am hooked, and looking forward to getting to play more of it. Right now we have managed to hit the cap allowed in this first alpha test, which sucks a bit because each of us have gear that will never be equippable as we cannot get higher than level 8. That said it was a really good time, and I hope to play some of the other classes to see if I like them better.

Wildstar

My plan is tonight to play Wildstar, and work on finishing Auroria on my Engineer. Right now I have reached a point where I am just tired of that zone and want to move on. The southern area of the zone is extremely nasty, and I feel like I am almost underleveled to be able to complete it successfully. I am wondering if I need to go back and finish some of the challenges that I didn’t quite make to see if I can finish off 22. I am also considering making myself a secondary hotbar setup with non-tanky abilities to see how much more smoothly questing goes. Right now my biggest problem is that it takes forever for me to kill anything, and while I can stay alive for a really long time… that time is not infinite. I feel like I am high center right now on my engineer, so I need to do something to get back into the swing of playing it.

#Destiny #DevilsLair #FourJobFiesta #FinalFantasyV